so i didn’t really get to see paris. i did get to see some really spectacular art, though.
i arrived in to paris after a very quick flight. it took just 55 minutes for the plane to take off in bristol, perform a rather dramatic clockwise spiral, pop over the english channel, and land safely in paris. it was honestly pretty groundbreaking to experience just how compact everything is. i could see brighton pier and the french coast distinctly, and at the same time. maps started seeming much easier to draft, even sans aircraft.
by the time i had landed at charles de gaulle, picked up my luggage, and caught the train into paris, the sun was beginning to set. as i walked toward the hostel, i had the odd feeling that paris could exist only in the sunrise or sunset, if it wished, and that people would either not notice or not question.
what i saw of the streets of paris was odd. it’s an old city, and decidedly grand, but everything is further apart than one might expect. streets are wider, buildings taller… it’s almost as if someone designed paris on a human level and then just sized everything up by 35% or so. london has distinct boroughs, some filled with graffiti and street food, others with white stone and bankers, all markedly individual; paris, on the other hand, is blended so thoroughly that the streets might be easily mixed up if it weren’t for the parks and landmarks which regularly dot the map. grand facades and mansard roofs are splashed with spray paint and cafe signs. at least from my brief encounter with the city, paris was almost inspiring in its uniformity.
that encounter really began properly yesterday morning. i awoke at eight and was out by nine, catching the metro toward the musée d’orsay. the metropolitan underground is an old rail system, and it shows. it might also have been the language barrier, but everything made a bit less sense than the tube.
the metro popped me out right across the street from the louvre, which i did not go into because i’ve made a promise to my sister haley that i would not go without her. this didn’t stop me from taking a couple of cheeky pictures outside:
the whole thing was on a greater scale than i could have possibly imagined, and basked almost sheepishly in the morning light. i walked beneath the arc de triomphe du carrousel (not the most famous arc de triomphe, but a good one) and across the seine to the orsay.
i stopped in at a small cafe behind the museum for breakfast before my day in the museum. this was a very french breakfast, being composed of a baguette (buttered, with jam), a croissant, a glass of orange juice, and a tea. the waiter seemed to be pulling rather hard for coffee instead of tea, which would have presumedly completed a summoning circle to bring forth a troupe of mimes or perhaps a crepe, but i insisted on the tea.
side note: i only saw a single busker in paris, and it was a small band of musicians outside the orsay. no mimes, no living statues, none of the identical floating people in robes and cheap masks which graced the street corners of every tourist venue in the uk. there were, however, people out in force with miniature die-cast replicas of the eiffel tower, all held on a large ring like a very unwieldy set of keys. they jingled them at me as i passed, as if to say, ‘i know this will wear you down eventually, and when it does, my colleagues will be there to sell you one of these trinkets. you cannot escape, etc.’
but i’m getting ahead of myself.
after breakfast i popped across the street into the musée d’orsay. they asked if any discounts applied to me, which they did not, but they gave me one anyways. it was about half past ten.
i walked through the gateway to this. i was fully unprepared for the scale of this museum. i knew it was the largest collection of neo-, post-, and just plain old- impressionist paintings in the world. i promise i’ll be quick here:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
unfortunately, the museum was renovating (again, just my luck!) and several artists were displaced. i’m pretty positive i missed out on a big monet. the dates of renovation were 25-30 september. i was in paris from the 26th to the 28th. really great timing.
there was also a surprisingly great amount of art nouveau art, architecture, and furniture on display, including pieces by (and if you have read that paper i wrote at university, you’ll understand the scale of emotions going on here) horta, gaudi, eckmann, guimard, mackintosh, wagner, and wright.
i won’t take up more time with miles of photography, but i will show this one off.
i could have died.
the temporary exhibition currently on displayed the works of picasso during his blue and rose periods, in this instance displayed together as one cohesive unit for the first time in france. i’m not always a great admirer of the man, but dear god he makes me want to paint. it was especially fascinating seeing these much earlier works (1899~1906) after having seen the exhibition at the tate modern in london which collected art of his from 1932. during the blue period especially, but throughout his early works, you could see the influence of other impressionist post-impressionist artists he admired. compare these self-portraits by picasso to that of van gogh, above:
and then compare to one of his later works:
it’s astonishing how much changed through the years. the fact that this man was such a huge deal in the art scene for thirty full years of his life is spectacularly inspiring, even if he was rather a dick along the way.
i left the musée d’orsay around 4:30 that afternoon. i saw probably half of the collection at more than a brief glance (the symbolists were never to my taste, and pontilism usually feels more of a novelty than anything else), but it was enlightening to see such a wide variety of one sort of art gathered together.
i left then to see the eiffel tower while i was about, and ended up walking an ambling, indirect 8 km or so round trip. eiffel towers were jingled menacingly, but i held my resolve. i returned to the metropolitan about six p.m. with a couple of new holes in my socks.
this morning was check out, which left me once again wandering with all of my things on me, looking rather like a turtle with giraffe legs. i could have kept my things in a locker but was short on change and not about to take out 30 euro and then buy something strategically priced so as to leave myself with enough coins to make up the missing €2,30.
i spent the late morning and early afternoon in the parc des buttes-chaumont, which was wonderfully green and just a few blocks away from the hostel.
i watched a man paint the bridge and the hill on the other side of it while i sat and wrote. it is usually as interesting to watch someone paint as it is to see a completed painting (the exception being those wine-and-paint-nites, which are depressing as hell). i saw myself in the way he worked, and wanted to tell him that he really had something and not to give up art. maybe i was projecting my own anxieties on him as well. he took the painting off the easel and put it back up twice before ultimately packing up his tools and leaving, having finished his work.
i had a properly fancy lunch in the bistro just next to the bridge, which was an artful arrangement of pork and filet mignon with carrots and a peanut sauce–the lunch, i mean, not the bistro. dessert was a sort of sweet biscuit with cream and berries, which was also beautifully presented. for the second time i was looked at in disbelief when i said ‘no, thank you’ to a cup of coffee. i was the only person in the restaurant who was speaking english. i have never felt more bourgeois in my life.
feeling full of good food and good art and good nature, i began the long trek to the train to catch my flight to reykjavik.
תגובות