Do I hear a Tumbril Rolling?

G'day Possums,

Truffles in a suit, pretends to  clean down a section of muddy flood damaged wall with  a nail brush.... next he'll be wiping Rabid-the-Hun's feet at some bloody Catlic Easter ceremony!  

Then, with his "Tin" political ear finely attuned he refused a snag sandwich on a street walk....so it's perfectly understandable why the  China / Australian extradition treaty was backflipped 10 minutes after saying they had approved it but forgot to tell their trade minister who was at the time extolling its virtues on national TV.... How much more incompetent can they get?  

The pics Petals, are suitably revolutionary, from that rather grim place in Paris called the Conciergerie, where from memory, some 1600 aristocrats and others were incarcerated and eventually went to the guillotine during the Terror, feeling the anger of the oppressed of an unequal society.

 Dane, Helle Thorning-Schmidt and ex-prime minister of that nation eviscerated Frydenberg on QandA.  Asking where, the bloody hell Australia was in world affairs now, she exposed the narrow minded, mealy mouthed and unimaginative rabble that rule us!

Fictions Frydenberg and his back-up The Righteous, Kelly seemed rather quiet on that episode... almost as if they understood, at last, that their trickle-down neanderthal-isms and reverse energy myopia were economically and socially useless and their ravings had also been blighted by the positive humanitarian works of Yunus and Thorning-Schmidt.

Fictions playing at being a "leader" of Alt energy was such a farce...and the audience far too polite!

The Conciergerie

The excuse of a federal treasurer, whose loathe to publish any economic modelling to justify how his  one solitary policy, "Trickle-Down" will work, suggested that journalists should go and ask people at the pub about the benefits of the government's company tax cuts.

As one wit observed, it makes sense to ask drunk people for an endorsement of your policy.

Australia under this ruling rabble is drifting to disaster.....

That case perhaps best exemplified by three of the current "darlings' of right-wing talk back and commentary, the Preening Princess, Daisy Cousens, The Gorgon Downer and the malicious Septic Tank, Helen Andrews. All three were given promo's in  a "puff-piece' in a Fairfax weekend mag which although it was at length, said little about these harridans of the right precisely because they actually have nothing to offer other than their own inflated, and over-entitled egos.

The Conciergerie

As symptoms of a failing society these women are exemplars.

Gorgon Downer thinks the minimum wage should be abolished along with penalty rates for the low paid (this current insanity being pushed by her playskool sandpit club for the intellectually and imaginatively bereft, the IPA) and that Brexit was Britain's finest hour since the Battle of. She is interesting to listen to as she becomes completely flummoxed when presented with the economic disaster the implementation of the IPA wish-list is making of this country and apart from repeating the rote cant of Thatcherism, has little of substance to convey. Which is probably why Timmy the Twat ex-Freedom Man Wilson got pre-selection in a safe seat ahead of her.

The Septic Tank, Andrew's, (whose sole qualification is apparently a degree in religious studies, which tells you much) avows a liking for disputation and conflict and public speaking. The pity being she lives in the past and wants to replicate the feudal system. But then, as Oscar Wilde pointed out, America passed from barbarism to decadence with no civilisation in between; so with her cultural baggage and fascination with make-believe friends, her lack of humanity should come as no surprise.

The Preening Princess is, well... just that!  Terming herself a controversialist she's happy to  blather-on  in what she thinks prettily about anything that upsets people..... a sort of delusional child libertarian who really should just "Shuffle Off To Buffalo" and set her "new conservative rebellion" to suitably shrill noises.

These destructive women offer nothing except pain, poverty and the maintenance of their own privileged positions. They present nothing except the return to a class system that millions have lost their lives fighting to overcome and represent all that is regressive, cruel, outdated and just plain wrong.

The Conciergerie

Comedian Tom Ballard got it right, ".....there's one thing we get wrong in Australian politics.... we don't assassinate them often enough!"

The Conciergerie

"Ohhh the Pikes, The Pike's are co-oming......remember the Conciergerie...

Hoo-roo Petals

Shane

Eleventy's Dreaming

Citizen Shane

G’day Possums,

Now that the dust in the burrow has settled on “the trip” and even though much less was shot than last time, I'm well into what seems an interminable “post-process” and able to reflect on what are becoming the salient memories of those six weeks.

