Sheila Hicks – American-born textile artist, Parisian since 1964 and, at 87, en pleine forme – has a plan for my visit, but it’s not entirely clear to me what it is. She greets me outside her studio – the platonic ideal of a cobbled courtyard in the Latin Quarter, with creeper-draped buildings of startling beauty, an ancient well, even an elderly gent processing elegantly out the gates on a bicycle. Speaking in the soft but decisive tones of a lady of great age who knows precisely what she’s about, she points to various windows – here Hockney had a studio, here Tony Richardson, you know? He was married to Vanessa Redgrave. Here Robert Carsen, the opera director. Balthus had his studio up here. She proceeds at a stately pace towards the courtyard’s back entrance. Here Dr Guillotin experimented. He placed his equipment here you see and the blood ran downhill, here. He tried it out on sheep.
