1.
Meaux
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Meaux is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located 41.1 km east-northeast from the center of Paris, Meaux is a subprefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department. In France, a subprefecture is the chef-lieu of an arrondissement and it is also the chef-lieu of two other smaller administrative land divisions, the cantons of Meaux-Nord and Meaux-Sud. Finally, since its creation in 2003, Meaux has been the center and the town of an agglomeration community. With a population of 51,398 inhabitants, Meaux is the second most populated city in the Seine-et-Marne department after Chelles, inhabitants of Meaux are called Meldois. Both names Meaux and Meldois originated with the Meldi, the Latin name of the original Gaulish tribe who occupied this area of the valley of the Marne river. Although during the Roman period the city was called Iantinum by the Romans, a meander of the Marne river divides the old city into the North Quarter and the South Quarter. The South Quarter of the old city includes the historic covered market. Centuries later, in 1806, during the Napoleonic era, was built the Canal de lOurcq, Meaux is nowadays mainly known for Brie de Meaux and the local variety of mustard. Following the official administrative French AOC there are two designations of Brie de Meaux, Brie de Meaux fermier and Brie de Meaux laitier, several festivals and concerts are celebrated in Meaux, venues for live music like the Music Festival Musikelles. Theres a local concert band in Meaux, LHarmonie du Pays de Meaux. It is constituted by three different ensembles, following different ages, Les Minimes, Les Juniors and LHarmonie de Meaux, the band is also one of the two official music academies of the town. The other one is the conservatory of the city, the show represents the history of Meaux all along the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and also, more recently, during World War I. There is only one cinema in Meaux, The Majestic, a stage theatre. In modern days there are three theatres in the city. One is the Théâtre Gérard Philippe, a theatre, situated close to the covered market. In an eastern area of Meaux, the Beauval quarter, there is the stage theatre of the town, the Salle Champagne, located in the Espace Caravelle. Private theatre companies and community arts associations play in all three theatres, two museums can be found in Meaux, the Musée Bossuet and the Musée de la Grande Guerre du pays de Meaux
2.
Seine-et-Marne
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Seine-et-Marne is a French department, named after the Seine and Marne rivers, and located in the Île-de-France region. Seine-et-Marne is one of the original 83 departments, created on 4 March 1790 and it had previously belonged to the former province of Île-de-France. With 60% of the used as farmland, Seine-et-Marne is where most agricultural activity occurs within the Île-de-France. Cereals and sugar beet are the exports from Seine-et-Marne. The other key structures are the refinery at Grandpuits and the Snecma research plant. The two new towns are the centre of tourism for the department, mainly due to parks such as Disneyland Park. Seine-et-Marne has a temperate Atlantic climate, the average rainfall is based upon that of Fontainebleau, giving an average rainfall of 650 mm, which is higher than the average of Île-de-France. Average temperature in Melun during the 1953–2002 period was 3.2 °C for January and 18.6 °C for July, the storm of 26 December 1999 led to five deaths in Seine-et-Marne and caused several trees to fall. Seine-et-Marne forms a part of the region, the department covers 49% of the regions land area. It is bordered by Val-dOise, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, Essonne to the West, Loiret and Yonne to the South, Aube and Marne to the East, the department has many natural reserves, notably Brie and Gâtinais. The highest point of the département is Saint-Georges Hill, people from Seine-et-Marne are known as the Seine-et-Marnais. Originally Seine-et-Marne was very rural and lightly populated, over the past 50 years, however, its population has tripled, due to the development of the Paris conurbation and the building of new towns in the northwest of the region. The population was estimated to be 1,267,496 inhabitants in 2006, the region has changed from consisting only of small villages to forming a large part of the Paris conurbation. Seine-et-Marne as a whole shares a sister city relationship with Orlando, Florida, United States, mutualité, assurance et cycles de lincendie
3.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
4.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
5.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
6.