Jardin de Plantes, Paris The Inspiration for Saint Sa'ens', "Carnival of the Animals"

The Cathedrals seen in Britain; Wells, Exeter, Southwark and the local churches all had a liveliness probably because they are used extensively and are not dank, damp spaces. Also the fact that the architecture being a century or so later in most cases and “English Perpendicular” has found its soaring, full formal restraint which is so different from the “Flamboyant” of French Gothic.

Wells Cathedral Chapter House Stairs

At Wells Cathedral I was hard pressed not to attempt to channel the spirit of Frederick Evans when confronted with the stairs going up to the Chapter House and had a twinge of regret that I wasn't lugging around a Field Camera with tilt and shift movements. It was only a twinge, as the gear I had bagged weighed in at 7 Kg and most was often left in the car for discretions sake. I had wrist straps for both cameras and they proved very useful in that the camera was always “at hand” and not flailing around your neck or protruding a lens in front like some priapic tourist in Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita.”

Scotney Castle

The gardenswere beautiful: Sissinghurst, Scotney, Trebah and the delightfully warm Lacock Abbey and even the walk to Petworth House but then nearly every French Village is a picture in itself and Versailles (apart from the selfie-hordes) has that expansive dignity and a singular charm in the Petit Trianon.

Versaille

Sissinghurst, Petworth, the Wallace collection, now administered by the State were all from immense private wealth, whereas wandering through the castle at Vitre or the ramparts of Dinan you’re conscious of a formidable awareness of Nation and region and even though The Victoria and Albert in London has a large Artwork Neon sign in its foyer telling the masses “This belongs to You” the Opera Garnier in Paris seems more publicly owned.

Petworth

Perhaps it was because the British renounced their Commonwealth, returning to a forelock tugging monarchical system whereas the French embraced Republican Liberty, Egalite’ and Fraternity that restaurant food and service is generally so much better in France?

Sissinghurst

Jardin des Plantes, Staircase

Wombat Droppings

A chronicle of the demise of Egalitarian Oz and its embrace of Fascism.

Rabid-the-Hun, leader of the ruling rabble, this week refused to deny that when he said, “…we are open for business,…” he meant the business of people smuggling.

It has come to light that in the free enterprise spirit some refugee boats have returned to Indonesia after thousands of dollars have been given by Oz Immigration to the captains of those vessels. This is irritating to those Military and Police in Indonesia who are complicit with this trade, as it will force them to lower the prices for the asylum seekers and pay their captains more. A real win-win for people smugglers.. ahhh, the talent of the ruling rabble.

Coming at the same time as Rabid was floating the idea of sending more troops to the hell-holes from where many of these refugees originate and mounting another four pronged assault on the Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs for suggesting that the Indonesians might stop listening to us on other matters if we continue violating their territory, his Treasurer Joe “Eleventy-Toyota-Killer” Hockey had us all “in the aisles” with his profoundly original observation that we will all need a good job if we wish to buy a house.

Eleventy ignored the fact that there are five people for every job at the moment and that self-employed and contract workers are not welcomed by the banks for home mortgages and that $100,000.00 university debts and a privatised health system and lower wages were not really a recipe for community building.

Pryor Cartoon, The Saturday Paper 13-6-2015

The $390,000.00 a year Free Speech Commissioner and ex Liarbril, ex “Coot-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe” (aka IPA), Timmy “Twat-Freedom-Man” Wilson popped his head up this week, too. At the Sydney Geriatric Institute he apparently opined that the judiciary should not be the ones dealing with human rights as this could be left to his mentor George “Bookshelves” Brandis or even “Dodo” Dutton but only after they’ve finished assaulting his boss, Gillian Triggs. Timmy didn’t see much use for any thing like a Magna Carta either… other than as a tourist attraction for lefty wimps.

It has yet to be ascertained what proportion of his $390,000.00 remuneration this thought- bubble was worth.

Peta "Bloody-Idiot" Credlin

Full of this spirit of Democracy, Rabid-the-Hun’s advisor, Peta ”Bloody-Idiot” Credlin was reported as telling a press photographer to delete the files she had shot of her. Having of late been less visible monstering her ruling rabble colleagues, this was a welcome return to form that we have missed appreciating in person; although if Rabid’s pronouncements on housing prices, wind farms, marriage equality, security and environmental matters are anything to go by, she is still showing equivalent acumen in her advisory role.

