Art and Paris

9-17-2008

At 9am this morning we took a bus tour around Paris. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from Paris. All I saw was one more city between me and London. However, this city took me by surprise. Partly thanks to Jenny and her ridiculous list of amazing things to do in Paris, and mostly thanks to this bus tour and our I’ve-smoked-since-I–was-twelve tour guide and her overly raspy voice. She pointed out so many amazing sights that I am looking at a trip back to the capital of France in the near future because I doubt I'm getting it all in over the next few days.

The tour ended at the Musee D’Orsay where I saw some of the most wonderfully moving paintings I’ve ever seen by some of the worlds most renown artists, as well as those that I've never heard of but fell in love with:

• Paul Helleu's Femme Assise Accoudee; pastel; a depressed woman staring at a bowl of apricots
• Odilon Redon's Le Bouddha; pastel
• Maximillien Luce's Une Rue de Parisen mai 1871; French Revolution war depiction, very Les Miserables-like
• Georges Lacombe's Iris; painting on a wood carving; blood pouring from a woman's breast giving life to flowers below
• Camille Pissaro's Chataigniers a Louveciennes
• Renoir's Etude ou Torse, effetde soleil; 1875, pools of light on a naked woman
• Henride Toulousey, captured a darker, more real side of life

Then I came across my favorites, mostly because of their popularity and my art ignorance: Seurat and Van Gogh.

Let's start with Seurat. One of my personal favorites has always been Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of Le Grande. After traveling halfway around the world, I've come to discover that this masterpiece is just a 3 hour drive from Green Bay. I should have gathered that from watching Ferris Bueller. Anywho, Seurat, wow, brilliance. For those of you who may not be firmilar,  Georges-Pierre Seurat is the master of pointillism, the use of tiny dots blended together to create an image. And while "Sunday Afternoon" is in Chicago, his studies on it are in the Musee D'Orsay. In his studies, one can get up close and personal, and see that his points in this particular painting are more like hash marks, but still stagnant points. 

Walk down the hall from the "Sunday Afternoon" studies and one will find another Seurat that trumps any piece down that corridor: Le Cirque. I was not expecting to see this puppy, but sweet sassy malassy am I glad I did. Here, Seurat is still very much using pointillism yet here his hash mark-like strokes give movement to this lively big top scene. 

Following Seurat were the Van Goghs: his self portrait and his chamber. The eyes of Van Gogh's self portrait are world renown and to be staring right back at him stirs a belittling feeling really. He's just so damn good. However, you turn around and look at his chamber picture and realize that the poor guy was just a lonely artist with only his paint and imagination to keep him happy. All I could think when I looked at his works were "Bring on the Paint!" Up close, it looks like the globs of paint are just barely holding on to the canvas, almost as if they are going to fall off under their own weight. 

After the Musee D'Orsay and during it really, I was on my own. I got an awesome sammich, walked to Paris' oldest cathedral, the Natural history museum (which my museum pass didn't get me into but it had a cool park), and then to the Pantheon where I saw the crypt of Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables. 

I walked and shopped with Chad, Mike, Jenny, & Cody. Then the guys ditched the ladies and did a little shopping of the metro manly type. We walked past  Roman ruins in the middle of the city, just like in Verona, and saw a bum with a bag full of cats who hates tourists. 

At midnight that night it was Chad’s birthday. We tried clubbing but failed and settled for two bottles of wine at a little cafe, plus a little birthday treat for Chad. Good day.