This is Holland…

…a sales assistant tells me, as I scan bookshelves generously stocked with English as well as Dutch works. "We are not so religious. Yes, we have more mosques now - but we have also a lot of empty churches." And here's a great thing to do with such atmospheric yet dormant spaces. I'm in central Maastricht, standing in what must be one of the finest bookshops in the world. That's quite a claim. Yet who could fail to be thrilled by this extraordinary venture?

Completed in 2007 by Merkx + Girod Architecten, the Selexyz Dominicanen Bookstore is an incredible church conversion that was originally consecrated in 1294. Located between Maastricht’s two major squares (the Markt and the Vrijthof), the bookstore is run by a large Dutch chain in collaboration with the city council of Maastricht.

The location has not been used as a church for over 200 years. Before becoming a bookstore it served as bicycle storage, exam hall for students, a Christmas market and venue for various shows and events. While some may find this usage peculiar, there are actually a significant number of abandoned churches in the Netherlands, many of them hundreds of years old.

With land being a premium in the country, local governments have opted to convert and restore (just look at those ceilings!) rather than demolish these historic abandoned buildings.

The Dominican church in Maastricht strikes just the right note. Its architects deserve a blessing.

The Art of self-presentation

Or packaging, for maximum exposure is hardly a new phenomenon. More than two thousand years after Augustus the possibilities for getting one’s picture shown in public have dominated the mainstream.

In today’s media society, television fare like Entourage, American Idol, Project Runway, Bethenny Getting Married?, and the always effortlessly cool Mad Men fill the airwaves, glorifying fame and all its accompanying excesses. Today, one needs to go no further for a bit of recognition and renown than to the Internets’ own über publicist, the infamous Facebook, a gathering of one hundred and fifty million plus strangers, who are ready to befriend, share and exchange the most banal of pleasantries and intimate of secrets, launching even the lowest of us to the digital Walk of Fame.

Never before have we consumed so much. Photo ops, press kits, fashion layouts, publicity tours, media interviews, behind-the-scenes stagings where highly customized presentations are carefully choreographed and rigidly controlled to create a favorable impression in anointing the next great celebrity wonder.

With literally hundreds of different media outlets competing for the attention of viewers, readers and listeners, a great deal of importance is attached to presenting oneself in the best possible light, no matter how distant the truth. Those who know how to present themselves, after all, get noticed, and a whole raft of consultants, posses, coaches, stylists and publicists make sure that their protégé and, by association, themselves, garner a spot at the celebrated top.

For a bit of fanciful fun and angling for fame and immortality, I have chosen as my avatar a man from the Middle Ages, a nobleman, bien sûr.  Although the printing press was introduced in 1440, shifting forever the power of the few to the many, it was the portrait paintings of that time that primarily memorialized and publicized the rich, the powerful and subsequently, the middle class.

Those looking for fame sought out the expert brush strokes of master artisans to transform the unknown and ordinary into a veritable superstar. One of the preeminent and official court painters of his day, the Medici appointed Angiolo Torri Bronzino (1503-1572) usually known as Il Bronzino, was celebrated as the master magician of the brush. His portrait figures—often read as static, elegant, and stylish exemplars of unemotional haughtiness and assurance—influenced the course of European court portraiture for a century.

Who better than Il Bronzino to wave his magic brush and usher in instant celebrity? In a Portrait of a Young Man, the viewer is accosted by the arresting and imperious gaze of an unidentified young Florentine. The overweening pomposity is perfectly captured in the all consuming self-important stare, not to the viewer, who is surely beneath the nobleman’s station, but to that private place where only the truly anointed brood. He stands between an elaborately decorated table and chair within an architectural setting meant to suggest a Florentine palace. Naturally.  One simple painting by the esteemed Il Bronzino was enough to catapult the young Florentine into the exalted courts of his own exaggerated imagination.  The portrait and carefully staged presentation elevated the subject to the heights of his choosing. 

In my avatar I superimposed this image with that of Kermit, to lessen the impact of my own self-importance.  

A Parisian Hideaway

When Marie-Antoinette wanted to play country, she had to invent the Hameau at the Petit Trianon. When sophisticated Parisians yearn for a country paradise, they dream of Montford-l‘Amaury. Thirty miles west of Paris, the medieval fortress town floats serenely above the surrounding pastures in the soft haze of the Ile-de-France. Set off against the rich tapestry of green and gold forest, Montfort in an Impressionist painting of pastoral perfection that could be light-years away from the hustle of Paris, instead of a short drive.

Montfort is country with all the pleasures of civilization. The local grocery stocks products from Paris gourmet shops, Fauchon and Hediard, and crusty Poilane bread is delivered daily. The fish is sparkling fresh, the meat tender, the cheese impeccable.

Les Montfortois are used to the best. Those one meets are not simple country folk, but a cosmopolitan collection. “There hasn’t been a peasant in Montfort for four-hundred years”, jokes a friend of mine. Montfort seems to be a chic Paris neighborhood in the middle of the forest. Full of houses furnished with ghosts and myths of hidden treasure.

Being on the move is a Montfortois characteristic. Friends are always just off to China back from Egypt about to trek in Nepal, or off to New York. Everyone knows everyone. Friendships are close and dependable because families have known each other for generations. This close-knit network produces support system that is as powerful as the proverbial old school tie.

Montfort’s unspoiled charm owes much to its location on the edge of the Rambouillet forest and its classification as a historical site with a recorded past that stretches back over a thousand years. Naturally, building restrictions are draconian, so the views that appear on turn-of-the-century postcards are astonishingly similar today.

“We are like an island,” comments my friend. “There is a very particular art of living here. It is a delicious place to live, very protected.”

Montfort may be just next door to Paris, but to call it a suburb would never do. The very word is enough to send elegant shivers down a Montfortois spine. Montfort is distinctly country, and country pleasures are pursued with vigor. Each weekend flocks of would-be Lance Armstrong's bicycle at breakneck pace through the Rambouillet forest.

Tennis too, is played with a fierce concentration. The Montfort players are very good and very serious. They don’t fool around. At the Polo Club in Paris, I might have a moment to watch the ducks fly past during a match. Not in Montfort. Although I played tennis, I abstained from the hunt.

Close to Versailles as well as Paris, Montfort has been fashionable and fought-over since it was founded by Count Amaury de Montfort in the late tenth century. The most famous-or notorious- of his descendants, Simon IV, led the particularly bloodthirsty Albigesion crusade until he met his and at the siege of Toulouse in 1218.

The charms of Montfort have proved especially attractive to a legion of artists and writers. Colette, who lived in nearby Mere, often visited writer Germaine Beaumont in town. Composer Maurice Ravel, small of stature, delighted in his minuscule house, Le Blevedere, where he composed some of his most known works such as Bolero and Daphnis and Chloe. Jean Anouilh came to Montfort to work. Today’s eccentricity is provided by my friend, whose carefully nurtured three-day stubble brings a bit of Les Halles to the heart of Montfort. On returning from a long trip abroad recently, he gave a party that started at 6:00a.m.-the guests rolled up from the trendy nightlife in Paris-and went on for twenty-four hours.

Montfort could be prime commuter country, if Parisians thought to commute. But they don’t, spoiled as they are by one of the world’s most livable cities, and wary as they are of sporadic train schedules. Nevertheless, for an enchanting weekend getaway it is priceless. Every time I approach Montfort I have a foretaste of the splendors in store and for the magic I have yet to experience.