“Dodo” Dutton was at his rollicking charming best, too when the bullying Sydney radio noise Ray Hadley played him a song about Green’s Senator Sarah Hansen-Young’s adventures of being spied on by Wilson Security when she visited the refugee concentration camp on Manus Island.  Hadley has to be congratulated in getting a laugh from the dour faced Dodo even if it was, as another of Hansen-Young’s colleagues Larissa Waters said, “Sexist claptrap!”

It is interesting to note that with all the expensive Royal Commissions going on and nothing of import coming from them that in Queensland and Victoria the new governments are uncovering some very interesting messes that were allowed or were fostered by the previous Liarbril regimes in transport, education, sport and law… and I suspect that the vicious attacks on Gillian Triggs or anyone else who contradicts or opposes this ruling rabble will have similar treatment meted out like that of Hansen-Young; after all, look at the way Gillard was treated by these “adults”.

Much as I said there was a stench in Victoria which is now emerging…. this federal rabble are so  “on-the-nose” in so many areas and the corrupt stink is coming from the very top.

Hoo-roo Petals,

Shane.

Versailles, Petit Trianon

Watts Chapel

being seen, being seen.

Shane at Versailles

G'day Petals,

It seems a long time between drinks but that's only because we've been flat-out like the proverbial Lizard and buzzing around Paris like blue-arsed Flies.

Versaille, The Marmottan, Dorsay,  Louvre/Arts Decoratif,  Magnum show at Hotel de Ville, Concergerie, St Chapelle,  Orangerie, a belt up the Tour Montparnasse for some panoramas across the city at dusk with the added spice of a day of death at Montparnasse cemetery followed by the completely "over-the-top" brilliance of Opera Garnier...  and all after Cluny, Ateliers' Zadkine and Delacroix and the Jardin de Plantes in the Luxembourg Gardens.  All possible only by the brilliance of the Paris metro and rail system....... and when you hear Rabid-the-Hun is spitefully holding back monies for the extension of Melbourne's underground you really have to consider that the ruling rabble's leader is not competent....in any capacity!
Some of the Paris transport has good entertainment, too....

These fellows were hopping between trains busking and making a fine noise....

...as were these classical types..







...and these two were bopping along in Bv St. Michel this afternoon.. which sort of ties with this posts theme of  being seen.... being seen.



So many of the "Big Venues", D' Orsay, Versailles, Opera etc  are very crowded.... not just with the most wonderful art, architecture, history and collections of talent but also with people; people who are there to tell every one else that they are there and will have a "selfie" to prove it. One for every minute, in front of every art work, pillar, sculpture, tapestry, vase, ring, building, landscape, tree, blade of grass that is there to justify their existence.

Opera Garnier selfies

It strikes me that so much time is spent preening for the position, look, pose and pout that there mustn't be a lot of brain left over for the "thing"they are using as a vanity prop.

Versailles selfie

The picture above has around 60 people crowded into this not overly large room in Versailles.. I counted about 12 looking at something and not through a camera... but perhaps the best was seen at the Orangerie where three young women whose quality of dress, attitude and looks could only be described as indifferent, took turns in pressing Monet's Water Lilies into service as wallpaper for their ego boosting face-book updates.

Orangerie

The democratisation of access to media and ability to proliferate it has meant that all the visual and conceptual lessons learned from advertising have been put into play. 

There was, when old advertising appropriated "art" as a status vehicle on which to drive its product, a diminution of the apparent value of the art happened through over-use but now the massive amount of media we are subjected to with its hyperbole necessarily ramped up to maintain a presence has completely obliterated the core value of the object and replaced that with a concept of its "thingness."

St Chapelle

It seems that the "selfie," in the art gallery context and quite apart from its extreme narcissism, has developed from a genuflection to art as a thing of wonder to a genuflection to a self who admits no possibility of creating anything except an ongoing self referential dialogue. The identification with self is so strong that that it precludes anything (or one) equivalent or better because that would destroy the primacy of self.  

