A few years ago, my friend Przem mentioned that art is such a topic of conversation in Paris that he would talk about the latest art exhibitions with his concierge.

So on Friday, after signing the lease for my new apartment, my new landlord’s mother (who turns out to have been a neuroradiology doctor!), on the way over to the bank so I could do the wire transfer for the deposit and first month’s rent (which didn’t end up happening because, you know, France, we don’t do wire transfers after noon), mentioned that she had been to the current exhibitions of Van Gogh and Modigliani and offered her thoughts on them. So, confirmed, Parisians will talk about art where Americans will talk about the weather.

On Saturday, my friend Dani and I had planned to go see the Viviane Sassen (Dutch art and fashion photographer who grew up in Africa) exhibit at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie. Somehow both of us had missed that it didn’t start until this coming Wednesday.

Not to worry! We quickly narrowed our alternatives to the Van Gogh exhibit at the Musee d’Orsay or the Modigliani exhibit at the Musee de l’Orangerie. We “settled” on the Modigliani.

We decided to get off the Metro a stop early and wander through the Tuilerie Gardens on the way and discovered by happenstance a number of wonderful sculptures that are part of the Art Basel contemporary art exhibition going on this week, including two by Zanele Muholi, a South African non-binary photographer whose work I’d been blown away by at the Seattle Art Museum a few years ago.

So then Dani and I made it to the Orangerie. It’s always so lovely to find those pieces that you really groove on that you weren’t expecting, like these…

And then we also loved the pieces by Hermann Nitsch, which seemed to take the Jackson Pollock approach of embracing the materiality of paint, but in a totally different way.

And then we got into the actual Modigliani exhibit, which focused on his friendship with his art dealer, Paul Guillaume. Which was amazing, and I don’t seem to have taken any photos. 😭

And then of course we went back upstairs to see the Monet water lilies, which are on permanent display.

Honestly these are paintings you really have to see in person. There is something about the willow trees and the lilies and the water and the sky reflected in the water that is just so mesmerizing.

So of course Dani and I will have to actually go see the Viviane Sassen exhibit once it actually opens.

And we also both madly want to go to the Agnes Varda retrospective that’s running from now till January, I think. She was a film director from the French Nouvelle Vague (“New Wave”) in the 1960s, very pioneering. I only know her from a lovely documentary from a few years ago called “Visages Villages” (“Faces Places”), and so I’m very keen to see her actual work.

And then there’s a Mark Rothko exhibit that’s opening this week at the Louis Vuitton Foundation that my new friend Josh and I are planning to go to this coming Saturday.

And there’s a Julia Margaret Cameron exhibit at the Musee du Jeu de Paume that I also want to go to. She pioneered a more atmospheric approach to photography with portraits of, among many others, the Alice from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” but also Alfred Lord Tennyson and Charles Darwin.

And in between all of that, there’s the Paris+ Art Basil 2023 exhibition that Dani and I got a taste of on Saturday.

So it’s kind of a good thing I don’t have a job, because I don’t think it would be possible to fit all the art in any other way.

And yeah, there might be just a little bit too much art in Paris.