Paris, Partie Une

Paris

May 13-May 22, 2012

Sunday, May 13-Monday May 14

My last day in Boston before The Trip was spent packing while trying to absorb information about Renaissance and Roman artwork from Kahn Academy, a website with mini video lectures by experts on topics from algebra to art history. Mom helped me have a little more time to prepare by driving me to the airport; it was really nice to have a smooth, personal send-off. 


Then there I was, waiting in line to fly through the sky and end up in Paris. 

On the plane I met a personable Englishmen who was an undergraduate at Harvard, returning to visit his family over the summer. Unfortunately our enjoyable conversation meant that after changing planes in London I arrived in the full daylight of Paris with very little sleep under my belt. 

Paris! I had arrived!

Dragging my suitcase from the train station through the not-entirely-safe-looking streets surrounding, I tried to follow the seemingly clear online instructions to my hostel, but found as I wound around some kind of fancy dress-shopping district near Montmartre that they were not entirely straightforward. This afforded one of my first opportunities to speak in French, which made asking for directions downright delightful. The French really came back, and finally I found myself in a small but charming hostel where I dragged my suitcase up a spiral staircase...

And was rewarded with a room with a view.

After a nap to recover from some of my lost night of sleep, I ventured out into the Montmartre district, wandering through the charming streets in search of a fondue restaurant that my guidebook highly recommended. 

When I finally made it, I discovered that the restaurant only served its cheese fondue to groups of two or more, and I had to try several other restaurants before finding one with space and enjoying a savory crepe at a small family restaurant for my first French meal. 

Fondue for Two (or more)

After dinner I went to the nearby Musée d'Erotocism, which was right next to the Moulin Rouge. 

Thanks to Toulouse tickets for shows are over $100, which didn't deter the formidable line!

At this point it was past 1am Paris time, and time for me to go to bed. 

Tuesday, May 15 

Tuesday was a rainy day, so I planned to use my time optimally by spending it in the Louvre. When I arrived I was surprised to goliath museum relatively peaceful--until I discovered that it is closed on Tuesdays. 

 

So plan B: walk across the Tuileries Gardens that abut the Louvre to L'Orangerie, where they house Monet's large water lily paintings.  



The Tuileries are a garden in the traditional French style--composed of well-manicured, geometric tree- and bush-lined paths dotted with sculptures, with all roads leading to a large central pool-with-fountain. 

The use of empty space means that the geometric expanses of the park are largely visible, as well as geometric things farther in the distance...

 



The sculptures ranged from those in a classical style (largely 19th century, including Rodin), to more modern abstract and even whimsical creations.

I smiled when I saw this one. 

Unfortunately, when I made it to L'Orangerie, I discovered that it, too, is closed on Tuesdays. So plan C: walk to the Rodin museum.


At the other end of the Tuileries is the Place de la Concorde, which is marked by an obelisk in an appropriation of the Roman's inclination to place pirated millennial Egyptian obelisks in their squares (stay tuned for pictures of the originals). 

Unfortunately, just as I reached the Place de la Concorde, the clouds began to darken and gather, and soon it was pouring rather cold rain that wind was blowing past the "New York #5" brand drugstore umbrella that I had packed as an afterthought and right into my face. 

Taking a very indirect route through the storm, I somehow managed to make it to the beginning of the Pont Alexandre III, where I took shelter in the Petit Palais museum, which I learned (thanks to my French) was free (sadly neither I nor the museum attendent was able to communicate this to the two German women huddled in the doorway). Even this relatively minor museum took pride in its appearance. 

The rain let up before too long, and I crossed the Pont Alexandre and walked through the charming seventh quarter to the Rodin museum, but not before purchasing some apricots that looked almost too picturesque to be true (though their price made their perfection slightly more plausible).

                   

The Rodin Museum consists of a large collection inside what appears to be a 19th century house, and a sculpture garden that hosts many of the artist's most famous works (or at least the larger versions of them--there are smaller "studies" inside corresponding to the most famous pieces). 

Now that I had finally made it somewhere, I wanted to savor it, so I purchased an audio guide and spent quite some time with the pieces inside.


I learned that Rodin was famous for his masterful sculpting of the human body.

