Giacometti – a post from Montparnasse

Ok people, brace yourselves – this is going to be an image heavy post! I will take you through a couple of days in Paris – the way I like it: hitting the streets early in the morning to catch the blue hour of this great city; Montparnasse is a very busy neighborhood at 8:30 am.

montparnasse early morning 1

This was my first time witnessing the changing of the ads:

montparnasse advertising

I walked to a favorite café that reminds me of my twenties, La Rotonde.

la rotonde

I don’t like them anymore (remember the whipped cream out of a can?) but nostalgia and Balzac take me to them every year.

balzac rodin rotonde

the cafés are changing in Paris – here is the old generation Select and the trendy Lotus.

select montparnasse

cafe lotus montparnasse

Of course anything that remotely reminds me of Los Angeles while I am in Europe is not welcome so this kind of restaurant/café just makes me wince but the worst offender is Starbucks and its paper cups.

starbucks in paris

I bought a pariscope from this news stand,

news stand montparnasse

and had a coffee while looking for the hottest exhibition in Paris.

pariscope montparnasse

I decided to see Giacometti in Centre Pompidou .It was never my intention to paint only with gray. But in the course of my work I have eliminated one color after another, and what has remained is gray, gray, gray!

giacometti man

What a great show it was – complete with the artist being filmed while painting and sculpting.

giacometti hands

His drawings (included some fabulous small notebooks), paintings and sculptures made a large window into the soul of this great creature…

giacometti square man

giacometti woman

Even though I am not a big fan of the Centre Pompidou, I have to admit that the view is breathtaking…

paris roof eiffel

I visited the Maillol museum a couple of days before this and liked its architecture as much as the collections:

maillol stairs

Maillol is very different in his style from Rodin – they were good friends.

maillol bronze

The picture bellow shows the plaster versions of the bronze sculptures above.

maillol plaster

On a more colorful note, living in Los Angeles, I am deprived of pretty store windows – abundant in New York, Paris and London.

fornasertti paris

I am ending this post with two images of my loyal laptop that’s getting very old but gets the job done.

mac cafe paris

tulips mac shokoufeh

Café crème or Petite Arvine, a good post I hope.

I met Arcimboldo and some Germans in Paris

I am sitting in this cute café which happens to have wifi! The world is changing and Paris with it.

cafe du metro michele roohani paris

I’ve been very busy since I am here; three interesting exhibitions in 2 days: Arcimboldo has never been so complete as in this exhibition in the Luxembourg museum.

michele roohani arcimboldo luxembourg

A way more somber show was Germany, the black years at the Maillol museum. Otto Dix, Beckmann and Grosz were the most impressing but i have to admit that the German propaganda posters with Hitler’s name on them were the most striking/chilling to me.

michele roohani german war poster 11

This one can give you nightmares:

michele roohani war poster german

this next one takes me back to all of my dear Professor Ungvari’s battlefields (Somme, etc…)

michele roohani somme

of course Paris can erase these nightmares with a winter sunshine after the rain.

michele roohani pont des arts

Christmas in Beverly Hills – a light post for nonreaders

Christmas is here with all the usual joy and gore! I took some pictures last night from my neck of the woods. Welcome to the winter in the Lala Land.

michele roohani rodeo drive christmas chandelier

We are trying so hard to look like New York or Boston in the winter holidays but Los Angeles stays Los Angeles, a comfortable 55 F on Christmas eve.

michele roohani rodeo drive christmas beverly regents hotel

The Beverly Regent (AKA the pretty woman hotel) looks great in red.

michele roohani rodeo drive christmas via rodeo

michele roohani christmas via rodeo nutcracker

“My little dog – a heartbeat at my feet”

michele roohani christmas via rodeo poodles

Of course what is all this without music?

michele roohani christmas rodeo music

And these are some of my favorite store windows – the fabulous Rem Koolhaas‘ Prada flagship is amazing. I’ve always liked his Seattle public library as well.

michele roohani koolhaas prada flagship

Red has always been my favorite color.

michele roohani christmas via rodeo red dress

I have added Blue as another favorite some years ago.

michele roohani christmas  rodeo tiffany

I like them equally now.

michele roohani christmas  rodeo superman

By the way, I hate shopping/the crowd/malls – I wished people would stop accumulating extra-everythings (from candles to cars)…We all know people that are hopelessly deluded, bathed in trivia, mesmerized to the point of idiocy by almost any celebrity, amusing themselves to death, self-defeating and absurde at times. I made you read!

Hello?… that was just a joke!

Ok people I was just joking when I said I was going to have plastic surgery! I talked about the United States’ dire economic situation (true), having a kid in law school (true) and needing cosmetic surgery (maybe true but won’t do it) to make you guys buy my stuff.

