I was quite pleased earlier this year when I was asked to be an instructor in IFP’s new Executive MBA program in Energy, which is run in conjunction with the BI Norwegian School of Management and the Business School of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.  So I added some additional lectures in this year’s Paris visit, for a group of young executives from around the world….  but truthfully, I’ve never had any trouble adding a bit more time to my Paris visits!

EDF’s Chine

 

I had flown to Paris from Beijing, and during my China stay I had had discussions about a proposed new programmatic CDM project there that would be developed by Électricité de France (EDF).  Interestingly, when I got to Paris, I found that EDF’s Foundation was sponsoring an exhibition entitled “Chine, Célébration de la Terre,” which  focused on the relationship that Chinese farmers have long had with the land….  and so of course I had to check that out.

For the Love of God, Laugh

Some of you may be worried that I seem to be o.d.’ing on China lately – writing about Chinese farmers in my Paris postings, no less! — but you can rest assured that that was not my only Parisian stop.  I also checked out an exhibit in the Musee Maillol with a more modernist bent, entitled Vanités de Caravage à Damien Hirst.  You might have heard about Damien Hirst – the controversial, death-oriented doyen of the ‘Britart’ scene, and probably the richest artist in the world today.  He is most famous, of course, for his 2007 piece “For the Love of God,” a platinum cast of a human skull encrusted with 8601 diamonds.  The Paris exhibit included several Hirst pieces, as well as other ‘memento mori’ by Picasso, George Braques, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and others.  I didn’t get to see the original skull, but instead a print entitled “For the Love of God, Laugh” – a derivative piece sprinkled with diamond dust, instead of diamonds.  Well…..  okay.  But still, perhaps as far from Chinese peasant life as one could get…  n’est pas??!