Salon du Patrimoine

Last night (November 3rd) I had the pleasure to attend the Vernissage of the Salon du Patrimoine, in the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris.

If you are interested in french culture, quality craftsmanship, painting (in the craft sense), art restoration, restoration of buildings, or just want to get a real sense of how enormously motivated the french are to preserve their historical roots, then visit the Salon du Patrimoine. It's a blend of high tech and traditional crafts, usually blending seamlessly together in ways that are very surprising.

The salon takes place annually in the Carrousel du Louvre, just beside the upturned pyramid. The dates this year, are from the 3 - 6th of November.
99 rue de Rivoli
75039 Paris 75001
tel:+33 (0)1 43 16 47 47

You will meet extremely helpful and friendly french people with exacting knowledge of their specialisation. A picture tells a thousand words so here are a few to give you an idea of what it's like.

My paints supplier from Germany is there :)

Quality oozes out of everything.
Very impresive reproduction carpentry everywhere although that's not the issue here. They are displaying handmade, individually designed, objet d'art and jewellery boxs.

The school where I studied Trompe L'Oeil and faux effects are there. They are based in Montmarte. Stand K1, if you are visiting. Say hi to Thimy or Pierre, for me.

Artparis 08 / The march of the little red dots.

What a great show and so many little red dots. This years Art Fair in Paris was great. It took place in the Grand Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill and runs from the 3rd to the 7th of April. No prefabricated structures here. Just class. Pity about the coffee though, bloody Maxwell House muck.
It was a really enlivening, impressive, colourful, painterly (where did they find all those great painters) and just generally brilliant show. There was a large queue to get in but that's normal, the French love a good queue. I've seen people join them only to get to the end and realise that that didn't really want to be there, so they trail away. There's a sense of solidarity in waiting together.

So why was the ArtParis show so great? There was a lot of art on the walls rather than empty space. There was no sense of boredom in visitors. The displays had a lot of class and each was a bit different to each other, simply creative rather than competitive. There were very interesting effects type art which didn't depend on being plugged in or require a solar panel to work. Just clever. The quality, across the board was really impressive and no one seemed to be trying to foist off bad or boring work on buyers. And there were lots of buyers. I've never seen so many little red dots. Not to mention so many political paintings. Freedom of speech really isn't dead here. It was very impressive.

Here's a selection of photos and video.