Sometimes the looming shadows of Picasso, Hemingway and Sartre can lock a locale's vibrancy in its nostalgic past. Worse yet, the lieu metamorphs into a caricature of itself - famous paintings regenerated on coffee mugs and backs of t-shirts.
That's not the case in Montparnasse, Paris's left-bank bohemian quarter from which artists' studios radiate into the neighboring 13th and 15th arrondissements. "Montparnasse isn't dead," assured M. Georges Viaud, president of the 14th arrondissement's Historical and Archeological Society as he handed me a brochure for an artists' collective portes overtes or open house in which many neighborhood studios opened to the public during one weekend.
On a balmy summer night, Rue de la Gaite, Boulevard Edgar Quinet and Rue Delambre are thronged with soul singers, Breton dancers, accordion players and a happy audience for the Fete de la Musique.
Every Sunday an open-air art show, Le Marche de la Creation, on Edgar Quinet Boulevard allows local artists to exhibit and sell work. In the same neighborhood at 55, Rue Montparnasse, the Artists' Residence provides a retirement home for Montparnasse artists as well as the ground level Galerie des Artistes which displays residents' work.
During one open house weekend, I visited a pottery studio, several painters' studios, a reknowned stained-glass master's studio, and chatted with the residents of the artists' retirement home. Age is apparently no deterrent to painting - one artist who greeted us in his pajamas mentioned that his only regret at age ninety was no longer being able to go sailing.
Some painters will admit the neighborhood's changed - as all Paris - has for artists and musicians. We met the American watercolorist, William Maurer, at the Marche de la Creation. Maurer remembers the days when he first came to Paris from Brooklyn, New York in the sixties. "Your café was your place of business, your banker, where you received your mail, where you met your friends to play cards. Your café was your living room and your lifeline. We use to tally up our bill on the paper table cloth and hand it to the waiter. He'd keep the sheets till the end of the month." (Maurer in recent years has relocated to Honfleur in Normandy).
With the encroachment of developers, certain artists have shown incredible tenacity in holding onto their studios as working studios - not museums. One of the forerunners of this movement, the sculptor, Armand LaCroix, in unison with his wife, Betty, and neighbor artists parried with both developers and government to secure a landmark status for the Cite Fleurie on 65 Boulevard Arago back in the 1970s. Jasmina Allam, La Croix's grand-daughter, described how even she had to fight eviction (Allam is also an engraver) from the Cite which has become a coveted address because of its country-garden aspect and tranquility in the middle of the city.
"Don't believe everything you read on the historic landmark in front of the complex," she said. "Rodin never lived here, but his patineur (bronze caster) who worked here was his confidant, so he came here often." She showed me some of her grandfather's statues which she had left in the studio. "The woman who modeled for that statue lives down the street. I just saw her a few days ago," Jasmina said.
Jasmina took me for a walk along the gravel path through the complex's wild and unruly garden which seems to unleash the creative spirit. "Whenever there was a special occasion like a vernissage (unveiling), artists who lived here would plant a tree to celebrate." Jasmina said. A black cat twisted its way through the undergrowth the same way Armand and Betty's cat used to do, hopping out of their kitchen window whenever it chose to go on a garden safari.
We visited another resident artist, Madame LeBoeuf-Evain who has painted exquisite icons for more than forty years. "I studied violin," she explained, "But I became fascinated with miniatures, and eventually started painting icons for the Church. "I don't sell my work," she explained. For Leboeuf-Evain, her work is an expression of devotion.
Jasmina showed me the bust of a four-year-old Ali McGraw her grandfather had sculpted.
"Yes, I remember Armand telling me how Ali, when she was a toddler, liked to play in the garden," I said to Jasmina. All the statues peopling her studio were very familiar to me because I also had been one of Armand La Croix's models.
"Would you like to see yours?" she asked, taking me up to the loft, where an unfinished clay statue of an American student remained just as I had remembered it on my last day before flying back to the States in 1977. LaCroix had chuckled as he handed me my check, "This is about the same amount Rodin paid his models!"
Certainly, Montparnasse has its share of nostalgia, but for those of us who are still here - or have returned - the spirit is very much alive and kicking.
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