I've been home in Ithaca exactly one week now. I flew in, was kind of tired for a few days, without being truly jet-lagged, and have begun to ease into my vacation-time rhythm. I've started running again, and my legs are getting slightly sore from my lack of exercise in France.
I've had time to reflect on my past 5 months out of the country, and have come to several conclusions regarding how I spent my time. This blog needs a final chapter, so why not try to draw up a balance sheet (bilan) of what was nearly half a year overseas? The following list is, I think, short enough to hold your attention.
1) I am glad that I spent the semester abroad in France. Although I forewent a semester of excellent classes at Cornell, and the company of some of my favorite fellow Cornellians, I now know a) that I can comfortably live in a culture other than the one I was born into, b) that with immersion, I can learn to get by in a foreign language, and c) that I am capable of living more than 10 miles from home.
2) I am thankful that I spent the one month studying at the Institut de Touraine. Without my time at the Institut, too much of my semester would have been consumed habituating myself to speaking and pronouncing French; likewise, without the semester abroad, what I learned at the Institut would have been quickly forgotten.
3) I can speak French tolerably well, now. I can speak on just about any topic that might come up in conversation, although a noisy background or obstreperous setting might make it difficult for me to understand. Non-French accents, such as those used by Mauritanians or Cubans, also prove a problem. I only have about a 25% chance of understanding a conversation on which I am eavesdropping.
4) Although I am rather disappointed with the academics at Paris IV, I do not wish to overstate my disappointment. My Louis XIV class, taught by Lucien Bely, for instance was better than several history courses I have taken at Cornell. However, I badly missed Discussion periods, and am positive that I was not motivated to work as hard. I learned maybe half as much during a Cornell semester, between my CMs, TDs, and time spent reading out of class.
5) I profited greatly from my time spent visiting chateaux, cathedrals, historic churches, public monuments, and art and history museums. I really have no idea how many museums I visited in Paris, but I visited everything that I really wanted to see. That being said, I left the museums of the marine, man, natural history, modern art (not the Centre Pompidou), romantic life, fashion, african art, sports, and several others entirely unexplored. Paris is just too big, and has too many things to see and do, and not enough time to do them: there's virtually nothing worth doing after 6:00 in the evening, unless the Louvre is open for a nocturne.
6) I made (what I think is) a lasting familial link with the Parisian branch of my family, whom I had never met before. Thank you to all, especially to Bruno and to Chi, for making me feel welcome, and helping me, a confused 20-year-old, get my bearings!
7) Beyond my family members, some non-Cornellian Americans (Tulane crowd and Ade) and a few other foreign students (notably Misaki and Sherif) I doubt that anyone will seriously miss my absence in Paris. Guillaume and Pauline might, but I do not think that more than a few people will miss my presence. That hurts, just a little, to know that I passed virtually unnoticed in France, and this is one reason why I am somewhat relieved that I only signed up for one semester in France, rather than the whole year.
8) I learned the stress of keeping a blog, but benefited by being forced to recall and record my more interesting discoveries. I agree with Nick that a paper journal will be much cooler to read in 20 years, and a paper journal would have allowed me to write nasty, vindictive comments than I cannot safely publish on JDWrit, but the entire point of this blog was that my friends and family could read about my misadventures.
This is the boring part: acknowledgments. I realize that I owe a lot of people a great deal for everything they have done for me since (and even before) I flew out of Ithaca, back in July. Thank you to my wonderful parents, for financially and morally supporting me throughout, and even visiting me; thank you to the Avertin family for being a welcoming host family in Tours, and thank you to Bruno, Chi, Lili-An, Jojo, and Martine for welcoming me in Paris, showing me (and my parents) around, and feeding me. Thank you to the EDUCO team of Giulia, Prof. Longino, Monique, Valerie, Veronique (alphabetical order) for supporting my academic endeavors. Thank you to Misaki, for being sweet and friendly, to Sherif, for helping me learn, to Pauline, for reaching out and working with me, and to Guillaume, for being my friend, just because you enjoyed it. Thank you to all of the TD Prof.s who took the trouble to make accommodations for me. Thank you to the various other EDUCO students, including, but not limited to Ade, Alice (x2), Anne, Brooke, Christine, David, Emily (x2), Hannah, Ilana, Jamie, Joe, Linda, Logan, Meaghan, Nick, Pat, Sarah (x2), and Sharon (if I missed you, or misspelled your name, I'm sorry!). Thank you to my brothers Sam and Andrew for keeping in contact with me throughout my time in France, as well as to everyone else who kept in contact (you know who you are). Finally, thank you to everyone who ever read my blog (even if you've already been thanked), and provided me with honest, or at least encouraging, feedback.
If I haven't seen you yet, I hope to see you soon! This might be the last blog entry ever, or I might end up converting JDWrit into my personal, general-use blog. The decision will be made after I return from Israel.
Happy Birthday, Mom!
~JD
"As it nearly always happens, when we wish to imitate great men, that we copy only their foibles and even their defects, since we are capable of nothing else, so many of these admirers took note of the way in which [Ibarra] tied his cravat, others of the style of his collar, and not a few of the number of buttons on his coat and vest." ~ Jose Rizal, Noli me Tangere
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
Countdown: 1... BLASTOFF!
On Wednesday, Paris was dark, overcast, wet, and rainy -- terrible condition for a long walk through town. That was exactly my plan; after blogging, and hoping that the rain would go away of its own accord, I set off, at about 10:50 in the morning for the Musee Marmottan Monet, located in the northern half of the 16e arrondissement in Paris: this might have been my longest walk in Paris, and certainly the longest walk I have taken since the start of classes. The rain was on-and-off, but I got the chance to see some parts of the city I have never visited before, on the rive droite. My Turkish friend once remarked that the neighborhood in the southeast 14e arrondissement where the Cite Universitare International is located is très bourgeois, and I think he’s right. Paris has its fair share of poverty, beyond the ubiquitous homeless beggars whom I mention so frequently: I’m talking about cramped, lousy housing, etc, with high concentrations of racial and national minorities.