These are my 2007/2008 holiday cards:

holioday 2007 2008 season’s greetings michele roohani

michele roohani happy holidays

I hope that you had a good thanksgiving – I always cook two turkeys no matter how many people are coming to my house (one in the oven and one in a pot) and this year wasn’t an exception – great persian stuffing camouflaged as the usual stove top

turkeys thanksgiving 2007

“Thanksgiving is when gluttony becomes a patriotic duty.” To me, this is one holiday that is not tinted with religion or acute nationality.

thanksgiving 2007

The real turkey this week will be president Bush going to Annapolis when thousands are protesting in Jerusalem and Gaza against the talks.

Mike Luckovich annapolis

Mike Luckovich sums it up in the above cartoon; I like Bob Gorrell’s too:

bob gorrell annapolis

I am shameless…

This is a shameless plug to sell my posters, my t-shirts, my images in general; my métro café poster has finally gone on sale on the major print stores.

michele roohani library kitchen cafe metro poster

A framed version’s been on my kitchen wall for a few months since the artist (meaning me) gets a preview/bonus set before all of you mere mortals! Remember, I am trying to be shameless, cocky, insolent, cheeky, impudent, etc…

café coffee metro reflection paris france

You can buy most of my work on demand from RedBubble.com; they have 80 works of mine that you can purchase in many different sizes and formats. They even have T-shirts that i have designed.

t-shirt nylons NY gruau

These are some of my posters that you can find on Allposters.com, Art.com, Artselect.com and many other art sites on the net.

Ok, I’m a pig!

I am not a chocolate person – I am not an ice cream person – I am not even a french fries person but I have no resistance when it comes to good pastry with tons of real cream. It’s not the sugar I am after, it’s the fat!

chantilly dessert sweet sundae ice cream almond

Ah…real whipped cream; the sexier name would be Chantilly…Making it the right way is an art in its way to extinction – even in Europe; I made a scene a couple of years back in la Rotonde, when they served me a café liegeois with cream coming out of a can! I left the café more heartbroken than angry…

chantilly dessert sweet sundae ice cream

Well boys and girls, this post was supposed to be about “fiber to the curb/kerb”, a telecommunication system based on fiber-optic cables, but i found this subject sweeter on a Monday.

cafe au lait heart coffee

Being a wimp with a high cholesterol count and in the absence of real Chantilly, I treat myself to a “hearty” nonfat cafe con leche. Stressed spelled backwards is desserts. Coincidence? I think not. “

“Leaf peeping” in L.A.

It rained today in Los Angeles and I pretended that the fall was here, that there is actually a change of weather, that time doesn’t pass me by in a bigger hurry in the absence of seasons in southern California. Going through the four seasons makes you realize that you are aging with the rest of the Earth, but not where I live…

fall, autumn, leaves, change, season, foliage

We are surrounded here by evergreens and we rarely use our gloves/umbrellas/fireplaces; every time that I see a sycamore or a Japanese maple tree losing quietly its leaves, I am transported back to my childhood in Tehran where the year was divided into its four glorious versions. Summers were hot and dry, winters cold and white, etc…

fall, autumn, leaves, foliage, bike, europe, river

The autumn leaves was adapted from the beautiful poem by Prévert. Both Juliette Gréco and Yves Montand had this song in their repertory.

momijigari japanese maple fall foliage red autumn leaves

I still remember the spectacular color shows of New England falls; It’s quite amazing how the green leaves turn to brilliant shades of yellow, orange, and red – a never ending spectacle.

japanese, maple, fall, autumn, foliage, leaves, red, closeup

Momijigari (leaf peeping in the U.S.) is the japanese traditional pastime of viewing the changing colors of the autumn foliage when it snows yellow and red.

Sex, Sex, Sex…

Now that i have your attention, I have an important announcement: you can buy many of my images from this fabulous site. You can get them as cards, mounted prints, canvas prints, even framed. My major posters are still being sold on all the “art” sites of course.

man, woman, lust, sexy, desire, tattoo, trenchcoa,t love

I have been waiting to get more of my images on redbubble but I think that it’s time to tell my friends about it; I will be adding to the batch little by little.

The models here are the beautiful Joey House, House of Petals‘ owner/actress and a friend, Mark.

man, woman, sexy, desire, love, tatoo, lust, intimate

“I can resist everything except temptation.” Oscar Wilde

man, woman, sexy, desire, voyeur, love, lust, intimate, tattoo

The new Ang Lee film, Lust Caution, was released last friday and the NC17 rating is already making it more important than it really is. NY Times article made me want to see it. When it comes to TV, the HBO’s “tell me you love me” is an example of unnecessary, gratuitous sex shown on screen. I really don’t need to see Jane Alexander in an oral sex scene but that’s just me…