He captured the body so perfectly that he was accused of molding this piece from life (an accusation later discredited by a panel of judges).

Look at the arm definition here! 

And the muscles of the legs here!!

This so rankled Rodin that afterward he often sculpted people at least slightly oversize to prove that he had produced the works mold-free.


Rodin truly is masterful at rendering the human body accurately. Every muscle and bone and ear canal is skillfully delineated.  Later when I saw work by others with this gift--Michaelangelo, early Greek masters lost to history--I starting thinking about what sets Rodin apart as a more impressionist sculpture. Of course part of what confers his celebrity is the expressive quality and dynamism of his work. 

But I noticed that a salient part of what breaks genre with earlier sculpture is that he departs from the content and compositional motifs used for millennia. The Greek golden age set a tone of toga-wearing serene figures conveying a tension of dynamism and stability via contrapasto or a similar pose (but usually contrapasto), and (as you will see) it became the meme that would not die. But Rodin captures a huge variety of subjects and poses, that appear, as in impressionist painting, to be caught in a moment. 

Not to--heavens--suggest he was completely devoid of classical influences... 

My favorite aspect of Rodin's sculptures was an analogue of my favorite aspect of impressionist painting: the tension between  recognizable representation and the visibility of the artist's hand. In impressionist painting the brush strokes that comprise the image are often saliently visible even as they create a scene that looks pulled directly from nature. Looking from one level to the other fills me with awe at this seemingly magical transformation--the image feels irreducible to the brushstrokes, and yet there are the brush strokes, and there is the image. (More on this later). Likewise, if you look closely at Rodin's sculptures you can often see the imprints of the sculpting, a tangible connection to the human fingers that created a form that looks quite like life. 

And in both the paintings and the sculptures, there is something about this effect--something more than the awe it brings by drawing attention to the incredible feat of the artist--that makes it more movingly beautiful than its counterpart in nature in a way that I can only say--with some dissatisfaction and a lot of respect--just feels uniquely impressionist. 

This particular sculpture is another interesting point of departure from classical themes--Rodin wanted to take the non-traditional subject of an older woman and make her beautiful through art.

The museum also had works on display by Rodin's contemporaries and students, including this one by a rare female sculptor named Camille Claudel. 

This epic-meets-intimate piece is purportedly an expression of her feelings about losing Rodin to another woman

I don't remember who did this one, but I really liked it:

The garden at the Rodin museum is a lovely blend of sculpted nature and sculpted metal. I went to the Thinker first, of course (this time it was right side up), but then meandered to other things. 

                 

                     

                      

While I was shooting this incredible view, 

I was inadvertently using up the last of my time before closing, which of course meant that I had vow to return and pay the one euro garden admission another time--I couldn't leave Paris without seeing the Gates of Hell!!

Being shy of finishing the garden was another unfortunate blow to my productivity for the day, but the evening was young. I wandered through the lovely 7ême, which had typical French streets lined with cream-colored 
buildings lined with flags and ornate iron balconies.

After dinner at a book-recommended simple home-cooked style restaurant in the area, I walked back across the Pont Alexandre. 

This is one of the Battaux Mouches or a similar boat tour of Paris. 

The always view-friendly Alexandre.

Which brought me back to the Place De La Concorde. 

Which is a straight shot to the Champs Élysées.                      

Sadly, said Champs is essentially a charmingly presented strip mall of stores you could find in the United States. But I did say charmingly presented... 

I also saw the first of several quite talented Parisian street performers (this one was dancing to Michael Jackson). 

                   

At this point, the thing to do seemed to be to have Mousse Au Chocolate at a café, and watch people stroll by from the window.

I can't recall if this was my really good mousse or my really bad mousse...

At the end of the Champs Élysées is the Arc de Triomphe, a monument to those who died in the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, and a participant, Roman-style, in numerous victory parades, including that following World War II (later we'll see the arches that directly inspired this and so many other arch-shaped monuments).  

At this point I just had time to get the metro back to my hostel (which I ran to from the metro, since it turns out Montmartre isn't the most comforting place to be at night). My efforts to use time optimally hadn't exactly gone as planned, but today was something, and tomorrow is another day.