The french

[WashYourHands]

One of the greatest moments of my childhood was watching Wales play France in Cardiff in the old 5 nations rugby tournament, when it was affordable and tickets filtered out more readily

All the greats were playing, but the moment that caused the most surreal uproar was the routine where the French fans released a cockerel onto the pitch before the game, just as you’d be anticipating the anthems. Madness, being hoisted up above my old gramp’s shoulders to see, the noise and whistling all drunk as fuck, bedlam

As much as Wales dominated, the side you always want to see play are the French. Closest northern hemisphere has got to the All Blacks. Any issues with the French or their culture/world views should be said in person to Chabal

 

[WashYourHands]

 

[shakahislop]

i think we can all agree that french music is basically shit. i've never really understood why nothing (that i'm into) has ever originated from there. compared to england next door in particular

 

[shakahislop]

france is basically a socialist utopia compared to england. that aspect of the place kicks our arse, comprehensively. think that when people talk about the Scandinavian utopias, they should include france in it. same kind of thing. public money for everything

 

[shakahislop]

you know where does have extravagantly shit but well-regarded art? the whole of european history before about 1850. i was in the prado the other day. room after room of gold-framed showing off, cloying religious scenes, selfies of rich dickheads. unfortunately i have to say 'extravagantly shit' isn't quite right because it's very subjective but its gross, it makes me want to retch

 

[sus]

But. And this might be difficult for you to understand. They are not shit. I am sorry if youve never got to sit in the Orangerie and see the magnificence that is the water lilies by Monet. If you’ve never got a chance to see Liberty Leading the People or the Raft of Medusa, the Dance to the Music of Time, Chardin’s still lives or Degas’ pictures of Paris or Ingres’ Napoleon. That is your loss don’t go dump a great negation on them. It is silly, tiresome and quite frankly ridiculous. There is a current philistine strand on the board that thinks it’s being iconoclastic, I’d prefer it to stop.
But if you want to talk properly about painting, I would love to engage, otherwise I’m not interested.

I been to the Louvre brother spent two days of my life there. Saw the Stele of Hammurabi tucked in the tombs where no one knew it existed, an hour in front of it not another soul seen. Went to the National Galleries, MoMA, the Met, seen Water Lilies up close seen Olympia I've seen things you wouldn't dream of the wheat the chaff the haystacks the cathedral at dawn.

Their romanticism is pretty decent for romanticism I'll give them that. They do Romanticism better than anyone else does romantic painting.

 

[linebaugh]

I must say I love the french. Id like to get that on record. Particuarly the music and the writing.

 

[linebaugh]

Im going to paris in march. Itll be the first time ive gone farther than a mile outsode the america I love them so much

 

[Mr. Tea]

france is basically a socialist utopia compared to england. that aspect of the place kicks our arse, comprehensively. think that when people talk about the Scandinavian utopias, they should include france in it. same kind of thing. public money for everything

And yet they seem to be permanently furious about everything.

 

[Slothrop]

And yet they seem to be permanently furious about everything.

Maybe because they seem to be permanently furious about everything?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Maybe because they seem to be permanently furious about everything?

Quite possibly.

(I suppose what I meant was that the gillets jaunes and the angry young Algerians in the grotty banlieus probably don't find it much of a paradise, but then I would no doubt be guilty of taking a throwaway post too seriously.)

 

[Slothrop]

Yeah, I got that really, I just couldn't resist what is bordering on being a running joke at this point ("why are the tube drivers so quick to go on strike when they get relatively good pay?")

 

[woops]

It’s another thread where people just get to say things are shit, just yet more philistinism - tiresome.
If you don’t like something (and I am not referring to you @IdleRich cos you don’t do this) don’t call it shit, just allow others to enjoy it.

I don't think it's philistinism I think it's a gung-ho attempt at discernment, or just being iconoclastic for the hell of it. Whereas someone else might say "the canon of French painting bursts at the seams with genius, but one talent stands supreme, and that talent is Cézanne", someone lacking the refinement of an @jenks will say "Cézanne is so good he makes everyone else look rubbish", or, more bluntly, "everyone is rubbish apart from Cézanne". Maybe they are trying to live up to the name of the forum?

I know it's annoying though, working with @luka I have frequently been told everything I enjoy is pure garbage and indicates serious personal failings.

 

[catalog]

Being iconoclastic for the hell of it really only works if luke is around, cos he's thd only one who will not only put up with it, but actively encourage it.

 

[catalog]

I am actually really enjoying this bataille book even though he's obviously a nutter.

Just gone through the bit where he writes up a lot of early Spanish conquistador source material on the early Mexicans and Aztecs, and he's now talking about seeing things as something other than a use value. Living in the moment, getting wasted, doing blood sacrifices.

Good writing.

If I am no longer concerned about "what will be" but about "what is", what reason do I have to keep anything in reserve? I can at once, in disorder, make an instantaneous consumption of all that I possess. This useless consumption is what suits me, once my concern for the morrow is removed. And if I thus consume immoderately, I reveal to my fellow beings that which I am intimately: Consumption is the way in which separate beings communicate. Everything shows through, everything is open and infinite between those who consume intensely. But nothing counts then; violence is released and it breaks forth without limits, as the heat increases.

There's an earlier bit, where he's a little more prosaic, but I like it cos you get the feel he's been wandering about the streets and countryside thinking it up:

Overcast weather, when the sun is filtered by the clouds and the play of light goes dim, appears to "reduce things to what they are." The error is obvious: What is before me is never anything less than the universe; the universe is not a thing and I am not at all mistaken when I see its brilliance in the sun. But if the sun is hidden I more clearly see the barn, the field, the hedgerow. I no longer see the splendor of the light that played over the barn; rather I see this barn or this hedgerow like a screen between the universe and me.

 

[version]

I am actually really enjoying this bataille book even though he's obviously a nutter.

That's the blurb.

 

[catalog]

I just had a look to see what the blurb is, and the first line is priceless. It's a quote from him

If one has the courage to read my book, one will find in it this affirmation: that the sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space.

 

[Clinamenic]

Wasn't Bataille involved in mystical ritualism, maybe even sacrificial ceremonies? There was some esoteric academia podcast about him that mentioned such things.

 

[catalog]

I'm sure Alan Moore has either borrowed from him or came to similar conclusions from his own reading of Aztec sacrifice. That's what formed the basis for From Hell, the notion that blood sacrifice is creative and does something. It's where he got the idea to make Gull into this figure who believes he's doing the killings in order to give birth to the twentieth century.

 

[catalog]

Wasn't Bataille involved in mystical ritualism, maybe even sacrificial ceremonies? There was some esoteric academia podcast about him that mentioned such things.

Yes, he had a club where they all went to the woods and engaged in rituals which they all agreed to not talk about.

And the rumour is that at one of them, he asked for a volunteer to kill themselves but they all chickened out.