The Travelling Salon

To our invited guest,

You are invited: the salon has no fixed address. Today it meets in the corner of a café, tomorrow in the dining car of a train, the day after on the back of an exhibition card.

This letter comes from Paris, 1935–36, in a dusty rose linen envelope. The title is in a high-contrast italic worthy of a French magazine. Blue and sage cubist fragments assemble the city's cafés, and there is a delicately engraved chain of jewelry, a cream gallery-invitation band, and a stamp of warm gold.

A poet wrote while reviewing a Salon exhibition: "Imagination is the queen of the true, and the possible is one of the provinces of the true." — Charles Baudelaire, Salon de 1859 (1859)

So each guest brings a province of the true. Come and bring yours; we will set out chairs in the letter and talk slowly. The salon opens in the rain, too.

Next time the salon meets at your place

Storm Post Office

1935–36 · Paris