Amedeo Modigliani
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Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian Jewish painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a style characterized by elongation of faces and figures, that were not received well during his lifetime. Modigliani spent his youth in Italy, where he studied the art of antiquity, there he came into contact with prominent artists such as Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brâncuși. Modiglianis œuvre includes paintings and drawings, from 1909 to 1914, however, he devoted himself mainly to sculpture. His main subject was portraits and full figures of humans, both in the images and in the sculptures, during his life, Amedeo Modigliani had little success, but after his death he achieved greater popularity and his works of art achieved high prices. He died at age 35 in Paris of tubercular meningitis, Modigliani was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Livorno, Italy. A port city, Livorno had long served as a refuge for those persecuted for their religion and his maternal great-great-grandfather, Solomon Garsin, had immigrated to Livorno in the 18th century as a refugee. Fluent in many languages, her ancestors were authorities on sacred Jewish texts and had founded a school of Talmudic studies, family legend traced the family lineage to the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The family business was an agency with branches in Livorno, Marseille, Tunis. Modigliani’s father, Flaminio, was a member of an Italian Jewish family of successful businessmen, while not as culturally sophisticated as the Garsins, they knew how to invest in and develop thriving business endeavors. When the Garsin and Modigliani families announced the engagement of their children and he managed the mine in Sardinia and also managed the almost 30,000 acres of timberland the family owned. A reversal in fortune occurred to this family in 1883. An economic downturn in the price of metal plunged the Modiglianis into bankruptcy, ever resourceful, Modigliani’s mother used her social contacts to establish a school and, along with her two sisters, made the school into a successful enterprise. Modigliani was the child, whose birth coincided with the disastrous financial collapse of his fathers business interests. Amedeos birth saved the family from ruin, according to an ancient law, the bailiffs entered the familys home just as Eugenia went into labour, the family protected their most valuable assets by piling them on top of her. Modigliani had a relationship with his mother, who taught him at home until he was 10. Beset with health problems after an attack of pleurisy when he was about 11, when he was 16 he was taken ill again and contracted the tuberculosis which would later claim his life. After Modigliani recovered from the bout of pleurisy, his mother took him on a tour of southern Italy, Naples, Capri, Rome and Amalfi
7.
Montparnasse
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Montparnasse was absorbed into the capitals 14th arrondissement in 1669. Beneath the ground are tunnels of the Catacombs of Paris, students in the 17th century who came to recite poetry in the hilly neighbourhood nicknamed it after Mount Parnassus, home to the nine Muses of arts and sciences in Greek mythology. The hill was levelled to construct the Boulevard Montparnasse in the 18th century, during the French Revolution many dance halls and cabarets opened their doors. The area is known for cafes and bars, such as the Breton restaurants specialising in crêpes located a few blocks from the Gare Montparnasse. Montparnasse became famous in the 1920s, referred to as les Années Folles, virtually penniless painters, sculptors, writers, poets and composers came from around the world to thrive in the creative atmosphere and for the cheap rent at artist communes such as La Ruche. Living without running water, in damp, unheated studios, seldom free of rats, Jean Cocteau once said that poverty was a luxury in Montparnasse. First promoted by art dealers such as Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, today works by those artists sell for millions of euros, in post-World War I Paris, Montparnasse was a euphoric meeting ground for the artistic world. Fernand Léger wrote of that period, “man…relaxes and recaptures his taste for life, his frenzy to dance, manuel Ortiz de Zárate, Camilo Mori and others made their way from Chile where the profound innovations in art spawned the formation of the Grupo Montparnasse in Santiago. Montparnasse was a community where creativity was embraced with all its oddities and they became good friends, Hamnett later recounting how she once borrowed a jersey and corduroy trousers from Modigliani, then went to La Rotonde and danced in the street all night. Between 1921 and 1924, the number of Americans in Paris swelled from 6,000 to 30,000, Robert McAlmon, and Maria and Eugene Jolas came to Paris and published their literary magazine Transition. As well, Bill Bird published through his Three Mountains Press until British heiress Nancy Cunard took it over, the cafés and bars of Montparnasse were a meeting place where ideas were hatched and mulled over. The cafés at the centre of Montparnasses night-life were in the Carrefour Vavin, if they fell asleep, the waiters were instructed not to wake them. Arguments were common, some fuelled by intellect, others by alcohol, and if there were fights, and there often were, the police were never summoned. If you couldnt pay your bill, people such as La Rotondes proprietor, Victor Libion, as such, there were times when the cafés walls were littered with a collection of artworks, that today would make the curators of the worlds greatest museums drool with envy. There were many areas where the great artists congregated, one of them being near Le Dôme at no.10 rue Delambre called the Dingo Bar. When Man Rays friend and Dadaist, Marcel Duchamp, left for New York and this is where his career as a photographer began, and where James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau and the others filed in and posed in black and white. The rue de la Gaité in Montparnasse was the site of many of the great music-hall theatres, on their stages, using then-popular single name pseudonyms or one birth name only, Damia, Kiki, Mayol and Georgius, sang and performed to packed houses. And here too, Les Six was formed, creating music based on the ideas of Erik Satie and that could not be seen in my town
8.
