Some odd photos, statues…

Some odd photos, which I have not been able to incorporate in any “real” blogposts.

This is a statue, called “La Seine”. You can find it close to the Pont d’Alma. The sculptor is Gérard Choain ( 1906-88). He obtained the “Grand prix des Beaux Arts de la ville de Paris” in 1962 for this one. Gérard Choain has made a number of monuments which you can find in France and abroad, e.g. a monument dedicated to the Mauthausen deported at the Père Lachaise cemetery.

Very close to this statue you can find another one, “A la France, la Belgique reconnaissante, 1914-18” (see also top picture). It has been here since 1923 and is a gift by Belgium in recognition of the Belgian-French friendship during WWI. The sculptor is Isisdor de Rudder (1855-1943). Two ladies representing the two nations face each other, the French one with her Phrygian cap, the national Marianne emblem. The exact address where you find it is Place de la Reine Astrid. Queen Astrid was born as a Swedish princess (Bernadotte) and was later married to the Belgian King, Léopold III. She died accidentally in 1935. She was the mother of the future Kings, Baudouin I and Albert II and grandmother to the present king, Philippe.

A third statue, a bit further away, close to the Pont des Invalides, is named “Le Messager”, (the Messenger), by Ossip Zadkine (1898-1967).  This is a bronze copy of an original wooden sculpture which was placed here to decorate an Exotic Wood pavilion, part of the 1937 Paris International Exposition – when the Palais de Tokyo, the Paris Museum for Modern Art, the present Trocadero installations… were also opened, when Picasso’s Guernica was exhibited at the Spanish pavilion… .

The statue seems to have other names as well – “Le porteur des présents” or “Le navigateur”. I don’t know if it was meant so, but the little ship we can see may refer to the one we can see on the Paris coat of arms, originally the symbol of the 14^th century powerful corporate “Marchands de l’eau” with the motto “Fluctuat nec mergitur” (She is tossed by the waves, but does not sink). This corporation, controlling the river traffic, ended up as the Paris municipal representation. 

Here we can see (photos “stolen” from the net) what the German and Soviet pavilions, facing each other, and what the Exotic Wood pavilion (where you can see Zadkine’s sculpture facing the river) looked like during the 1937 event.

Zadkine has a number of statues around Paris, a street name and his own museum. I talked about it in my previous blog, here.

Of course, nothing to do with this, but...

… and to finish this post, I would like to show you a rose, which has resisted the (so far fairly mild) winter.