Les musées

Since I'm here doing my dissertation research, it's a fair assumption that I'm going to be spending a lot of time in the various museums in Paris, both for business and pleasure. As I anxiously await the opening of the Redon retrospective at the Grand Palais (11 days and counting! Woot!), I thought I would hit a few of the other museums... because, you know, there are a few around here. :)

While Doug was here last week, we went to two of the biggest museums, especially if you're an art lover: the Musée d'Orsay and the Louvre. We considered trying to get into the Louvre on its free day, but eventually decided against it, after reading multiple warnings online. Apparently it's not worth it. So instead of attempting to battle millions of tourists on the free days, we decided to battle only thousands and went to Orsay on Saturday and the Louvre on Monday.

First, Orsay: I'm a nineteenth century-ist, so this was my heaven. Or at least it should have been, but since the Redon exhibition starts soon, none of his works were out on display. I expected this, but was still a little disappointed. I did, however, make my obligatory pilgrimage to see Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe, which was quite exciting. This was the first time I had ever seen it in person (as far as I can remember) and I was amazed at all the little details in it that you don't really notice in reproductions. I also enjoyed seeing some of Manet's floral still lifes and his portrait of Zola, proving that comps didn't completely ruin art for me.

I also reluctantly visited the Courbet gallery to the Painter's Atelier and the Burial at Ornans. Bleh. I don't like Courbet. However, whenever I see the Painter's Atelier, I'm reminded of my very first 19th century class at UI, the Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism class. I don't think of it because of anything I learned in the class however. Rather, I just sit and giggle at the "additions" Karissa and I made to the cover of Linda Nochlin's Realism book. Hee hee! For those of you that don't know, it involves Courbet being eaten by a stegosaurus. Huge improvement, if I do say so myself.

One of the irritating things about Orsay (and the Louvre, for that matter) was the sheer number of people packed into the galleries. Or rather, packed into certain galleries. The ones with works by artists not named Van Gogh or Monet were typically less congested. Fortunately for me, most Impressionist paintings make me want to projectile vomit, so I didn't stick around there too long. I did get a chance to check out several galleries dedicated to the Nabis though, which was fun. And I got to see some Moreaus, crazy Ingres, a whole gallery on Symbolism and Art Nouveau (woo!) and some Puvis de Chavannes (sorry Karissa...)

As I said, we decided to skip the Louvre's free day on the first Sunday of the month, and instead went on Monday. The lines and crowds were still horrible, but what can you expect... it is the Louvre. I also wanted to pass along a little tidbit... you can buy tickets to the Louvre at a little tabac in the Carrousel du Louvre, just as you come out of the Metro (Palais Royale-Musee du Louvre). You still have to wait in line, of course, but it's not as long, and you don't have to pay a service charge like you do if you buy it somewhere else. I didn't know any of this until I got here, but maybe this is common knowledge. Anyway, I thought I'd share.

After getting our tickets and getting through security and wading through crowds of people, we finally entered the museum, and I was almost immediately greeted by the one sight that I do remember from my first visit: the Nike of Samothrace on the grand staircase. Amazing. I remember just being in awe of it the first time I was here, and this time was no different. Even though I'm usually more partial to two dimensional works, it's nearly impossible to tear your eyes away from the Nike. Even when we had been through the museum and walked back out that way, I couldn't help but gaze at it as we walked by again. It's truly stunning.

Eventually I did manage to turn away from the Nike, and we moved on into the Italian galleries. Yes, we had to get this out of the way first. We saw the Cimabue Madonna and a mediocre Giotto (scoff!) and panel after panel of Madonnas and ugly babies (Christ childs? Christ children? and yes, I'm going to hell for that). Now, I have to admit, I did get giddily excited to see the Madonna of the Rocks and some of Leonardo's other paintings. I did not get to see the Saint Anne though, which made me sad. Fortunately, these works were displayed in the main gallery, not in the gallery with the Mona Lisa, so we were actually able to see most of them.

We did indeed enter the Mona Lisa gallery, but I tried to stay along the perimeter. Shockingly, there are actually other paintings displayed in this gallery. Who would have thought? I was actually more excited to see some of the Titians and Giorgiones and Veroneses than I was about the Mona Lisa... although, in the interest of full disclosure, we did snap a few pictures of ol' Mona as we sneaked past.

After escaping the Mona Lisa crowd, we found ourselves in the French galleries, so I made another mini pilgrimage and visited the Neoclassical gallery, or the Dorothy Johnson gallery, as I like to call it. Now, I'm not a big fan of David (sorry DoJo), but seeing some of his works in person did give me a new appreciation for him. I spent a little time looking at the Loves of Paris and Helen, a work I've seen reproduced about a million times now, and I had never noticed before how incredibly skillfully David painted the different textures of the fabrics. So I have to admit, I was quite impressed. I also spent some time enjoying the craziness that is Ingres, as well as the Girodets, who I think I've finally decided I like.

We ended up spending more than 3 hours at the Louvre and in the interest of space, I won't go into everything else we saw. I will say, though, that I'm glad I'm a nineteenth century-ist, because I really don't care for most French art before the Revolution. We walked through a gallery of Watteaus and I literally wanted to run away screaming.

Those were the only two museum Doug and I visited together, although we had planned on going to both the Musée Rodin and the Musée Moreau, but we ran out of time. I remedied this, at least in part, today by going to the Moreau museum. I think, of the three I've gone to so far, this one was my favorite. It's obviously much, much smaller than the other two, so it was more intimate. At first, I was not terribly impressed, as the first floor consists of Moreau's apartment. You can walk through the various rooms, but it's quite cramped and, in my opinion, not all that thrilling. The next two floors, however, are full of paintings, oil sketches and cabinets of drawings. If you ever have a chance to visit this museum, I highly recommend it. You can flip through the framed drawings at your leisure (they even provide chairs), and Moreau's drawings are just incredible. I was particularly fascinated by the variety of drawing styles and the amount of detail he included in even the smaller sketches. And I found it amazing that a drawing which, at first glance, looked like nothing more than a mass of squiggly lines, could come into focus as a landscape or a mass of people. Really amazing drawings.

The third level had more paintings, including another blast from my comps past, Jupiter and Semele. Now, I've known for a while that Moreau's paintings are incredibly detailed, and that this painting in particular was no exception, but I still was blown away by it. Even in the bad light of the museum, it looked amazing. I felt kind of bad because I was snapping away with my camera and looking like a tourist, but I wanted to try to get some pictures of it. Sadly, said lighting issues means that none of my pictures turned out very good, but oh well. I walked around a little more, then came back to Jupiter and Semele to take it all in again, then went on my way.

So I know you're probably thinking, wow, only three museums in all of Paris? Slacker. Well... ok, I probably am. But as I visit more museums, I'll be sure to update everyone. And coming up soon, I'll introduce you to one of my new favorite places in Paris.

All for now. Bonne nuit!