Part III: Exploring the Art World, Searching for Familiarity, Finding Muriel Franceschetti

Before the lockdown, within my first two months in Paris, I met two Americans who left a lasting impression on me.

The first was a young woman from Colorado who had just completed her studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She sat next to me on an Air Tahiti flight from Los Angeles to Paris. She had come for an internship at a nonprofit organization, working on a refugee project shaped by the murder of her father in a political conflict.

During those first weeks, we met several times, happy to explore the Paris art world together. We visited the Pierre Soulages centenary exhibition at the Louvre and the Barbara Hepworth exhibition at the Musée Rodin. Yet she left earlier than planned when the pandemic began. With people advised to work from home, there was little reason for her to remain in Paris, and she returned to Colorado to be with her sister and mother.

The second American I met was Jamie. He approached me at the Centre Pompidou, where I had just seen Bacon en toutes lettres and was wandering through the permanent collection. I was standing in front of “Le Rêve” by Matisse, a painting of a woman with her eyes closed, when he asked,

“Qu’est-ce que vous pensez de ce tableau?”

“Pardonnez-moi. What?” I replied.

“What do you think about the painting?” he repeated in a deep voice, smiling.

“Oh, you speak English?” I said.

At the time, my mind was elsewhere on my failed American dream, the expiration of my U.S. work visa, and the rejection of my green card application. USCIS told me I could appeal and submit more evidence, but I had nothing impressive left to offer. Intuitively, I knew that the letter from Emil Wyss, the former Consul General of Switzerland in Los Angeles, who had met me at the Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Santa Monica, would not be enough. Most people, I suspect, would have introduced themselves in a very different way.

We talked for a while and then exchanged numbers. When Jamie walked away, I noticed he was wearing a skirt. I was momentarily confused. Was it a fashion statement? And wasn’t Jamie a woman’s name? I soon learned that Jamie was a crossdresser, the child of a minister’s family from the Midwest who fully accepted and loved him. He had worked in a musical instrument store in Seattle before learning French through an art appreciation course in Aix-en-Provence.

We first met again at Les Deux Magots, where I had once also met artist Maya Mercer’s mother for coffee. “I’m so sorry my country didn’t give you a green card after twenty-five years,” Jamie told me. Afterward, we crossed the street to the Église de Saint-Germain-des-Prés to admire the blue ceiling of the nave, where they sometimes hold classical concerts. We spent the afternoon at the Picasso Museum, attracting attention both because of his skirt and his passionate, animated way of talking about art.

Then the lockdown arrived. Jamie stayed in his tiny apartment in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, while I remained in mine in the 10th arrondissement, rented from a Russian-American violinist. After restrictions lifted, we met again, sitting along the Seine and savoring a regained sense of freedom. Later, we went to Montmartre, my first time experiencing it not as a visitor, but as someone who now lived in France.

When Jamie also decided to return to the United States earlier than planned, like the young woman from Colorado, I felt a deep sense of loss. There were........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)