In any case, I eventually made it to the Marmottan at nearly 1:00 exactly. On the way, I passed the UNESCO building, which is apparently something of a local monument. The walls were covered with a thick covering of luscious green moss, and there is what appears to be a duck pond out front. Later, in the small park just across the way from the museum, however, I saw what is by far my favorite statue in Paris: a bronze monument to Jean de La Fontaine, the famous writer of fables, peering down at two of his most famous characters, the Fox and the Crow, which, if you remember the August entry on Parisian children, I mentioned that most French children can still recount from heart. Then it was into the museum, where no photos are allowed. The Marmottan Monet is an impressionist museum, featuring mostly Monet’s work, but also a few canvases by Cezanne, Degas, Pissarro, Sisley (I mentioned that I like him, didn’t I?), etc. There were several striking portraits of several of the impressionists (most notably Monet) and of their close family members.
It was very interesting to see Monet’s lesser-known works, some of which I found, well, ugly. Messy Japanese bridges, sloppy water-lilies, and bland Scandinavian landscapes were all the product of his palette (which I saw, along with his pipe, his pen, and the knife he used to sharpen it). Nor was there a strict chronological arc to the quality of his work: he painted good and bad paintings throughout his artistic career. His best paintings are those which strike a balance between the abstract techniques of impressionism, and the capacity of these techniques to nonetheless immediately depict real objects. When he lost his grip on his control of color, his paintings turned out sloppy, much like Jackson Pollack’s paintings; when his colors were too drab and representative, his paintings aren’t any better than Cezanne’s. For all of this, there are some beautiful Monet tableaux on display at the Marmottan: locomotives in the snow, water-lilies, Britain’s Parliament building, and, of course, Impression: soleil levant, the painting which gave the Impressionism movement its name.
The temporary exhibit was possibly even more interesting than the permanent collections. The topic was Neo-Impressionism, specifically, the work of the painter Henry Cross, and his collaboration with Georges Seurat, but also with several other Neo-Impressionists, such as Maximilien Luce. As with so much other art, I can’t explain exactly why, but I enjoyed looking at this “Neo-Impressionism,” distinguished from Impressionism by its smaller brushstrokes, and sharper distinctions between different bordering objects in the composition (to my eyes, anyway). The Neo-Impressionists had some truly excellent paintings of rural life, of boats, of bodies of water. At first, they painted using a technique known as pointillism, the use of tiny dots of color; later, around 1895, their brushstrokes became true strokes, but still remained small and concentrated. I really enjoyed Cross's pictures of lapping waves, of families of goats, of families of ducks, and of sunlight glinting off the water. Like Cezanne, he also painted naked women, but while Cezanne's tend to be bathing, Cross's are dancing and frolicking. Cross went through a fauvist phase, according to the art historians, but to be honest, I can't see much of a difference. All I know is that I enjoy looking at his paintings!
I left the museum, crossed back over the Seine, and arrived at the Musee Quai Branly, the Parisian anthropological museum. It was a bit of a shock upon first entering the building: unlike every other museum in this town, the Musee Quai Branly was built as a museum, and isn't simply a converted 17th-, 18th-, or 19th-century mansion! I was also surprised by the clientele: now I know where Parisians bring their five-to-ten-year-old children! There were so many little boys running around the exhibits!The line for the temporary exhibit on the samurai was very long (more than a 30-minute wait), so I decided to explore the fairly large permanent exhibits. The museum was divided into four sections: the Americas, Oceania, Asia, and Africa. I made it through all but Africa before I ran out of juice at 6:00, and decided to leave. While I was there, however, I saw some amazing objects: Zapotec and Mixtec rain idols, 2000-year old funerary masks from Colombia, statues of Quetzalcoatl, Taino shamanic vomiting spatulas, paintings by George Catlin of Plains Indians, Mohawk wampum, and artifacts from New Guinean "men's houses." I found a couple of amulets from Jewish populations of the Middle East, which I always find fascinating (I have been interested in "folk Judaic" talismans since I read the excellent Cultures of the Jews, especially the article on magic by Shalom Sabar). There were also some excellent pieces from India, although I'll admit that my favorite was a tiny bronze figurine of an airplane and pilot, sculpted around 1900, and probably meant for a local altar. I also saw a few Southeast Asian artifacts, although nothing was as impressive as what I had seen at the Musee Guimet. There was another bronze Dong Son drum, even larger than the first, and ornamented with frogs, as well as some beautifully-decorated Thai and Burman pots for betel nuts.
Eventually, I couldn't look at anything more, and wandered out, eventually finding a Metro station, riding to Port Royal, where I proudly spend my 64th and final meal ticket (I won). I returned to the dorm, and found myself involved in a number of tasks until past midnight, including trying to find a way to responsibly dispose of my pile of recycling. I finished packing at nearly 2:00 a.m., and awoke the next morning a bit before 8:00. I was out the door around 9:00, leaving my reusable Franprix bag with some foodstuffs and a few other articles outside of Jamie's room (again, Jamie, thank you for being such an awesome neighbor!). I hopped on the RER B, rode it to Charles to Gaulle, and went through the whole airport gauntlet. On the shuttle bus, I met a French family when I held the hand of their (very cute) little girl, so that she wouldn't fall over, and they wished me very happy holidays, in both languages. On the flight itself, which left slightly late, at about 1:30, I sat next to a girl my own age from Surinam, attending American University in Paris (trilingual, plus some Spanish; I don't know how some people can manage that), and read Voltaire's Siecle de Louis XIV, although I had difficulty at times with the turbulence. They fed me twice on the plane: I was surprised.
I arrived in Philadelphia, and was off to another security-customs-baggage gamut. I ran it, and the Agriculture section neutralized the banana and two kiwis that were in my backpack. They were very friendly about it though. In fact, all of the guards and officers on the American side of the border were friendly, and it took me some time to catch on that I was not encountering a series of unusually friendly personnel, but rather, a different culture than the one I have been living in for the past several months. On paper, I had a 6-hour wait, but it was really only a 3-hour wait, because of customs, the passage to the proper terminal, security, and the call to my Mother that I made to let her know that all was well, and that I was safe in Philadelphia airport. I ate the non-confiscated food, and then bought a couple of muffins to supplement it (I think I would just have preferred the fresh fruit). I nearly fell asleep before the 9:30 flight to Ithaca boarded, and I actually did fall asleep, while we were still taxiing, and 4th in line to take off. I sat next to a fellow Ithacan and IHS grad, class of 2004, who was returning home for the holidays. When I woke up, we were descending: somehow, I made it out of the plane, and was met by my wonderful parents. We drove back in the pouring rain, and I made it into bed around midnight.
