i took the above video with my digital camera. the song is “Nantes” by Beirut. most of the video consists of a 45 minute giant elephant ride that Kourtney and i took. the first part of the video features a bunch of french high school students riding some prototypes for a giant marine carousel that they are planning to build.
Les Machines was created after founding artist, François Delarozière split up with Royal de Luxe, a company responsible for this shit.
my boyfriend nathan worked on the window displays at bergdorf goodman, which were just unveiled this week. they’re truly phenomenal. i highly suggest getting out to the store and checking them out in person. make sure to go at night.
the store is located on fifth avenue between 58th and 59th (in manhattan).
i spent two nights in my friend cécile’s fabulous apartment in le marais (the super chic gay district of paris). here are some photos from the extremely limited amount of time i spent there. above : sacre coeur - church on montmartre.
that was my quote of the day as we walked down this street in barceloneta on monday, my last full day in barcelona. apparently, twenty years ago there was no beach. barcelona was just a massive port of trade, but now the beach is a draw and augments the city’s debaucherous reputation - giving a daytime leisure equivalent to bcn’s world class nightlife. it’s like los angeles but spanish - and with more art. cities are like cake batter. you add various elements to affect sweetness, texture, etc. the addition of hollywood to any beautiful beach town will inevitably lead to a kind of sourdough, bitter, fluffy cake. in other words - barcelona is like the los angeles you can actually live in.
but would i actually live there?
that’s the question i ask whenever i go to a new city. barcelona was kind of my main reason for coming to spain at all. i had heard so much about it and i wanted to see if it lived up to all the hype. as you may have read here, my first impressions of barcelona were not necessarily the best. thankfully i was able to meet some amazing people that showed me an amazing time, and now i have a markedly higher opinion of the city. as for permanent residence, i can’t really say. madrid seems to still be my spanish love, but the art scene in spain definitely lives in barcelona. as a designer, it would absolutely be the most fruitful place for me to be in spain. from the galleries and shops in el born, to the contemporary art museum in el raval to poble nau’s open studios, barcelona is a perfect climate for new and innovative design.
my new friends in barcelona include print-makers, painters, documentary film-makers and dj’s and they all absolutely rock. from lovely dinner parties to tapas to all-nighters at razzmatazz, every social interaction i experienced was genuine, non-pretentious and fascinating. if by any chance any of you are reading this : you’ve got a place to crash in nyc! (that means you, clare, becks, tom, james, dix, ninian, john, hiroshi, steve & all you other awesome folk!)
at long last, here are my pics from our visit to ‘temple expiatori de la sagrada familia,’ the unfinished masterpiece of catalan architect antonin gaudí. they’ve been working on it for over 100 years and it should be finished in about 20.
so we got to barcelona yesterday, via ryan air from madrid to girona - a small airport about an hour and a half south of barcelona - and then a cheap bus ride. apparently it’s very expensive to fly directly to barcelona (which of course has it’s own airport) so most people fly to girona or reus.
yesterday i was in a pissy mood for some reason. maybe it was our frat-house hostel, homesickness or worries of spending my last dime on tapas and having to sell my body on the street to get back to lyon at the end of the month. in order to ease my pain, jess and i had dinner with the gays in the gay-borhood of barcelona which has a catalan name that means “left of the example” at this fabulous and cheap cafeteria that was packed. an injection of gayness got me through the night and today, after doing some much-needed laundry, i booked it over to casa mila by gaudí.
learning about this building in high school got me pumped, and i gotta say, the slides just don’t do it justice.
spain is hot - and the temperature of design is warmer than in most other places. art and design on the street in madrid is bright, enticing and brilliant.
so this is a double retroactive post about lyon, originally written on fire island, but finished and finally posted from my apartment in queens as my lazy cat hangs out in my bookshelf. here you go, katie and i go (went) to the musee des beaux arts [captions below]:
this painting by lyonaise painter claude bonnefond (b. 1796, d. 1860) sturck me immediately. look at the dying guy’s right hand.
