Praeterita

Then watch this Tate Gallery, UK, compilation of archive footage of the great man:

After I got back from Paris on January 18th, I tried to cure some of my withdrawal symptoms (NB: didn't really work, but please read on) by creating a Google map of my 16 days there. Each point on the map has some notes attached, most have photos with them too, and there's a video I shot from a moving Metro train. I also discovered fun functions like being able to trace and highlight different walking routes, each with its own colour of line. For some reason, the photo links work best when you click on a point in the left-hand list, rather than the point on the map itself. Anyway, I had a blast creating it. It's kind of like an alternative photo album of a short and intensely-lived trip.

Me outside the Bateau Lavoir, and (top) the building in about 1905. You know those people that are completely obsessed fans of Star Wars, Game of Thrones, or any other kind of chronicle/team/celebrity/et cetera? The ones who secretly hoard collections of memorabilia, who consume everything created by the object of their obsession or written about it? The ones who, when asked a question about their pet subject, find it hard not to start gabbling wildly, trying to tell everything they know as fast as they can, in a way that makes the person who asked the question freeze with a ghastly smile on their face and wide, unblinking eyes that cannot hide their deep regret at starting a conversation with this complete and utter nutter? That's me, when it comes to Pablo Picasso and his early years in Paris. Picasso on the Place Ravignan, in front of Le Bateau Lavoir, in 1904. Thankfully, it started with his paintings, and later the other kinds of art he made, so at least my ...

Me outside the studio building. I didn't go into the Louvre during my recent Paris trip. But I did visit the Musee Delacroix, which is in the house-garden-studio occupied by Eugene Delacroix at the end of his life, between 1857 and 1863. Even if you don't know Delacroix's work that well, or you only know him as the painter of the big historical canvas Liberty Leading the People, it's still worth visiting, for a variety of reasons: You get to see some fine smaller paintings and statues. You see sketches and sketchbooks that give you a glimpse of his working process. You see lots of the personal objects he collected, particularly from his life-changing visits to north Africa. You get to stand inside his studio. And all this without the crush of crowds inside the Louvre. From top: two of Delacroix's painting toolboxes, including a palette; one of his sketchbooks For someone like me, who feel in love with Delacroix's work shortly after I left...

There are reasons to believe that Parisians are not necessarily as enamoured of their city as the millions of starry-eyed tourists who go there every year. People with a longer acquaintance of the place, who are married to or have Parisian friends, talk about the dissatisfaction that the natives have with many aspects of life in the capital. Some of these complaints would be familiar to New Yorkers or Londoners: rents are getting higher all the time, you have to work too hard just to feel like you're barely keeping up, it's too depressing in winter and too hot in summer, traffic congestion is worse than ever, there are too many tourists, it's being turned into a tax-haven playpen for foreign billionaires. Some of the complaints are specifically French: ridiculously complicated and burdensome tax regime, a top heavy bureaucracy that slows down all interactions with officialdom, a general societal 'can't-do' attitude that can make a battle out of anything fr...

My wife and I flew to Paris on January 2nd, arriving at Charles de Gaulle on the morning of the 3rd -- her birthday. After dropping our suitcases at a VRBO apartment in Montparnasse, we had a quick lunch and a beer at a brasserie around the corner, on the bustling thoroughfare of Rue Daguerre. We slept for a few hours, then celebrated Patty's birthday with a classic French meal at the Cafe du Rendezvous, on the corner of the Place Denfert-Rochereau. In two meals, I made two early mistakes with my rusty French: thinking I ordered a small beer, only to find that I'd really ordered a pint and a half; thinking I'd ordered a medium-to-well done steak, only to see a pool of blood squirt out from it at the first touch of a fork. In each case, by the way, I manfully finished off everything I was given. The next morning I walked about 200 metres to the nearest boulangerie and brought back a warm, fresh baguette for breakfast. The apartment was a well-appointed third-floor walk...

These photos are from some classes I am teaching at Lill Street Art Center , a venerable institution on the north side of Chicago. I got to know about this warehouse-sized collection of artist's studios and fully kitted-out ceramics, painting, and printmaking facilities more than ten years ago, shortly after I moved to Chicago from the UK. At that time, if you were someone like me who was looking to make some work quickly before acquiring my own studio, people told you about the Chicago Printmakers' Collaborative and Lill Street. I used the CPC for a few years, then got my own studio. In 2011, I took a short ceramics class at Lill Street. And starting a few weeks ago, I began teaching my first classes there. The first class was a one-day intensive in Monoprints (bottom photo). The other class is a three week Journal and Sketchbook class, and in the photo you can see the participants spending an hour adding colour, collage, cut-outs, and other things to thei...