I woke up the next morning around 8:00 a.m., shaved, and ate breakfast with my parents. My Dad, who is sick, headed off to work, and I spent until around 12:30 unpacking and organizing. It was sleeting, so I didn't take a run. Now it's evening: I'm warm, clean, and possibly even already adjusted to the time zone. Sam is coming home this evening. What more could I want? I'm home.
~JD
"J'ai trop aime la guerre; ne m'imitez pas en cela, non plus que dans les trop grandes depenses que j'ai faites. Prenez conseil en toutes choses..." [I loved war too much; do not imitate me in this, nor in the excessive expenditures that I made. Accept counsel in all matters] (Deathbed letter from Louis XIV to the Dauphin, as cited in Voltaire, Le Siecle de Louis XIV, 651).
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Countdown: 2...
Tuesday was a very full day. Morning blogging was followed by a few minor tasks around town, such as returning my books to the library; by the time I reached my first tourist destination, Victor Hugo's house on the Place des Vosges. I'll admit that all I have read of Hugo's works is "Demain, des l'aube," a short, but very famous, poem of his. However, I will be reading Notre-Dame de Paris this semester, so I expect to shortly become a fan, because from everything I've heard, he's an excellent writer.
Hugo lived in the 280-square-meter apartment for 16 years of his life: he moved constantly, so there is no single house where he passed most of or all of his days, as is the case for certain other historical figures. Although there is the attempt in some rooms, such as the "Chinese salon," to reconstruct Hugo's own interior decoration, for the most part, the rooms contain mementos and artifacts relating to his life, his family, and his works, arranged chronologically with reference to his time in exile following Napoleon III's coup d'etat. There are some excellent paintings, drawings, and engravings of scenes from his works, which I'm certain I would have appreciated even more if I had read them. Although I've already seen both of Rodin's excellent sculptures of Hugo as the great visionary writer (one naked, the other clothed), I saw several other good portraits and busts, a couple of them even made especially for the museum, which opened in 1904 (Hugo really looks quite different with and without a beard), as well as a few artifacts which had belonged to him and to his family members. I was surprised by just how many anti-Hugo caricatures were drawn during his lifetime: as a politician and an artist, he clearly had made a fair amount of enemies, which rather surprises me. Now, of course, everybody loves him, but it wasn't always that way, it seems.
I didn't have enough time to walk to my next stop, which was up in Montmartre, so I did the unexpected, and took the Metro northwest, to a Metro station named after Lamarck, one of the least-appreciated scientists; my Dad will be happy to learn that the man at least has a Metro station (and its eponymous street) named after him! I eventually got my bearings, and made my way to an out-of-the way museum: l'Espace Dali. Dedicated to the drawings and sculpture of the great Spanish surrealist (rather than his familiar paintings), l'Espace Dali had been recommended to me by Meaghan, one of my fellow Cornellians here in Paris. In any case, there were some pretty nifty things on display: sculptures of melting clocks and of long-legged elephants carrying crystal obelisks on their backs, naturally, but also drawings I had never seen or heard of before. Dali illustrated Don Quixote, Romeo and Juliet, The Search for the Holy Grail, the Old and New Testaments (his mother was a fervent Catholic), and Alice in Wonderland, among other works of literature. He designed a couch in the shape of an enormous pair of lips, and a set of silverware in the shape of little animals' heads. My favorite piece, however, was a series of 12 drawings, plus a frontispiece, done in 1973, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the state of Israel. Dali considered the return of a Jewish state, after centuries of exile, a fitting subject for surrealist art, and at least one Israeli minister commended the artwork, stating that "whether for their ambiguity or ambivalence, these portraits hold a definite significance for us. Through his abundant and diverse imagination, Dali in this album helps to immortalize the Israeli civilization at the beginning, to realize the mystical character of its existence and of its developments."
I hopped back onto the Metro, and rode it to my third and final stop for the day: Honore de Balzac's house, in the 16e arrondissement, in the far west of the city. Balzac moved there in order to escape his creditors, and wrote up to 22 hours a day in his small office, producing the great super-series the "Human Comedy." I'll admit that, as with Victor Hugo, I haven't read anything by Balzac; apparently his vocabulary is difficult for even native French speakers to understand. Furthermore, my Mother once told me that I would need to wait until I was 30 before I could read and fully understand Cousine Bette, but now that I've visited the house, I might give old Honore a shot, perhaps this summer. His house is occupied almost entirely by the temporary exhibit on the rather dull topic of the Grisette, which means something like "young girl or young woman of middling social condition, worker or employer in a dress shop" in the 19th century (a definition that makes me think about the Mantalini couple in Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby). In one side room is a series of several hundred woodcuts of many of the characters from Balzac's fiction. In another are a few of his personal artifacts, including his walking stick. Thankfully, the study, too, has been preserved: you can still look at the desk where he wrote that pile of books!
It was dark again, so I rode the Metro to Denfert-Rochereau, from which I walked to the student cafeteria, and then, back to my dorm.
~JD
Hugo lived in the 280-square-meter apartment for 16 years of his life: he moved constantly, so there is no single house where he passed most of or all of his days, as is the case for certain other historical figures. Although there is the attempt in some rooms, such as the "Chinese salon," to reconstruct Hugo's own interior decoration, for the most part, the rooms contain mementos and artifacts relating to his life, his family, and his works, arranged chronologically with reference to his time in exile following Napoleon III's coup d'etat. There are some excellent paintings, drawings, and engravings of scenes from his works, which I'm certain I would have appreciated even more if I had read them. Although I've already seen both of Rodin's excellent sculptures of Hugo as the great visionary writer (one naked, the other clothed), I saw several other good portraits and busts, a couple of them even made especially for the museum, which opened in 1904 (Hugo really looks quite different with and without a beard), as well as a few artifacts which had belonged to him and to his family members. I was surprised by just how many anti-Hugo caricatures were drawn during his lifetime: as a politician and an artist, he clearly had made a fair amount of enemies, which rather surprises me. Now, of course, everybody loves him, but it wasn't always that way, it seems.