Tsuguharu Foujita
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Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita was a Japanese–French painter and printmaker born in Tokyo, Japan, who applied Japanese ink techniques to Western style paintings. He has been called the most important Japanese artist working in the West during the 20th century, immediately after graduating secondary school, Foujita wished to study in France, but on the advice of Mori Ōgai he decided to study western art in Japan first. In 1910, when he was years old Foujita graduated from what is now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts. His paintings during the period before he moved to France were often signed Fujita, three years later he went to Montparnasse in Paris, France. When he arrived there, knowing nobody, he met Amedeo Modigliani, Pascin, Chaim Soutine and he also took dance lessons from the legendary Isadora Duncan. Foujita had his first studio at no.5 rue Delambre in Montparnasse where he became the envy of everyone when he made enough money to install a bathtub with hot running water. Many models came over to Foujitas place to enjoy this luxury, among them Man Rays very liberated lover, Kiki, another portrait of Kiki titled Reclining Nude with Toile de Jouy, shows her lying naked against an ivory-white background. It was the sensation of Paris at the Salon dAutomne in 1922, in 2013, the painting sold at Christies in New York for $1,205,000. His life in Montparnasse is documented in several of his works, including the etching A la Rotonde or Café de la Rotonde of 1925/7, Foujitas first marriage was to Tomiko Tokita, a school teacher in a girls school in Chiba Prefecture. They were married in 1912, the year before Foujita left for Paris, in March 1917 in the Café de la Rotonde, Foujita met a young lady by the name of Fernande Barrey. At first, she totally ignored Foujitas efforts to engage her in conversation, however, early the next morning, Foujita showed up at Fernandes place with a blue corsage he had made overnight. Intrigued, she offered him a pot of tea and they were married 13 days later, within a few years, particularly after his 1918 exposition, he achieved great fame as a painter of beautiful women and cats in a very original technique. He is one of the few Montparnasse artists who made a deal of money in his early years. By 1925, Tsuguharu Foujita had received the Belgian Order of Leopold, in 1918, a trip to the south of France was organized by the Polish poet Léopold Zborowski, who had the idea that his artist-friends could sell pictures there to rich tourists. Foujita and his wife went along as did Soutine, Modigliani with his lover, the trip was not, however, a success and the group had to survive on the advances that Foujita had obtained from his Paris dealer. By the time the final reckoning arrived even those funds had run out, in 1921, he became involved with Lucie Badoul, whom he called Oyuki, or Rose Snow. She would become his third wife, the relationship ended when she became the lover, then the wife of the surrealist poet Robert Desnos. After the breakup of his marriage, and his flight to Brazil in 1931, Foujita traveled and painted all over Latin America
9.
