Irving Penn and Willi's Wine Bar

Monday October 19 was quite mild with the usual cloud clearing to sun and 10 minutes of rain.  The  high was 18C.

We took the Metro to the Grand Palais to see the Irving Penn (1917-2009) exhibit.  This major retrospective marked the centennial of his birth in 1917.

While Penn is one of the generation of postwar photographers who made their name in fashion, he didn't start in fashion.  After acquiring his first Rolleiflex in 1938, he took pictures of 19th century storefronts, hand-lettered advertisements, and street signs in Philadelphia and New York.  He also took a number of wonderful still-lifes.

Union Bar Window 1941

Dr. Johnson is Here, 1941

Penn joined Vogue in 1943 and his initial assignments were still lifes.

Beef Still Life, 1943

Salad Ingredients, New York 1947

After Dinner Games, New York 1947

After serving in the war, in 1945 Penn returned to his work at Vogue.  The then art director Alexander Liberman asked Penn to make a series of portraits of personalities.  The sitters were selected for him. but the set, lighting etc. were up to Penn.

Penn found that cornering his subjects between two angled stage flats was an effective way to control the interaction and he got some amazing shots.  He also used an old carpet tossed over boxes as a minimal set.  Both sets seemed appropriate in the immediate postwar moment.  It was these portraits that initially made Penn's name.

Carl Erickson and Elise Daniels, New York 1947

W.H. Auden, New York 1947

Igor Stravinsky, New York 1948

Alfred Hitchcock, New York 1947

Elsa Schiaparelli, New York 1948

Salvador Dali, New York 1947

Truman Capote, New York 1948

George Grosz, New York 1948

After the successful portraits, Liberman groomed Penn for fashion photography.  Penn didn't like the crush of competing photographers.  He pressed to work in a daylight studio.  For the 1950 collections, a Paris studio was found as well as a theatrical curtain that served as a neutral backdrop.  Penn used this backdrop throughout his career and it was displayed in the exhibit.

Penn did the covers of 166 issues of Vogue over his career.

Covers From 1948-52

On one of his early shoots he met model Lisa Fonssagrives (1911-1992), a former dancer with a gift for posing.  They married in 1950.

Cocoa-Colored Balenciaga Dress (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), Paris 1950

Glove and Shoe, New York, 1947

Balenciaga Sleeve, Paris, 1950

Woman in Chicken Hat (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), New York, 1949  (one of many eccentric hats that were in vogue following WWII and rationing)

In late 1948, Vogue sent Penn to Lima, Peru, for his first fashion assignment on location. After the fashion shoot, he traveled alone to Cuzco and rented a daylight studio.  In three days, he produced hundreds of portraits of residents from nearby villages, all wearing their traditional wooden clothes.  Penn's knack in posing subjects led to a series of amazing photos.  He would employ these techniques in the photos he made around the work over the following twenty-five years.

Cafe in Lima (Jean Patchett) 1948

Standing Woman with Braids, Cuzco 1948

Two Standing Men, One Barefoot, Cuzco, 1948

Two Men in White Masks, Cuzco 1948

Cuzco Children 1948

In 1950, while photographing the couture collections in Paris, Penn began a new series of portraits of the "small trades"- a project he would continue in London and New York.  The Small Trades became the largest single series of Penn's career.  He also used a daylight studio, the same neutral backdrop and same lighting he used in sittings with fashion models and the cultural elite.  These are wonderful photos and carry on a centuries- old printmaking tradition known as small trades, street cries, and petits métiers.

Garcon de café, Paris 1950

Marchande de ballons, Paris 1950

Pâtissiers, Paris, 1950

Rag and Bone Man, London 1950

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Penn's eye, imagination, and technical skills were in great demand.  He divided his time between advertising work and photographing fashion and celebrities for Vogue.

He studied the art of Goya, Daumier, and Toulouse-Lautrec for lessons in focus, lighting and immediacy.  He developed techniques for putting his subjects at ease.  He was only satisfied when he captured the essence of the person he was photographing.

