Cafe de la Tour Eiffel

#88010     40″ X 30″     ac

Chen did not know whether there was any cafe in Paris called “Cafe de la Tour Eiffel”, but it is reasonable to assume there must be at least one using the Tower’s name, especially those near the place or part of the Eiffel Tower could be seen from their shops. Paris is famous for her thousands and thousands of coffee shops, big or small. The dazzling cafes alongside the grand boulevards are indispensable Parisian cityscape. Sitting on the “terrace de cafe” alone or with friends is part of Parisian life and tourists’ satisfaction. In some occasions, coffee rooms serve as cradles of artistic/cultural movements, such as Impressionist and existentialist.Degas’s and Toulouse-Lautrec’s Parisians occupied Chen’s “Cafe de la Tour Eiffel”. They were ordinary citizens or bourgeois, some, pleasure seekers. While coffee-sipping became essential in their social life, coffee shops became the places for their meeting and dating.

Throughout the transparent window screen appeared eternally the Eiffel Tower, the pride and beauty of the capital, yet they were too familiar to her existence, no attention neither admiration was raised, as we used to take for granted the creation of God around us.

– T. F. Chen