Nice
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Nice is the fifth most populous city in France and the capital of the Alpes-Maritimes département. The urban area of Nice extends beyond the city limits. Nice is about 13 kilometres from the principality of Monaco, the city is nicknamed Nice la Belle, which means Nice the Beautiful, which is also the title of the unofficial anthem of Nice, written by Menica Rondelly in 1912. The area of todays Nice contains Terra Amata, a site which displays evidence of a very early use of fire. Around 350 BC, Greeks of Marseille founded a permanent settlement and called it Nikaia, after Nike, through the ages, the town has changed hands many times. Its strategic location and port significantly contributed to its maritime strength, for centuries it was a dominion of Savoy, and was then part of France between 1792 and 1815, when it was returned to Piedmont-Sardinia until its re-annexation by France in 1860. The citys main seaside promenade, the Promenade des Anglais owes its name to visitors to the resort, for decades now, the picturesque Nicean surroundings have attracted not only those in search of relaxation, but also those seeking inspiration. The clear air and soft light have particularly appealed to some of Western cultures most outstanding painters, such as Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Niki de Saint Phalle and Arman. Their work is commemorated in many of the museums, including Musée Marc Chagall, Musée Matisse. Nice has the second largest hotel capacity in the country and it is one of its most visited cities and it also has the third busiest airport in France, after the two main Parisian ones. It is the capital city of the County of Nice. Nice was probably founded around 350 BC by the Greeks of Massalia, the ruins of Cemenelum are in Cimiez, now a district of Nice. In the 7th century, Nice joined the Genoese League formed by the towns of Liguria. In 729 the city repulsed the Saracens, but in 859 and again in 880 the Saracens pillaged and burned it, during the Middle Ages, Nice participated in the wars and history of Italy. As an ally of Pisa it was the enemy of Genoa, during the 13th and 14th centuries the city fell more than once into the hands of the Counts of Provence, but it regained its independence even though related to Genoa. The medieval city walls surrounded the Old Town, the landward side was protected by the River Paillon, which was later covered over and is now the tram route towards the Acropolis. The east side of the town was protected by fortifications on Castle Hill, another river flowed into the port on the east side of Castle Hill. Engravings suggest that the area was also defended by walls
10.
French Riviera
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The Côte dAzur, often known in English as the French Riviera, is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco. There is no boundary, but it is usually considered to extend from the Italian border in the east to Saint-Tropez, Hyères, Toulon. This coastline was one of the first modern resort areas and it began as a winter health resort for the British upper class at the end of the 18th century. In the summer, it played home to many members of the Rothschild family. After World War II, it became a popular tourist destination and convention site, many celebrities, such as Elton John and Brigitte Bardot, have homes in the region. Officially, the Côte dAzur is home to 163 nationalities with 83,962 foreign residents and its largest city is Nice, which has a population of 347,060. The city is the center of a communauté urbaine – Nice-Côte dAzur – bringing together 24 communes, Nice is home to Nice Côte dAzur Airport, Frances third-busiest airport, which is on an area of partially reclaimed coastal land at the western end of the Promenade des Anglais. A second airport at Mandelieu was once the commercial airport. The A8 autoroute runs through the region, as does the old main road known as the Route nationale 7. Trains serve the region and inland to Grasse, with the TGV Sud Est service reaching Nice-Ville station in five. The French Riviera has a population of more than two million. The region has 35,000 students, of whom 25 percent are working toward a doctorate, the French Riviera is a major yachting and cruising area with several marinas along its coast. As a tourist center, French Riviera benefits from 310 to 330 days of sunshine per year,115 kilometres of coastline, the name Côte dAzur was given to the coast by the writer Stéphen Liégeard in his book, La Côte d’azur, published in December 1887. Liégeard was born in Dijon, in the French department of Côte-dOr, the term French Riviera is typical of English use. It was built by analogy with the term Italian Riviera, which extends east of the French Riviera. As early as the 19th century, the British referred to the region as the Riviera or the French Riviera, usually referring to the part of the coast. Originally, riviera is an Italian noun which means coastline, in Occitan and French, the only usual names are Còsta dAzur in Occitan and Côte dAzur in French. A name like French Riviera is unusual and sounds odd, it could work as a word-to-word translation of the British point of view
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