After a truly fantastic time at Y/CON, my wife and I spent the next few days touristing around Paris. We visited the Musée D’Orsay primarily because they had an exhibit of work by John Singer Sargent, who I very much like. My wife was blown away by his Smoke of Ambergris.

We also had the pleasure of learning about Brigid Riley, who took her inspiration from Georges Surat, but whose work in color and minimalist shapes and lines really spoke to me.

I found a Monet I liked. This is a first. I am not a fan of Impressionism. But, as usual, I found that looking at the paintings themselves, rather than images of the paintings, changed my impression. I have a complicated history with Van Gogh, but actually seeing The Starry Night Over The Rhone was very moving.

The next day we did the Louvre, where we went to a Jacque-Louis David exhibit. Sitting in a room surrounded by 3 Death of Marat was something, let me tell you. Also, if you are interested in David, go watch this Great Art Explained video about him, because he was 100% the radical leftist edgelord who ends up working as the propaganda machine for an autocrat. So that is, exhaustingly, eternal. Human nature does not change. 

I took 15 million pictures of Nike of Samothrace, because she is my absolute favorite piece in The Louvre.

Wednesday night, we had dinner with a new friend from Y/CON, Shane. On Thursday we decided to go to an exhibit that my wife had seen advertised in the Metro for Manga. Tout un Art! at Le musée national des Arts asiatiques – Guimet and wow, we were impressed! The exhibit began with a history of comics in Japan, beginning with strips in Punch magazine and other media, including a kamishibai theater on a bicycle.

The main focus of the exhibit was Shounen manga and relating famous titles to Japanese folklore and artifacts from the Guimet’s collection. Naruto was connected to the nine-tailed foxes art pieces in their collection, Dragonball to art depicting Journey to the West, Demon Hunter to yokai art and One Piece to.. a massive art board given to PM Macron by Oda himself.

Of course Tezuka rated a room and we were pleased to see an old friend in original pages of Ribon No Kishi.

The lighting was very bright, so everything is a little wonky, so it wasn’t all glare and shadow.

There was a room of Shoujo manga among all the Shounen, and that presented me with yet another old friend, one that you might expect to see in France of all places…The Rose of Versailles.

And, relevant to my recent review of Witches Of the Orient, a few pages of Attack. No. 1 in Margaret Magazine. 

This made us incredibly happy, as you can imagine! Interestingly, Marie Antoinette owned several piece of her toilette that were in Japanese style. This was one of those “oh, right, cowboys and samurai were contemporaneous” moments. ^_^ This portion of the exhibit ended with manga-inspired fashion.

I’ve uploaded all the (unedited) pictures I took to this Gallery.

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The exhibit continued on another floor with more of the museum’s permanent collection, of literary scrolls that depicted popular stories, then early commercial books in Japan.  

We ended up in the museum cafe overlooked by art depicting the Koream tiger and magpie motif we now call Derpy and Sussy, thanks to K-Pop Demon Hunters. ^_^ You have watched that, haven’t you? You should. It was very good. Not Yuri, but worth a review one day. 

And that was the end of our trip to Paris! It ended as it began, with manga and anime that we love.

Thank you again to everyone at Y/CON, and Paris for being a lovely place to visit once again – I look forward to vising again soon.

Wow, Y/CON was so much fun! I highly recommend it to anyone who can get to Paris for the event. First of all, everyone was so charming and enthusiastic, from Y/CON staff to every one who listened to our panels or came to get a book and chatted with me.

I did a presentation on the history of Yuri fandom, and had roundtables with author Rutile and Louis-Baptiste Huchez of Taifu Comics, in which we talked about Yuri internationally and with Dr Pralinus, about BL and Yuri and queer joy.  We of course did not have not have time, but our conversations were really interesting. I have so many people to thank I know I won’t remember everyone, so if I miss you, please remind me!

 Thanks to Alex, who was a wonderful driver, Shaby, Shane and Paul in the green room who helped us find the bathroom down the dark corridor of nothing and made us feel so welcome. Olivia, Elisa, Valentine for arranging everything, Lou for being a fantastic moderator and Julie for doing an outstanding job a translating my insistence on being aggressively, joyfully, queer as a form of political resistance. 

This last kept coming up over and over as we are seeing a resurgence of fascism globally. Dr Pralinus and I agreed on many things, but as they spoke of how queer people have always been here and we will always be here, even if we have to hide, I suddenly was hit with an epiphany that hiding is not the way. We have never been safer for hiding. As we see with protestors dancing and singing in costume, joyful resistance makes the oppressors look even MORE ridiculous. My message was that they are the weirdo minority, not us. So enjoy your BL, Yuri, trans manga and be loud about it. 

It was exciting to see Akata Editions, Hana and Taifu at the event, I’m jealous of French Yuri fans that they have schwinn’s Hana Monogatari available to them.

Before I wrap up I want to wave hi to Mang’Albine and Resuri, it was so amazing to meet you both in person and I will see you online!

I hope to return to Y/CON one day soon.