Marlene Dietrich, New York 1948

Miro and His Daughter, Dolores, Tarragona, 1948

Dora Maar, France 1948

Jean Cocteau, Paris 1948

Colette, Paris 1951

Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski de Rola), Paris 1948

Rachel Carson, Washington 1951

Richard Burton, London 1950

Audrey Hepburn, Paris 1951

Yves Saint Laurent, Paris 1957

Penn also photographed people around the work. From 1967-71, he travelled to the Pacific and Africa with a tent to use for a studio.

New-Guiinea Man with Painted-On Glasses 1970

Woman with Three Loaves, Maroc, 1971

A small room in the exhibit displayed his series of close ups of Cigarettes, done in 1972.  In the 1950s, Penn had made portraits of people smoking and even shot some ads for cigarettes.  Privately, he hated smoking and sympathized with the American Cancer Society's war against Big Tobacco.  For him, according to the exhibit, the butts in the gutter had a relationship to individuals undone by corporate and government irresponsibility.

Cigarette No. 98, New York,1972

Single Oriental Poppy, New York 1968

The last room had more of his portraits from the 1960s to the beginning of the 21st century.  Penn had a brilliant eye that caught his subjects in amazing poses.  (I apologize for the reflections in some of the photos- this was due to the lighting in the exhibit rooms).

Alvin Ailey, New York 1971

Arthur Penn (Irving's brother) and Warren Beatty, New York 1967

Igmar Bergman, Stockholm, 1964

Saul Steinberg in Nose Mask, New York 1966

Joan Didion, New York 1996

Three- Tiered Vessel, New York 2007

Old theatre curtain that Penn used as a backdrop for his portraits.  He found it in Paris in 1950  and took it with him to London and New York, where it was moved from studio to studio over the next half century.

I took this photo looking out at the columns of the Grand Palais.

After the exhibit, we walked to the Concorde and then onto Rue Royal.  We saw a a large red stiletto at the entrance to a courtyard of shops.

Le Village Royal by Richard Orlinski

Alain stopped at Ladurée to look for his favourite pastry - pain au chocolat pistache (pistachio).  There were none in sight and they were not on the list of pastries! Quel dommage!!  Alain inquired and they said that the pain au chocolate pistache would be back in November.  So he settled for a delicious pain au chocolat.

Grace and Alain with their pain au chocolat from Ladurée

We then walked along Rue Saint Honoré.

Louis Vuitton store with an interesting facade and a lineup!

We stopped in a Ports1961 store after being lured in by the Pandas.  Very beautiful clothes at beautiful prices.

Pandas shopping at Ports

We have noticed that the number of chocolate shops have multiplied.  In a courtyard off the main street, we found a beautiful Jean-Paul Hévin store.

Outside of Jean-Paul Hévin Chocolatier

Chocolate stiletto an Eiffel Tower

Golden ambiance

Grace buying some beautiful jams

We walked up to the Opera and the large department stores and then started to wander back to the apartment.  We decided to stop for an apéro at Willi's Wine Bar on Rue des Petits Champs.  One of our friends had been talking about this wine bar for a long time.  We have always passed it when it was either closed, or packed.  Today, we got there just as it was opening for the evening.  The Wine Bar has a wonderful series of posters on its walls.  The bar has been in existence since 1980.  It is on a street just behind the Palais- Royal.

We asked whether there was a Willi-- the waitress was purposely vague-- she said it might have been named after a dog, it might have been named after Colette's husband Willi (who no one liked), or even the owner Mark Williamson.  Colette had lived in the nearby Palais Royal.  We all had glasses of very good, reasonably-priced wine.

Opening up Willi's Wine Bar

At Willi's Wine Bar Paris

Wonderful posters on the walls

We carried on walking, passing the beautiful Yoji Yamamoto store.  Nice to look in the windows, as prices are out of sight.

Styln' at Yoji Yamamoto

We walked down to the bottom of Rue Montmartre and in a nearby street discovered a new location of a wonderful noodle place that Alain and I had eaten at a few years ago in the 9th - Les Pâtes Vivantes.  The noodles are made and stretched on site.

Making noodles

Les Pâtes Vivantes

We walked back across the Seine and headed back to the apartment for a pasta dinner.