Alternative Guide Book: Part 1

Strolling Through Bohemia Of Saint Germain

Roles/Responsibilities:

  • Catherine: Research, photoshop the photos,  photos during the tour
  • Arya: Decoration of the bags and make them, research,  photos during the tour, buying snacks
  • Agnes: Research, photos during the tour
  • Priscilla: Research , photos during tour, buying snacks

Research:

Café de Flore:

  • During II World War was one of the warmest places in Paris . It provided an escape and a sense of freedom during a tumultuous time.
  • mix of café society, literary, artistic, wanton, fashionable ambitions,” wrote Alicia Drake in the opening of The Beautiful Fall
  • Café was named after a sculpture of Flora, the goddess of flowers and spring, which lived on the opposite side of the boulevard. For the most part, the no-frills tables, the red cushioned seats, the scaled patterned tiles have all remained unchanged for decades.
  • Poet Guillaume Apollinaire and André Salmon transformed the café into a publishing house, which became the birthplace of literary art magazine ‘Les Soirées de Paris’.
  • Surrealism and Existentialism were also born from discussions inside the Flore’s.
  • Albert Camus, Léon-Paul Fargue, Yves Tangut, Raymond Queneau, and Pablo Picasso, who would sit for hours on end, pen their novels, draw inspiration, mingle with one another, contemplate, and observe.
  • The Flore served as the setting for a number of runway shows, like Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Chloe, Sonia Rykiel, and Paco Rabanne, and fashion campaigns, including Louis Vuitton, Longchamp.
  • Other known people: G. Apollinaire, E. Hemingway, L. Trotsky, J.P. Sartre, A. Koestler, T. Capote, L. Durrell…

Brasserie Lipp:

  • Mitterrand, P. Verlaine, M. Proust…
  • E. Hemingway – partially wrote the “ A Farewell to Arms”
  • After WWI, they started welcoming back their loyal customers, their business grew dramatically, and they have been successful ever since then. Famous people like Jean Cocteau, Raymond Radiguet, Max Jacob started visiting at that time.

Les Deux Magots:

  • The 1930s to 1960s was known for its greatest literature. Many writers visited, including Elsa Triolet, André Gide, Jean Giraudoux, and Ernest Hemingway.
  • They hosted the surrealists, lead by André Breton; where he started a cultural revolution and the Existentialists, lead by Satre and Beauvoir. This was a place were Surrealism was born.
  • This was also a place were artists and politicians met. Pablo Picasso and Giacometti happened to meet with Sartre and Beauvoir in the cafe. Their encounter contributed to the outcome of their artwork.
  • Art deco room, unchanged for 8 decades.

Map of Our Tour:

Transport:

Bus 95-Every 10 min

Metro : Line 1 to Chatelet

Line 4 to Saint Germain de Pres

Audio During the Tour:

  • Music of artists from the Jazz Period will be played in low-volume in the background.
  • One Portable  speaker
  • A spotify playlist will be created.

Design of Snack Bags:

  • Paintings of Picasso and Matisse:

  

   

 

  • Quotes:
  1. “The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink.” -Hemingway (Brasserie Lip)
  2. ‘We are at home at Café de Flore’- Jean Paul Sartre
  3. “Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary…” -Hemingway
  4. “The people that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them and be together.” -Hemingway
  5. ‘In Flore, we cruise Occupation like an ocean, splashes from the events broken on the curling.’- Henri Pelletier
  6. ‘At that time, it seemed that all cinema met there, the authors and their muses, the screenwriters, designers, almost all who participated in creating a movie.’-Daniel Gélin
  7. ‘At the Flore, people are little less ugly’-J. Greco
  • Process:

I put a painting and quote on the snack bags from the people who used  to go and work in these cafés and got inspiration from the atmosphere of Saint Germain, food and people who also hang out in those cafés.

 

 

  

  • Snacks:

The food in the three cafés used to be cheap and good and that was why famous people preferred to hang out in those places but today it is completely different. The more years pass and the atmosphere changes slowly. The places will continue to attract artists and intellectuals, but they will come less and less to find a nice place, and more and more to show up. For instance, today in Café de Flore a tart tatin costs 15 €, a Caesar salad is bought for 20 € and the emblematic Flore chocolate lightens our wallet of 7 €. Most of the people commented on the internet that their experience in Café de Flore was really bad and the food didn’t worth the price. So we are far from the time we went there because we were poor and bohemian. With our snack bags, we wanted to create the atmosphere in the past with cheap and delicious French pastries.

 

Photos for the Guided Tour (Process):

Photos from the Tour:

Grafittis from ‘The Petite Ceinture’ Tour:

We drew the same paintings of Picasso on the wall that we used for our snack bags.

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