I didn't have enough time to walk to my next stop, which was up in Montmartre, so I did the unexpected, and took the Metro northwest, to a Metro station named after Lamarck, one of the least-appreciated scientists; my Dad will be happy to learn that the man at least has a Metro station (and its eponymous street) named after him! I eventually got my bearings, and made my way to an out-of-the way museum: l'Espace Dali. Dedicated to the drawings and sculpture of the great Spanish surrealist (rather than his familiar paintings), l'Espace Dali had been recommended to me by Meaghan, one of my fellow Cornellians here in Paris. In any case, there were some pretty nifty things on display: sculptures of melting clocks and of long-legged elephants carrying crystal obelisks on their backs, naturally, but also drawings I had never seen or heard of before. Dali illustrated Don Quixote, Romeo and Juliet, The Search for the Holy Grail, the Old and New Testaments (his mother was a fervent Catholic), and Alice in Wonderland, among other works of literature. He designed a couch in the shape of an enormous pair of lips, and a set of silverware in the shape of little animals' heads. My favorite piece, however, was a series of 12 drawings, plus a frontispiece, done in 1973, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the state of Israel. Dali considered the return of a Jewish state, after centuries of exile, a fitting subject for surrealist art, and at least one Israeli minister commended the artwork, stating that "whether for their ambiguity or ambivalence, these portraits hold a definite significance for us. Through his abundant and diverse imagination, Dali in this album helps to immortalize the Israeli civilization at the beginning, to realize the mystical character of its existence and of its developments."
I hopped back onto the Metro, and rode it to my third and final stop for the day: Honore de Balzac's house, in the 16e arrondissement, in the far west of the city. Balzac moved there in order to escape his creditors, and wrote up to 22 hours a day in his small office, producing the great super-series the "Human Comedy." I'll admit that, as with Victor Hugo, I haven't read anything by Balzac; apparently his vocabulary is difficult for even native French speakers to understand. Furthermore, my Mother once told me that I would need to wait until I was 30 before I could read and fully understand Cousine Bette, but now that I've visited the house, I might give old Honore a shot, perhaps this summer. His house is occupied almost entirely by the temporary exhibit on the rather dull topic of the Grisette, which means something like "young girl or young woman of middling social condition, worker or employer in a dress shop" in the 19th century (a definition that makes me think about the Mantalini couple in Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby). In one side room is a series of several hundred woodcuts of many of the characters from Balzac's fiction. In another are a few of his personal artifacts, including his walking stick. Thankfully, the study, too, has been preserved: you can still look at the desk where he wrote that pile of books!
It was dark again, so I rode the Metro to Denfert-Rochereau, from which I walked to the student cafeteria, and then, back to my dorm.
~JD
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Countdown: 3...
I woke up nice and late on Monday morning, at nearly 8:50. I blogged, and wasted some time, but was finally en route to my destination of the Musee Quai Branly, the museum of anthropology which Nick recommended to me. Unfortunately, when I arrived after a nice long walk which took the rest of the morning, I learned it would have been a good idea to verify the museum's horaires, because it isn't open on Mondays! I looked at my map, the ever-useful Paris Pratique, and decided to visit the Musee Jacquemart-Andre instead, which my Mother had wished to visit, and which Giulia, at EDUCO, had recommended to me. Moreover, I had seen a great deal of Metro ads for the temporary exhibition currently on display, on the works of the early Renaissance artist Fra Angelico.
The Musee Jacquemart-Andre is located in a grand old 19th-century bourgeois mansion, and the basis for the collections is the collection of the house's former owners, Edouard Andre and Nelie Jacquemart (see Wikipedia for more information). Photography of any sort is not permitted, but I very much would have liked to have taken a few shots of the apartments. The apartments themselves are quite incredible, decorated just as richly as those of a chateau, and even more lavishly than many of the rooms of the Musee Carnavalet, which had belonged to a Marquise. A great deal of the art in the first few rooms consists of the portraits and busts of various 19th-century bigwigs, about whom I couldn't have cared less. Then, in the corner of the library, are works by David, by Rembrandt, and by Van Dyck. David painted ordinary portraits, it seems, and not just titanic neo-classical canvasses. I was especially pleased by the Rembrandt paintings on display, which, I thought, were more interesting than those at the Louvre: his "Portrait d'Amalia van Solms" was particularly striking. I also found some Titian and Botticelli: just who were these people, capable of purchasing so much art?! At least it all ended up in a museum, rather than being funneled into just another private collection. The ceilings are painted, and even the ordinary objects around the house are somewhat artistic: there was a sugar bowl in the shape of a red cabbage that made me think of Mom, and of her china closet.
I had to wait in a line for several minutes in order to enter the eight-room suite which housed the temporary exhibit on Fra Angelico and his contemporaries. The museum has a nice introductory video, and I had also bought, for just 2 euros, the visitors' guidebook. Fra Angelico was a Florentine Dominican monk, and benefited from the wave of Florentine patronage that stimulated so many artistic achievements in the early 15th century. He painted oil on canvas, but he also painted frescoes and altarpieces, and he illuminated manuscripts. I saw some very beautiful pieces, many of them recently restored: a lot of Madonnas with Children (including the famous one on the Metro posters), crucifixions, martyrdoms, annunciations, scenes with boats and sailors, etc. By the end, Fra Angelico was getting so many commissions that he needed a great deal of assistance in order to fill them all, and before long, many of his assistants, most notably Zanobi Strozzi, began careers of their own.
After a bit more time in the apartments, I realized that I had just enough time to make it to a museum I hadn't yet visited: the National Archives, which close at 5:30 every day. I hopped onto the Metro in order to make it in time (also, I'll admit, because I was somewhat cold by this point), and despite being rather confused in the Marais (3e arrondissement), I managed to make my way to the Archives in time for a 30-minute visit to the permanent collections, which was really all I needed. On display are the neo-classically-designed apartments of the Prince and Princess (Francois de Rohan-Soubise and his wife Anne de Rohan-Chabot), which are OK, but not really worth seeing for themselves. Upstairs though, in the Princess's apartments, are displayed a series of choice documents, each one more startling than the last: a land grant given by Charlemagne, bestowing a portion of Alsace; an official letter of homage sent to Philippe-Auguste; the Edict of Nantes; Moliere's marriage contract; a page from Louis XIV's will (drawn up in 1714); the signed Tennis Court Oath; a page from Napoleon's will; and the Constitution of the 5th Republic. Quite a lot of history to fit in one room! And everyone else was looking at the temporary exhibit!
It's the morning of my last day in Paris, now. I don't want to leave my dorm, because of the rain, but how else am I going to visit the Musee Marmottan and the Musee Quai Branly?
