Zut alors! Seattle has been discovered. Madame Figaro, a national French magazine that, according to one France-dwelling Facebook commenter is “in every dentist’s office in Paris,” just published a rave review of Seattle’s art and culture scene called “Seattle: The New American Arty Stopover.” “Cool, eco-friendly, rock and high-tech,” the article states, “Seattle is astonishing by its freedom and eclecticism.”
The piece highlights the work of the “great geek” Paul Allen’s Seattle Art Fair, and features five other Seattle luminaries, such as gallery owner Tariqa Waters, former Stranger music editor Emily Nokes, Vital 5 Productions founder Greg Lundgren, and former Frye Art Museum director Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker.
Since I stopped taking French classes in middle school, leaving it to Google Translate to sort out the language gap makes for a few funny phrases that may or may not have been the magazine’s intention!
For instance, Nokes, described as the “spicy voice of Tacocat, one of the most bustling bands of the Rainy City” is “the leader of Seattle’s insolent girl bands” and a “worthy heiress pop punk of Courtney Love.” Mon Dieu! Do they realize that’s not really a compliment?
Jennifer Zwick is “The Strange Photographer”—perhaps because she photographs for ‘magazines’ such as “the caustic Stranger,” artist and “Scissor Dreamer” Joe Rudko spends time “in his studio, a disused factory on the outskirts of Seattle,” where he “cuts America and his faces,” and local arts supporter Greg Lundgren is dubbed the “Warhol of Seattle.”
While it’s certainly nice to be noticed for our burgeoning art scene—and something other than rain and grunge and tech—Madame Figaro pulled out almost every Seattle trope there is (save Starbucks) in between mentions of the “magnificent architecture” of the Seattle Public Library and pointing out the plethora of smart women behind many of the museums here in town.
“Whether one invents software or germinates a counterculture, the city seems to have kept the pioneering spirit of its founding fathers,” the piece declares.
Aw, leave it to the French to make everything sound overly romantic and simultaneously creepily colonialistic. But why no mention of coffee? We here in the Rainy City need it to invent our softwares and germinate our countercultures.
Read the whole article here.