Une Connerie Extraordinaire!

The most politically questionable sculptural installation project in Europe in the last decade has to be that of the completion of the Fountain du Soleil and the Sept Scultures Illuminées de Sept Continents. This monument to something not yet clear to me, now defines the Place Massena, which is in my opinion …the heart and Soul of the City of Nice.

Had I considered myself pudique I hardly would have settled in France…particularly Nice... but this most recent project has tested the limits of my comprehension.

At the centre of the Fontaine du Soleil… standing haughty and very, very, white (marble) in all of his “butt naked glory” at the entrance to the Old Town of Nice is Apollo!

photos by dwelch-tyson

All of you know him, I’m sure: the God…Greek God, I emphasize…of light and the sun, truth and prophecy, enlightenment medicine, healing, plague, music, poetry, arts, archery…everything… and I suppose our very existence as well.

He is the son of Zeus and Leto and twin brother of the “chaste “(ah…hem, look, I didn’t write this stuff. I wasn’t even born yet) huntress Artemis. Surrounding Him are five bronze statues of fabulously buffed naked men and a voluptuous broad or two...one toting a baby... accompanied by their animals. Allegedly, these Greco-Roman mythological folks represent the planets, Earth, Mars, Mercury and Saturn.

Yeah, right!

The inauguration took place on June 20th of this year (I happened to be in New York at the time and missed out on the “festivities”). Apollo is now back at his old location at the Place Massena after almost 40 years of censure.

It was rumoured that he was banned  back in the 70s for being “overly well endowed”. This I find hard to believe because, in my opinion ( based on, of course, quite limited experience in these matters), he appears to me to be in completely perfect proportion throughout…if you get my drift.

But then what do I know? I’ve never been with a Greek!

So, back then,  after considerable controversy, Apollo was exiled to North Nice to the Sports Stadium, Parc des Sport Charles Ehrmann.

To my way of thinking, a sports stadium seemed to be a far more appropriate place to reside, outside of perhaps as a centrepiece for a Gay Disco, for this particular Deity.

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This Apollo now complements the contemporary art installation commissioned from the Catalan artist Jaume Plensa which frame the tracks of the Tramway.

Plensa’s towering seven white resin sculptures, which punctuate the square, are of naked men. These men are sitting on 10 meter high poles. Each man lights up the night with a play of light which bounces from one statue to the other signifying communications between the seven continents. 
This interplay of light flashing reduces the Tramway to a dubious image of an ominous phallic image snaking its way though core of Nissa La Bella.

I have been informed that the work is called “Conversations in Nice.”

Yeah, right!


It’s not the Apollo statue itself which perturbs me, it is the cumulative message of the entire centre city installation!

When a friend, appealing to my own personal sense of swagger bragged to me, years ago, how her Niçois population was rather “butch” I had no idea that this was what they were referring to.

Considering the sorry state of Greece today, it hardly seems fitting to have that kind of karma dominating the downtown area of a major French city!

Running Late!

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View from Windows on the World Restaurant

  I realize that this is October 11th…an entire month after most expats have posted their remembrance of 9/11. Finally here is mine.

So sorry about running late!

We had already been living in France, in Villefranche Sur Mer, for over two years on that fateful day when we were running late for an appointment in Nice.

My husband called me into our Den, pointed to the TV screen and said, “Look at this! What do you think of this?”

We both stared… horrified… at the image of a blazing tower of the World Trade Center. The news announcer had said that a plane had flown into the building.

Realizing that, as native New Yorkers, many of our friends and relatives were still living in the New York City Metropolitan area and that it appeared that they were now under attack, we looked at one another…speechless…and frightened in a manner we had never experienced in our entire adult life.

"Perhaps those N.Y.U. film students are up to their old shenanigans again…seizing the TV stations...or something...,” I quipped, in a misguided attempt at adding levity to our state of confusion..

What one earth was going on?



Should we call home?



We did. All the lines were busy.



We were running late for our appointment in Nice.



We turned off the TV got in our car and immediately turned on the news on Riviera Radio, just in time too hear the announcer state quite flatly that ‘the Twin Towers were no more!”

Impossible!



That massive structure… the Titanic of Manhattan (I had prophetically called it for years), could not possibly be gone! Transforming from a flaming inferno of death and destruction... to now toxic rubble. After all, we had just had dinner with friends at its restaurant, Windows on the World, a couple of years earlier for my birthday!

Impossible! Ridiculous!

Those film school students should be flogged, I thought again, just not wanting to believe.

We went though the rest of the day, after our appointment, running errands and buying newspapers. Not a single person we encountered in our local French Riviera towns seemed to us to have heard or read anything, despite the screaming headlines. Not one person broached the subject. Not a twit or tweet…so to speak.

Anyway when we finally got through to various friends and relatives in New York City, over the next few days, this is what we heard:

“I was running late…looked out my window and saw a plane flying into one of the towers…”

Another:

“I was running late, I turned on the TV to see that a second plane had already flown into the World Trade Center building. I realized I would not be going to work!”

Another:

“I was running late. My view from Jersey faces lower Manhattan. When I looked out my window, I saw smoke. I put on my binoculars to see what was happening. There was no way I was going to work that day!”

Another:

“My husband and I were running late on the Long Island Railroad. When we arrived at Grand Central there was pandemonium. Everyone screaming about a terrorist attack in lower Manhattan. I realized, then that I had no physical courage.”

And another:

“I was running late. When I arrived at the lobby of my apartment building, my Doorman said that there had been an attack on the World Trade building. Obviously I wasn’t exacting going to go to work. All I know is that I better get paid this month!”

And finally…

"I was running late to my job at the World Trade Center.. If I had arrived minutes earlier, I would not be here talking to you at this very moment because I would have been in the building's elevator when the first plane hit the building!”

My conclusion is that, as my Mom would say, I am "truly blessed” to have had tardy friends and relatives!

For the record though, despite surviving the worst catastrophe in North American history committed on North American soil, the general fall- out resulted in a certain amount of alienation from friends Stateside.. An alienation which generally grows between those who have physically survived a holocaust and those who only experienced one in theory or by distance.


Those survivors in New York had to continue to work and breath in contaminated air. All had to work, in various ways, through posttraumatic stress disorders and a lingering and haunting fear that there had not yet been closure in the assault.

Nevertheless we all still live…except one friend who I lost three years ago to the long-term effects of having to continue to work at her office near Ground Zero.


She had been running late that day as well.