~JD
The Musee Jacquemart-Andre is located in a grand old 19th-century bourgeois mansion, and the basis for the collections is the collection of the house's former owners, Edouard Andre and Nelie Jacquemart (see Wikipedia for more information). Photography of any sort is not permitted, but I very much would have liked to have taken a few shots of the apartments. The apartments themselves are quite incredible, decorated just as richly as those of a chateau, and even more lavishly than many of the rooms of the Musee Carnavalet, which had belonged to a Marquise. A great deal of the art in the first few rooms consists of the portraits and busts of various 19th-century bigwigs, about whom I couldn't have cared less. Then, in the corner of the library, are works by David, by Rembrandt, and by Van Dyck. David painted ordinary portraits, it seems, and not just titanic neo-classical canvasses. I was especially pleased by the Rembrandt paintings on display, which, I thought, were more interesting than those at the Louvre: his "Portrait d'Amalia van Solms" was particularly striking. I also found some Titian and Botticelli: just who were these people, capable of purchasing so much art?! At least it all ended up in a museum, rather than being funneled into just another private collection. The ceilings are painted, and even the ordinary objects around the house are somewhat artistic: there was a sugar bowl in the shape of a red cabbage that made me think of Mom, and of her china closet.
I had to wait in a line for several minutes in order to enter the eight-room suite which housed the temporary exhibit on Fra Angelico and his contemporaries. The museum has a nice introductory video, and I had also bought, for just 2 euros, the visitors' guidebook. Fra Angelico was a Florentine Dominican monk, and benefited from the wave of Florentine patronage that stimulated so many artistic achievements in the early 15th century. He painted oil on canvas, but he also painted frescoes and altarpieces, and he illuminated manuscripts. I saw some very beautiful pieces, many of them recently restored: a lot of Madonnas with Children (including the famous one on the Metro posters), crucifixions, martyrdoms, annunciations, scenes with boats and sailors, etc. By the end, Fra Angelico was getting so many commissions that he needed a great deal of assistance in order to fill them all, and before long, many of his assistants, most notably Zanobi Strozzi, began careers of their own.
After a bit more time in the apartments, I realized that I had just enough time to make it to a museum I hadn't yet visited: the National Archives, which close at 5:30 every day. I hopped onto the Metro in order to make it in time (also, I'll admit, because I was somewhat cold by this point), and despite being rather confused in the Marais (3e arrondissement), I managed to make my way to the Archives in time for a 30-minute visit to the permanent collections, which was really all I needed. On display are the neo-classically-designed apartments of the Prince and Princess (Francois de Rohan-Soubise and his wife Anne de Rohan-Chabot), which are OK, but not really worth seeing for themselves. Upstairs though, in the Princess's apartments, are displayed a series of choice documents, each one more startling than the last: a land grant given by Charlemagne, bestowing a portion of Alsace; an official letter of homage sent to Philippe-Auguste; the Edict of Nantes; Moliere's marriage contract; a page from Louis XIV's will (drawn up in 1714); the signed Tennis Court Oath; a page from Napoleon's will; and the Constitution of the 5th Republic. Quite a lot of history to fit in one room! And everyone else was looking at the temporary exhibit!
It's the morning of my last day in Paris, now. I don't want to leave my dorm, because of the rain, but how else am I going to visit the Musee Marmottan and the Musee Quai Branly?
~JD
Paris with Mom & Dad IV
I actually made the 10:00 Sunday-morning rendez-vous just outside of the Gobelins Metro station, which rather surprised me (though I literally had to run more than half of the way). Once all three groups had made it, we began to walk north, towards the Parisian market on the Rue Monge, which Bruno had described as a very traditional Parisian market, somewhat more low-key and less ephemeral than the market I had visited with him.
Riddle: How is it possible that to walk down the entire length of the Rue Monge without passing a single fromagerie?
Answer: Bring your parents!
Really, the fromageries were quite wonderful looking, and could be smelled from several meters' distance. Not to say that the fresh fruits and vegetables weren't appetizing; far from it! Everything looked good, even the red meat and the crustaceans! However, it was a morning of touching only with our eyes (as the French say). We eventually sat down in a cafe for hot drinks, coffee for everyone else and cocoa for me.
After we were warm again, we continued north (it really was a gorgeous morning), and arrived at the Arenes de Lutece, the 2nd-century Roman arenas which I have already mentioned I visited with Nick. There was a soccer game going on at the moment, and we watched the players for a few minutes, from the upper levels of the arena. From there, we headed west, walking towards the famous Pantheon, which I had strongly recommended that my parents not leave without seeing. Just before entering, we stepped into the Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, a beautiful church which is right in the Place du Pantheon. The Pantheon itself did not fail to impress, and I felt like a real Pantheon expert, being able to show and explain to my Mother all of the scenes painted on the walls of the main floor, and the byzantine political process behind Pantheonization. We descended into the crypt, and that's where I let Bruno take over, who, understandably, knows French history much better than I do! It was nice to finally get a general idea of just who Leon Gambetta and Adolphe-Sylvestre-Felix Eboue were (among others). I really need to learn my contemporary history ("contemporary" means "since 1789" in France). I was very glad that Dad got to visit the Curies, and I know that Mom was very happy that she had the opportunity to visit the graves Dumas, Zola, and Hugo, who are all interred in the same vault.
Next stop was a monument with which I am quite familiar -- the Sorbonne! Although it was closed, there really isn't much to show, except the Cour d'Honneur, and the confusing corridors. To be honest, academically and physically, the Sorbonne is much more impressive from the outside than from the inside. We decided to stop for a late-afternoon lunch (although it sounds as if we barely did anything, it was already about 2:30 pm by this point), and Mom chose to eat one of the restaurants right in front of the Sorbonne. I hadn't realized quite how cold I had become, and I had completely lost my appetite because of the cold. I needed to put my hat and gloves on inside the restaurant, and borrow Bruno's coat, in order to warm up. I'm not normally cold when I'm outside, but our walking pace was far more leisurely than usual, which prevented my movement from warming my limbs. No serious harm done: it was a good lunch, and a good afternoon. I handed Mom a few of the books I had accumulated since then (I worry that I won't be able to fit everything in my suitcase) in the restaurant, and then the four of us headed to the closest Metro station. I was walking back to my dorm, and didn't want to become cold again: the goodbyes were necessarily short (unusual for our family), and I ran (literally) back to my dorm, where I stayed for the rest of the evening, mostly because of the rain.
