"In A BAD moment CHANGE is the BEST thing that could HAPPEN"- Karl Lagerfeld

Lillies of the Water: Claude Monet

As scary as this may sound, my time in Paris is winding down and I'm using my last week for pure indulgence. Museums, vintage shopping and any other ideas that I can come up with! Yesterday I made my way to L'Orangerie mueseum, to visit some breathtaking oil paintings by Claude Monet, known in french as Les Nymphéas and in english as The Water Lillies. 
 My original plan was to head over to Jeu de Paume and hopefully find some remnants of the Richard Avedon exhibit that I missed back in September, but when I arrived, their doors were closed and in true parisian spirit, I walked through the Tuilerie gardens to the other museum I've been waiting to see, L'Orangerie.  This, I must add is why I love Paris, you can wake up one day and go say hello to Demarchelier, Monet or Avedon and you can even head over to the Picasso mueseum to see many of his works and if you're really feeling artsy you can take the 1 metro to the Louvre and see the famous Mona Lisa painting.

The water lillies are actually a series of about 250 oil paintings by Claude Monet, which depicted the garden from his house in Giverny.    The Orangerie houses 8 of these amazing paintings, while the rest are scattered all around the world.
When I attended fashion week back in October, one of the presenting designers Akris, was inspired by the water lillies for some of the pieces in his collection. See the video below, I love it, and Chanel Iman working her dress :)

Bisous,

Jennifer Pauline

Falling in Love

Just like myself, Josephine Baker was a black girl in Paris (yet, that was over 50 years ago) and she fell in love with Paris just like I did.  Ms. Baker was so loved by France that she actually became a citizen in 1937.  While she came to Paris to escape the racism in the states and I came to Paris to find my joie de vivre and a new peace of mind, we both fell in love with this city and the country of France and our love is just the same.  I admire Ms. Baker and her courage to do what others may have considered crazy and insane and for going after her hearts desires.  This video is actually her singing at Follies Bergère in Pigalle (Paris), the song is called "J'ai deux amours" (I have two loves) as she goes on to say, J'ai deux amours, mon payee et Paris (I have two loves, my country and Paris).  My sentiments exactly, I can finally exhale.

Bisous,

Jennifer Pauline 

I think i can i think i can i think i can...i DID

My absence was for good reason, I got an A on my french exam and an A in both my grammar and phonetics class.  The French grading system is quite different from the states, 16 and higher is almost impossible to attain because of there strict system of grading, 14.5 and higher is an A and the grading scale is broken down from there. It's amazing to see how far one can come from having a dream to living that dream. All I have to say is, if you think you can, believe you can and do all you can, you WILL absolutely get what you need and want in life.

bisous,

Jennifer Pauline

[re]Visitation

There were so many things in Prague that I had no time to mention, when I made my first post about this wonderful city in eastern Europe.  One thing that crossed my mind this morning as I finally had time to sit down and do a post before class was my  visit to the Salvador Dali exhibition.  I guess you could say this was my first Dali "experience" because I had just recently been introduced to him in my art history class.  Known as one of the original surrealism artists (and a madman, according to my teacher)  I knew that I had to explore the Dali world (crazy genius is quite intriguing to me).  The exhibition was a mixture of photos taken by Vaclav Chocola along with paintings and sculptures created by Dali himself.

                                  (Dali with model Amanda Lear)

Although I wasn't allowed to take photos, I was able to snag the first photograph of this post which was a series of "Dali at work" photographs.  In addition to photographs of Dali at work or Dali at home, there were also a multitude of photographs of Dali and Amanda Lear (seen above) a very popular, transgender model of the 60's.  

After moving through the first room full of photos, I made my way into the exhibit where Dali paintings and sculptures were on display.  Known for his slightly bizarre paintings like "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bumble bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening" (seen below), I allowed my mind to wander into the thoughts of Dali.

The interrprutation of this painting is quite intricate and full of Freudian influence, as Sigmund Freud and Salvador Dali were friends.  Dali said this painting was created "to express for the first time in images Freud's discovery of the typical dream with a lengthy narrative, the consequence of the instantaneousness of a chance event which causes the sleeper to wake up. Thus, as a bar might fall on the neck of a sleeping person, causing them to wake up and for a long dream to end with the guillotine blade falling on them, the noise of the bee here provokes the sensation of the sting which will awaken Gala [his wife]." [source]

Even though I find the Dali style and Dali the man to be slightly strange , I acknowledge his immense creativity and I feel somewhat like how he felt in his manifesto entitled "declaration of the independence of the imagination and the rights of man to his own madness", to each it's own.  

What do you think? Too much?

bisous,

Jennifer Pauline

Its Been A Long Time

So sorry, it's been almost a week. So much to do, so little time.  My family has come to visit me and I'm sooooo excited.  I'll be doing a post on that soon!!

Bisous,

Jennifer Pauline

Say a Little Prayer: for Me

OK. It's been a couple days since I've posted and I'll tell you why:  I have a very huge french final exam starting tomorrow morning at 8:30 am (3.5 hours long) and the second part on Tuesday evening.  My priorities are in order, therefore new stuff will be up next week and I have some exciting news.  Until then, bon chance (to me and whoever else has finals coming up!)

bisous,

Jennifer Pauline