Paris Post War

1948

For everybody's pleasure, Notre-Dame, the Place de la Concorde, Ste-Chapelle, and other architectural gems are once again being given their pre-war evening floodlighting, which makes them stand out like well-proportioned ghosts of history. In the windows of the fine shops in the Faubourg St-Honore, the merchants, in a joint effort, have set up insouciant still-lifes illustrating the seven deadly sins. Two of those illustrating the deadly sin of greed feature fresh bananas and oranges. The most artistic is one in Lanvin's window, audaciously illustrating the sin of envy with a headless, and therefore brainless, female figure elegantly attired in court brocades and decked with real jewels. On the Left Bank, where entertainments are simpler, the St-Germain-des-Pres quarter has become a campus for the American collegiate set. The Cafe de Flore serves as a drugstore for pretty upstate girls in unbecoming blue denim pants and their Middle Western dates, most of whom are growing hasty Beaux-Arts beards. Members of the tourist intelligentsia patronize the Rue de Bac's Pont-Royal Bar, which used to be full of French Existen

tialists and is now full only of themselves, often arguing about Existentialism.

From Paris Journal 1944-1965, by Janet Flanner (Gollancz 1966)

Paris Post War: Art and Existentialism 1945-55 at the Tate Gallery until 5 September.