~JD
Riddle: How is it possible that to walk down the entire length of the Rue Monge without passing a single fromagerie?
Answer: Bring your parents!
Really, the fromageries were quite wonderful looking, and could be smelled from several meters' distance. Not to say that the fresh fruits and vegetables weren't appetizing; far from it! Everything looked good, even the red meat and the crustaceans! However, it was a morning of touching only with our eyes (as the French say). We eventually sat down in a cafe for hot drinks, coffee for everyone else and cocoa for me.
After we were warm again, we continued north (it really was a gorgeous morning), and arrived at the Arenes de Lutece, the 2nd-century Roman arenas which I have already mentioned I visited with Nick. There was a soccer game going on at the moment, and we watched the players for a few minutes, from the upper levels of the arena. From there, we headed west, walking towards the famous Pantheon, which I had strongly recommended that my parents not leave without seeing. Just before entering, we stepped into the Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, a beautiful church which is right in the Place du Pantheon. The Pantheon itself did not fail to impress, and I felt like a real Pantheon expert, being able to show and explain to my Mother all of the scenes painted on the walls of the main floor, and the byzantine political process behind Pantheonization. We descended into the crypt, and that's where I let Bruno take over, who, understandably, knows French history much better than I do! It was nice to finally get a general idea of just who Leon Gambetta and Adolphe-Sylvestre-Felix Eboue were (among others). I really need to learn my contemporary history ("contemporary" means "since 1789" in France). I was very glad that Dad got to visit the Curies, and I know that Mom was very happy that she had the opportunity to visit the graves Dumas, Zola, and Hugo, who are all interred in the same vault.
Next stop was a monument with which I am quite familiar -- the Sorbonne! Although it was closed, there really isn't much to show, except the Cour d'Honneur, and the confusing corridors. To be honest, academically and physically, the Sorbonne is much more impressive from the outside than from the inside. We decided to stop for a late-afternoon lunch (although it sounds as if we barely did anything, it was already about 2:30 pm by this point), and Mom chose to eat one of the restaurants right in front of the Sorbonne. I hadn't realized quite how cold I had become, and I had completely lost my appetite because of the cold. I needed to put my hat and gloves on inside the restaurant, and borrow Bruno's coat, in order to warm up. I'm not normally cold when I'm outside, but our walking pace was far more leisurely than usual, which prevented my movement from warming my limbs. No serious harm done: it was a good lunch, and a good afternoon. I handed Mom a few of the books I had accumulated since then (I worry that I won't be able to fit everything in my suitcase) in the restaurant, and then the four of us headed to the closest Metro station. I was walking back to my dorm, and didn't want to become cold again: the goodbyes were necessarily short (unusual for our family), and I ran (literally) back to my dorm, where I stayed for the rest of the evening, mostly because of the rain.
~JD
Paris with Mom & Dad III
You can't visit Paris without visiting the Louvre and eating baguettes, right? I made certain that my parents did both. We had a 10:00 rendez-vous inside the iconic glass pyramid, and I, naturally, half-ran to make it on time (which I did). We did exactly as we do when we visit the Metropolitan in New York City: each one of us took a map (I also used a coupon to give Mom a free audioguide), and headed off in opposite directions, agreeing to meet again at noon in the Richelieu side of the main pyramid.
I decided to visit the rest of the Northern European and French paintings in the Richelieu wing, having passed by the Germans, etc., in order to look at the Dutch, and I quickly stumbled upon the work of an artist whom I have mentioned before, finding a whole room of paintings by Jean Fouquet, whose c. 1450 medallion in the Medieval art objects section of the Louvre, is the oldest self-portrait in the history of western civilization. He had a moody-looking portrait of Charles VII (the king whom Joan of Arc served under). Realizing that this was going to be my last time in the Louvre before I left, I decided that I should try to see the famous masterpieces which I hadn't yet seen, so gently directed my course towards the works of art indicated on the map. I saw an enormous amount of portraits of kings, dukes, bishops, etc., anyone who had power, including the famous portrait of Francois I, the anonymous portrait of Gabrielle d'Estrees (Henry IV's mistress) being pinched in the bathtub by her sister, Durer's self-portrait (a gift meant for his fiance?), and La Tour's "Le Tricheur." Along the way, I took pictures of paintings sporting good-looking lace, for my Mother. I eventually found myself among the works of the brothers Le Nain, whose early 17th-century paintings are beautiful for their clair-obscur. The Le Nain are also remarkable for their choice of common subjects, such as the interiors of peasant dwellings, and families of French farmers at haymaking time. Who was buying these paintings at this time, I wonder? Did the dukes and the princes really want the pictures of commoners hanging on their walls? Did they enjoy reminders that they were above the rest of society, whose dignity was fully preserved by these paintings?
Back at the rendez-vous, I ordered some English Breakfast tea for Mom and Dad, and we discussed photography techniques as we ate our baguettes and Comte doux (Mom and Dad had picked it out, on my suggestion), specifically, how to stand in order to prevent an ugly glare of light from marring a photograph of a painting. Mom was a little bit overwhelmed by the audioguide, and didn't find it very helpful for providing information regarding the pieces that interested her, so I took it, after having the battery changed, and the language switched to French (theory: not all of the audioguide entries have been translated from French yet, and the French language option remains, at the moment, the most complete). We ran off for another couple of hours: this time, I decided to finally find that wooden statue of the Magdalen, and was surprised to find that it is actually life-sized! It's so large, I had never imagined, and quite beautiful (it's by the German sculptor Gregor Erhard, from around 1515, and is probably inspired by a print by Durer made about 10-15 years earlier). Then, I got into the room of Big 18th-century French canvasses, which somehow I had missed earlier: Delacroix, David, Gros, Ingres, etc., with such well-known pieces as "La liberte guidant le peuple" (1830), which Nick has told me is one of his favorite paintings. To be honest, my favorite was actually David's self-portrait, painted while he was in jail, following the fall of the Robespierrists. I saw Dad for 20 seconds on my way through the Italian hallway (see an earlier entry for a full description of this section), and made it to the small section of Spanish paintings. Although I keep on mentioning all of these schools and nations, to be honest, I leave it to the art historians to recognize the late-16th-century Fontainebleau school from the 18th-century English school, and just try to find sections which please me. I found the tastiest still-life I have ever seen, of a loaf of crusty bread and some ripe figs by a Senor Luis Eugenio Melendez, which looked as if it was positively popping out of the frame to greet me.
