David Prowler Blog

Surrealism was born in Paris and it lives on.

There’s plenty in the museums, like this wall from Andre Breton’s small apartment on Rue Fontaine, which was so full of masks, paintings, books, manuscripts, rocks, photographs and bric a brac that the auction catalogue was 8 volumes. It is in the Pompidou, just past Duchamp’s bicycle wheel and bottle rack. 

Other spots like the sewer tour or the catacombs are probably pretty surreal but I haven’t visited them. The Museum of Medicine is full of bizarre and terrifying ancient instruments. I saw a show of medicine and the occult – seances and telepathy and stuff like that – that was plenty surreal. A creepy place.

But the most surreal spots are free and on the street. Like right out our window, this tipi that showed up for just a few days:

Or, just below it, the windows always covered with tin foil. We thought maybe it was unoccupied, but no, an old woman lives there, in the dark. She does open the windows sometime to water the plants.

Or, around the corner, this taxidermy store with the cat playing a violin.

And the pig with a bow tie:

Who would buy such a thing?

Sometimes on the street you can find collages:

Or décollage:

Or things like these:

Or this plaque, to the inventor of the endoscope and the electric tricycle (and a lot more as it turns out):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Trouv%C3%A9https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Trouv%C3%A9

There are a couple of not-real buildings.

This one is by Jean Nouvel and it is construction staging for a new museum going in next store, right across from the Louvre.

There’s the Michael Jackson store/shrine:

And there is always Cemetery Pere LaChaise. It’s super magical especially on a gloomy day. And especially now that the City has decided to not manicure it, so it is wildly overgrown.

Foxes live there now.

For me the most surreal place in all of Paris, hands down, is Drouot the big auction house, about 20 galleries for viewing the most incredible juxtaposition of stuff.

Even the building is bizarre:

Every weekday you can wander around the paintings, taxidermy animals, maps, furniture, shoes for footbinding, model ships, erotica, and…stuff.

Once I saw a Modigliani painting, a Mastodon skull, and a racing car in the same room.

The best part is the juxtaposition. Buddhas, busts of Napoleon, Eames chairs, stuffed ostriches, swords, African maps: they all mingle.

It’s like walking the Paris streets.

david@prowler.org