It's a scary thought that society, for a narcissistic selfie-producer begins and ends with them and that collective action on anything is not possible without a loss of self.

The Fascists dream.... but oddly enough, not much in the way of selfies being taken in the Concergerie.... a trifle too macabre I dare say.

The Concergerie

Then there were other people on the street and here they are....

Effigy

"Effigy" a 3D portrait outfit by Vincent Haeffner and his assistant Max working in St Germain..... a  really interesting concept... check them out on face-book.

Effigy

Gilbert

A rather poignant portrait for Gilbert taken outside his late parents home...

Petit Trianon

Petit Trianon

Petit Trianon

and fountain this makes great playof light...

Carpeaux

a room with a view.... but Rouen calls...

Hoo-roo Possums.,

Shane

Perambulating Paris

Shane and his E3.00 bottle of Wine

G'day Possums,

Mrs Wombat and I went for an early wander on Sunday morning.
We were looking for a supermarket and came across much in the way of Art Nouveau architecture down side streets but particularly along the Rue Montparnasse where the names of the entrepreneurs as well as the architects are carved in low relief into the facades.
A practice probably indicating pride in their buildings and aesthetic and one which should be implemented in Melbourne but only so we can know who to blame!

Rue Montparnasse

off Rue Montparnasse, Rue Compagne Premier

Then as you'd expect, in a working city noted for its fashion, food, architecture and art it's quite normal to come across a fashion shoot combing all of these elements in one.

Fashion shoot models, Rue Raspail.

The models, the clothes, the architecture, La Rotonde, and Rodin's Honore de Balzac....ehhh, what more could you want at 08.00 on a Sunday morning?
 We then ambled down to the Luxembourg Gardens to find squadrons of children on Shetland ponies, Tai Chi aficionados, marathon men and women, Yoga devotees and and a Renoir-esque scene of parents having fun with boats.

1. 

   Luxembourg Gardens

Luxembourg Palace

We had passed the Arab Institute building on our way and you couldn't but help notice that the decorative frieze along the bottom of the building facsimiled many works that recently have been deliberately destroyed by bogans of the self styled Islamic State in a pathological display of narcissism.

Arab Institute

Which is an act in stark contrast to the four or five young people we happened upon in the gardens on our return journey. With easels set with known art-works and one original they, off their own bat, were engaging passers-by to discuss the works in any terms as a means of promoting art and an understanding of it. It was a sort of altruistic, non-didactic performance art of a very social order.

big man little bike

electric car re-charge point

The above pic showing a forward thinking attitude that unfortunately would be foreign to the ruling rabble in Oz.

Maillol with attendants

The Tuileries  Gardens were pretty crowded too with many cavorting in tableau vivant style and so we meandered till

Tableau Vivant

 we found a little hole-in-the-wall type restaurant and had some lunch, slaked our thirsts and rested our feet .
 

Pizza in Paris

Shakespeare and Company was nearby and having had no luck at the book-stalls along the Seine popped in out of curiosity expecting to find what I was after,

Shakespeare and Company

only to be not only mistaken as to the extensiveness of the stock but also surprised by the apparent "branding" that has commodified a bookshop into a tourist attraction and seemingly little else.  There was a loud Septic Tank on the desk proclaiming that he "....had all the time in the world.." for some reason (perhaps a "performance" piece?) and a sign which said NO PHOTOGRAPHY and much of what you'd find any where else.
I suppose the creative and nebulous circumstances which coalesce into making a business have a frisson of life can't be manufactured. The elements , as in a play,  have all to exist in their appropriate order and be quietly recognised for their worth at the appropriate time by all participants for the "thing" to work. It's the difference between real experience and a theme park re-creation.

BAD PUN

C12th Pigeon, Cluny Museum

for K.

Famiglia Italian.

The last stop on our perambulation was the Atelier Zadkine,  a few hundred metres from the present burrow.Ossip Zadkine for a short time mentored the man who taught me sculpture so the visit there was in the vein of a pilgrimage.

Ossip Zadkine

....and I'll finish this little tome off with some night shots....

Port Royal

Rue D'Assas

Rue D'Assas

"Bullier"

...and another for H and D to note: "C'est Mon Plaisir" 150, Bv Du Montparnasse.

Highly recommended.

Hoo-roo petals,

Shane