A Proustian Moment
and Yayoi Kusama, Pt II
Apse walking by Apse (alley between Blvds Richard Lenoir & Beaumarchais) Paris, France, February 2026)
Bienvenue and welcome back to Musée Musings, your idiosyncratic guide to Paris and art. Today, I’ll begin with Proust, to give you an idea of how I felt when Nicolas agreed to fly to Paris in February. It’s not the moment most people associate with Proust, his Madeleine moment. Although I do love it when something I do triggers memories of an earlier time. When memories flood into my head and into my heart.
Ginevra walking by Apse ((alley between Blvds Richard Lenoir & Beaumarchais) Paris, France, September 2025)
The Proustian moment that I associate with Nicolas’ visits (and Ginevra’s, too) has nothing to do with tea-soaked cookies. It is something to which Proust refers even before the madeleines. Very early in the first book of In Search of Lost Time, he recounts his childhood bedtime ritual. “My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night was that Mamma would come in and kiss me after I was in bed. But this good night lasted for so short a time, she went down again so soon, that the moment in which I heard her climb the stairs … was for me a moment of utmost pain, for it heralded the moment which was bound to follow it, when she would have left me and gone downstairs again….But those evenings on which Mamma stayed so short a time in my room were sweet indeed compared to those on which we had guests to dinner, and therefore she did not come at all.” (Swann’s Way, translation by C.K. Scott Moncrieff & Terence Kilmartin) (Figs 1, 2)
Figure 1. Marcel waiting for Maman. A la recherche du temps perdu, Adaptation et dessins de Stéphane Heuet
Figure 2. Marcel kissing his Maman. A la recherche du temps perdu, Adaptation et dessins de Stéphane Heuet
It wasn’t the anticipated pleasure of his mother’s arrival that occupied his mind but the anticipated pain of her departure that burdened his heart. On a much heavier note, it is also why the Virgin Mary looks so sad when, as a young mother, she holds the Baby Jesus on her lap. As she gazes at her sleeping infant, she anticipates the Pieta. (Figs 3, 4)
Figure 3. Madonna and Child with St. John and Angel, Sandro Botticelli, 1490
Figure 4. PIeta, Michelangelo, 1498-99.
Anticipating Nicolas’ visit to Paris in February set in motion emotions that were nearly identical to the ones Proust describes. Nicolas might be coming to Paris, but if he did, he would surely be leaving, too. Although Nicolas hadn’t been able to come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, he felt sure that he would be able to swing France in February - to help me empty the house that I have owned longer than Nicolas has been alive. The possibility that there were buyers for the property had been in the air since the summer when one of the four real estate agents who has listed the property since 2022 (there are no multi-lists in France and the buyer’s real estate agent is also the seller’s real estate agent - talk about conflict of interest) thought she might have a buyer. The buyers dragged their feet all fall. They finally made an offer in November that was 20% lower than the asking price. I didn’t bargain. The commune had just reclassified my land as terrain simple, no longer terrain a batir. No structure can now be built on that land. Which makes it, at least for the moment, much less valuable. My bad luck.
Finally, on 21 November, the compromis de vente was signed. The buyers put down 10% of the (much reduced) price. Once signed, they had 2 weeks to change their mind without penalty. Interestingly (or not), once the compromise is signed, the owners cannot change their mind. It is one of the many ways that French law seeks to level the playing field between buyer and seller. In the law’s estimation, sellers have more power than buyers, so laws protect the buyers. Like giving them the right to change their mind. There are lots of hoops that must be jumped through when selling property in France, especially in the French countryside. Along with all the expensive, mandatory inspections which the seller, not the buyer, is required by law to pay, there is a an organization called SAFER (Société d'Aménagement Foncier et d'Etablissement Rural) that can preempt a sale by buying any land that comes onto the market. To the reasonable question, why can’t they make that decision before someone makes a bid on a property, there is no answer. On 4 December the countdown for the agricultural organization to waive their right to buy the property, began. No one expected that SAFER would buy it, but the sale could not happen before the date by which they had to buy it, passed.
