Mié came from New York for attending Alex Katz vernissage at Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in le Marais. Mié was a model for Katz; she also is a living link for Katz leading to his japanese hero: Utamaro. Utamaro, like Katz, specialized in painting single characters or groups of people living happy moments. I met Malcolm Mac Laren and Young Kim at the vernissage and was happy to speak with him, right after having red Kureishi's book The Buddha of Suburbia, in which the beginning of the punk culture is very well depicted from a Paki point of view. After the vernissage, Mié, Flo and I were invited to Ropac's house on the river Seine, in the former Tom Ford duplex. I was very anxious and Flo too, but Mié insisted and eventually we found the soirée very nice. We saw an unbelievable collection of art from the XXth century and spoke to nice people. I happened to know that you had to cross a butchery to enter Ropac's very first gallery; the gallerist is still young.



We went with Mié and Flo to the carte blanche given to the french singer Simone elle est bonne (Simone she's hot) in a club called Le Globo. Simone invited some friends to play before and with her for an incredible and stunning show. I thought after the show that she is the best thing that happened to french pop since Elli & Jacno. But with zero nostalgia, zero retro-look, zero hommage: all is fresh and punky, sexy and feminist in a way (she spits on a male musician's face, she's having a song called 'toutes les filles sont connes'). Simone plays with Georgette elle en jette on stage, and one other musician seems to be her composer Pop-Hip, ex-Stupeflip member. So Simone is unique and being so unique can be called genius; genius for me is not romantic or divine: it is a very special way of feeling and playing with contemporary social signs, without mimetism.



I went with Mié to the auction room rue Drouot, where I often go, for it is an everyday changing museum where you don't know what you're going to see. I sometimes see Philippe Garrel around that place, probably searching for inspiration. I stumbled across a strange painting and couldn't say what was represented on it, while most of the paintings are classical and very boring. Levitation? Magic? Who's the man? What is he doing? Is he a ghost? Is the woman dead? Or asleep? Hypnotized? I decided that this painting would become my late christmas gift for Florence and went back when the auction started. The commissaire-priseur made fun of the painting and I was paralysed by the huge crowd and almost missed it due to my shyness. But when I heard that nobody made an enchère over 100 euros, I eventually left my left arm and won the auction. Right after placing the painting on the wall, a huge infra-bass sound started to cross the appartment. I made a research during 5 days to make it stop. It was hard for an ultra-sensitive ear like mine, but I probably found the origin, in a pakistanese shop. The painting reminds me of Gogol's short story The Portrait. But of course, this old painting has nothing to do with Putin hommage to the writer.