I eventually arrived at the famous "eighth section" of the Louvre, which contains the art of Oceania, the Americas, and Africa. There were some startling woodwork, stonework, and wickerwork, and I was quite impressed. There was also a very interesting film on the decision, in the mid-1990s, to create this "eighth section," which apparently was quite controversial. On the one hand were the people who insisted that the Louvre should contain the best arts from the whole world; on the other were the group who didn't like their fine old museum being meddled with by a new director who thought that he knew what was best. Jacques Chirac, surprisingly enough, took the side of the former, stating that he wanted the Louvre to be the place where the "premiers arts" of the whole world could be seen. Eventually, this side won the debate, and now, you can see a sculpture of the Hawaiian god Kuka'ilimoku, a giant basalt head from Easter Island, and the highly-iconic Mexican sculpture of Chupicuaro, dating from somewhere between the 7th and 2nd centuries B.C.E. I ran in order to make it back in time, because nothing is more distant from the glass pyramid than the eighth section.
Mom and Dad were semi-glutted with the Louvre that day ("all Louvered out" was the term), so decided to drink tea and take a peak at the museum postcards while I took a final tour through the galleries. In this last hour, I hit up two of the temporary exhibits, one on rock-crystal reliquaries and the other on the notion of the world at the Louvre (a guard here gave me a hard time for beginning to take a photo of an Ethiopian statue). I also decided to give the Mesopotamian and Iranian antiquities another chance, since I hadn't seen them too clearly the first time through with Nick. I saw a few curiosities, including a clay cone with a cuneiform text describing the reforms of the Sumerian prince Uru-KA-gina against the abuses of his the "old days:" the text was dated from 2350 B.C.E. I saw some Greco-Roman antiquities, too, including some items taken from Pompeii, which I rather enjoyed, before I made it back to meet my parents.
We took the Metro back to the hotel, where we didn't have much to do except worry about the furnace being broken back home. Eventually, though, we headed off in the direction of the restaurant where we were meeting Bruno. When I told the hostess that we were waiting for a fourth, she told us that the Latanicki reservation was actually for seven! That meant he was bringing his family! My parents met another branch of the family that night: Bruno, his parents Martine and JoJo, his wife Chi, and their daughter Lili-An. We had an excellent time (even the vegetarian food was good -- I had forgotten that Mom and Dad eat fish), and I got to speak some French (and some English). Another typical Lipkowitz evening! We made plans to meet at Gobelins the next morning, in order to visit a Parisian market.
~JD
I decided to visit the rest of the Northern European and French paintings in the Richelieu wing, having passed by the Germans, etc., in order to look at the Dutch, and I quickly stumbled upon the work of an artist whom I have mentioned before, finding a whole room of paintings by Jean Fouquet, whose c. 1450 medallion in the Medieval art objects section of the Louvre, is the oldest self-portrait in the history of western civilization. He had a moody-looking portrait of Charles VII (the king whom Joan of Arc served under). Realizing that this was going to be my last time in the Louvre before I left, I decided that I should try to see the famous masterpieces which I hadn't yet seen, so gently directed my course towards the works of art indicated on the map. I saw an enormous amount of portraits of kings, dukes, bishops, etc., anyone who had power, including the famous portrait of Francois I, the anonymous portrait of Gabrielle d'Estrees (Henry IV's mistress) being pinched in the bathtub by her sister, Durer's self-portrait (a gift meant for his fiance?), and La Tour's "Le Tricheur." Along the way, I took pictures of paintings sporting good-looking lace, for my Mother. I eventually found myself among the works of the brothers Le Nain, whose early 17th-century paintings are beautiful for their clair-obscur. The Le Nain are also remarkable for their choice of common subjects, such as the interiors of peasant dwellings, and families of French farmers at haymaking time. Who was buying these paintings at this time, I wonder? Did the dukes and the princes really want the pictures of commoners hanging on their walls? Did they enjoy reminders that they were above the rest of society, whose dignity was fully preserved by these paintings?
Back at the rendez-vous, I ordered some English Breakfast tea for Mom and Dad, and we discussed photography techniques as we ate our baguettes and Comte doux (Mom and Dad had picked it out, on my suggestion), specifically, how to stand in order to prevent an ugly glare of light from marring a photograph of a painting. Mom was a little bit overwhelmed by the audioguide, and didn't find it very helpful for providing information regarding the pieces that interested her, so I took it, after having the battery changed, and the language switched to French (theory: not all of the audioguide entries have been translated from French yet, and the French language option remains, at the moment, the most complete). We ran off for another couple of hours: this time, I decided to finally find that wooden statue of the Magdalen, and was surprised to find that it is actually life-sized! It's so large, I had never imagined, and quite beautiful (it's by the German sculptor Gregor Erhard, from around 1515, and is probably inspired by a print by Durer made about 10-15 years earlier). Then, I got into the room of Big 18th-century French canvasses, which somehow I had missed earlier: Delacroix, David, Gros, Ingres, etc., with such well-known pieces as "La liberte guidant le peuple" (1830), which Nick has told me is one of his favorite paintings. To be honest, my favorite was actually David's self-portrait, painted while he was in jail, following the fall of the Robespierrists. I saw Dad for 20 seconds on my way through the Italian hallway (see an earlier entry for a full description of this section), and made it to the small section of Spanish paintings. Although I keep on mentioning all of these schools and nations, to be honest, I leave it to the art historians to recognize the late-16th-century Fontainebleau school from the 18th-century English school, and just try to find sections which please me. I found the tastiest still-life I have ever seen, of a loaf of crusty bread and some ripe figs by a Senor Luis Eugenio Melendez, which looked as if it was positively popping out of the frame to greet me.