A sale date was set for the first week of March. That gave me three months to get the place ready for its new owners. After dragging their feet about buying any furniture, they finally agreed to buy or take most of it. Not at a price any of the custom made pieces were worth. But surely better than paying someone to haul everything to the dump.
That left sorting through 30 years of papers - what to burn, what to take. And 30 years of objets - what to take, what to give away, what to throw out. I couldn’t do it alone, I didn’t have the heart to do it alone. Early February was the perfect time for Nicolas to come to France, it would be right after he submitted his students’ grades and right before Lunar New Year preparations and celebrations began. To make his 11+ hour flight about more than filial piety, I promised that we would spend only half of the time he was in France, in the Dordogne. The other half would be in Paris. (Figs 5, 6)
Figure 5. Nicolas at the Gare St Jean, Bordeaux, waiting for our train to Paris with most of our stuff
Figure 6. Both of us with most of the stuff we brought back to Paris
The ticket I bought for Nicolas was exchangeable. In case the sale fell through. A previous one had fallen through at the last minute for another property that I was responsible for selling. That fiasco began in 2018 and didn’t end until 2023 after two lengthy court cases (both of which I won). Which was followed by the trauma of finding another buyer, which we did in mid 2024. The whole mess won’t be over until January 2028 because one quarter of the proceeds from the sale are being held by an agency that I had to pay to determine the tax liability. I may have paid them but they are working for the government and themselves. The fisc (tax department) has 3 years to decide if I owe any of the money that is being held. The interest that accrues on the money the agency is holding, will be theirs. What better incentive does one need to exaggerate the potential tax liability. I think you can tell that my experiences in home ownership in France have not been happy ones. If I had to do it over again, I definitely would NOT!
We did manage to finish everything I needed to do in the Dordogne in the three days I allocated to the process. We made it back to Paris in time for dinner at a pizza place Nicolas had read about. The pizza was fine but the pizza box was even better. It reminded me of the Toiletpaper exhibition that I saw at Fotografiska, last year in Berlin, called ToiletFotoPaperGrafiska. (Figs 7-9))
Figure 7. Sonny’s Pizza Box, Sonny’s Pizza, rue de la Fontaine au Roi, Paris
Figure 7a. Sonny’s Pizza box with the light a little better
Figure 8. Finger in Egg, Toiletpaper
Figure 9. Toiletpaper, Spaghetti Room, Fotografiska, Berlin, 2025
The next day, we walked over to Le Bon Marché to see the Song Dong exhibition which I wrote about last week. Before he moved to China, Nicolas and I had talked about how he might have to modify his lifestyle to accommodate a very different culture. I had nightmares of him being caught in the middle of the night with his spray can in hand. (Fig 10) I envisioned him peeling potatoes in some gulag for 20 years after a mock trial. He now knows a few things that will help him stay out of trouble. Mostly he has to avoid any reference to the 3 Ts - Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen Square. In 1996, Song Dong did two pieces, one about Tibet, the other about the protests that killed so many young people and so much hope, at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Song Dong and his older compatriot, Ai Wei Wei are brave artists who speak out at their own peril. (Figs 11, 12)
Figure 10. A wall done more than a decade ago under a bridge between Bergerac and Sigoules, France
Figure 11. Stamping the Water, Performance in the Lhasa River, Tibet, Song Dong, 1996
Figure 12. Breathing, Performance on the Ice in front of Tiananmen Square, 1996, Song Dong
After Le Bon Marché, we walked across the Seine and through the Tuileries to the Gagosian Gallery on rue de Castiglione to see the recreation of Joseph Cornell’s studio in the gallery’s three street side windows. Next week, I’ll tell you about that exhibition and my participation in Song Dong’s happening at Le Bon Marché. This week, my second piece on Yayoi Kusama, one of Joseph Cornell’s best friends. Click here to Read. (Figs 13, 14) Happy reading. Gros bisous, Dr. B.
Figure 13, Yayoi Kusama and Joseph Cornell, 1970.
Figure 14. Yayoi Kusuma, 2022