I eventually arrived at the famous "eighth section" of the Louvre, which contains the art of Oceania, the Americas, and Africa. There were some startling woodwork, stonework, and wickerwork, and I was quite impressed. There was also a very interesting film on the decision, in the mid-1990s, to create this "eighth section," which apparently was quite controversial. On the one hand were the people who insisted that the Louvre should contain the best arts from the whole world; on the other were the group who didn't like their fine old museum being meddled with by a new director who thought that he knew what was best. Jacques Chirac, surprisingly enough, took the side of the former, stating that he wanted the Louvre to be the place where the "premiers arts" of the whole world could be seen. Eventually, this side won the debate, and now, you can see a sculpture of the Hawaiian god Kuka'ilimoku, a giant basalt head from Easter Island, and the highly-iconic Mexican sculpture of Chupicuaro, dating from somewhere between the 7th and 2nd centuries B.C.E. I ran in order to make it back in time, because nothing is more distant from the glass pyramid than the eighth section.
Mom and Dad were semi-glutted with the Louvre that day ("all Louvered out" was the term), so decided to drink tea and take a peak at the museum postcards while I took a final tour through the galleries. In this last hour, I hit up two of the temporary exhibits, one on rock-crystal reliquaries and the other on the notion of the world at the Louvre (a guard here gave me a hard time for beginning to take a photo of an Ethiopian statue). I also decided to give the Mesopotamian and Iranian antiquities another chance, since I hadn't seen them too clearly the first time through with Nick. I saw a few curiosities, including a clay cone with a cuneiform text describing the reforms of the Sumerian prince Uru-KA-gina against the abuses of his the "old days:" the text was dated from 2350 B.C.E. I saw some Greco-Roman antiquities, too, including some items taken from Pompeii, which I rather enjoyed, before I made it back to meet my parents.
We took the Metro back to the hotel, where we didn't have much to do except worry about the furnace being broken back home. Eventually, though, we headed off in the direction of the restaurant where we were meeting Bruno. When I told the hostess that we were waiting for a fourth, she told us that the Latanicki reservation was actually for seven! That meant he was bringing his family! My parents met another branch of the family that night: Bruno, his parents Martine and JoJo, his wife Chi, and their daughter Lili-An. We had an excellent time (even the vegetarian food was good -- I had forgotten that Mom and Dad eat fish), and I got to speak some French (and some English). Another typical Lipkowitz evening! We made plans to meet at Gobelins the next morning, in order to visit a Parisian market.
~JD
Monday, December 19, 2011
Paris with Mom & Dad II
Friday was my last day of classes, and what a day! Definitely my most difficult TD, on Louis XIV. I had prepared and printed out in advance (how unusual) my homework, an analysis of a passage from Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes, but it turns out that the homework for that day was actually studying for the test. Which I hadn't known about. Drat. I was just a little bit upset (just a little), not because I am worried about mes notes (the French word for "grade," which the Prof. told me he would be lenient in assigning) but because I like to be prepared for my tests, and do not wish to give the impression that I have not learned anything, simply because I have not taken the trouble to read over my notes once or twice.
After that, I trotted back to my dorm in the drizzle, and, checking my e-mail, found that my Dad had told me that they were still in the hotel, and asked me if I'd like to join them for a trip to Notre Dame. They had been planning to visit Versailles that day, so I couldn't quite understand why they still hadn't left for that, but I wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to spend time with them, so told them I was willing and ready to meet them (and bring sandwiches). We met outside of the Sainte-Chapelle at 12:15, and I finally got an umbrella, which was needed in the absolute downpour (I had been getting by on my excellent red rain-jacket). Dad needed nourishment (which I hadn't known, thinking we would visit first, and eat second) and the rain was the hardest I've seen since I arrived in Paris (that is not an idle statement). Dad wanted to find a public place where we could sit indoors and eat, and Mom and I agreed, but I told them that I didn't know of any place closer than Paris Pantheon-Sorbonne, which is for them about a 30-minute walk. They decided that that was a good idea, so they found the closest cafe (we were still on the Ile de la Cite), a decision that rather surprised me. We sat indoors, out of the rain, warming up and drying out as much as possible (I was somewhat wetter, having stood out in the rain for some time). We ordered crepes and hot drinks: this is only the second time that I've eaten crepes here in France, not because I don't enjoy them, but because I've simply been too stingy. We warmed up, and ate and talked until around 1:30 pm, and then headed off, our first stop being the Sainte-Chapelle.
As I mentioned the first time, the Sainte-Chapelle is stunningly beautiful, and also quite cold. We were as bundled up as possible, and after admiring the lower chapel, ascended to the upper chapel, and sat where Louis IX himself used to sit, right across from the stained-glass window depicting the book of Esther. There were dozens of tiny panels, and we tried our best to recognize a few familiar scenes: Haman constructing a scaffold, Moredechai being led through the streets on the king's mount, Achashverosh removing Vashti's crown (or possibly, crowning Esther), various people drinking. The panes were just too distant, however; was there once a time when people actually could read and understand the stories depicted in the stained-glass windows? I've seen a woman with binoculars at the Sainte-Chapelle -- not a bad idea! We eventually stood up and switched sides, sitting on the opposite side of the chapel's aisle so that we were looking at some other familiar books, those of the Torah (five books of Moses). There, too, we had more difficulty than success in recognizing what was what, although the Menorah is iconic enough that it's easy to distinguish. There was a figure in yellow carrying a shield with an emblem of a black scorpion who appeared multiple times in the window of Bamidbar (Numbers): I wonder who that was? I simply have no idea. There seemed to be a fair amount of combat and battles in that window, especially in the later sections...
We headed back out, into the rain (at least I had an umbrella now), and over to the other side of the Ile de la Cite, to Notre-Dame de Paris. Notre-Dame is large, famous, well-stocked in gargoyles and in stained glass, and cold. It is also surprisingly uninteresting, for such a famous building. Really, I mean that -- the stained-glass roses are beautiful, as is the rest of the stained glass, but there really isn't that much of it, relative to the rest of the building. Notre-Dame de Chartres remains my favorite French cathedral named Notre-Dame.
It had been a long enough day for my parents, and I was rather wet and cold by this point. We returned to their hotel room together; Dad dozed for a little bit, and I told Mom a little bit about the chateaux of the Loire (something you all read a little too much about back in August, I imagine). For dinner, we ate the sandwiches I had brought from my room. They called it a day, and I took the Metro back to my dorm, wearing Dad's sweater, which had helped me stay warm.
~JD
After that, I trotted back to my dorm in the drizzle, and, checking my e-mail, found that my Dad had told me that they were still in the hotel, and asked me if I'd like to join them for a trip to Notre Dame. They had been planning to visit Versailles that day, so I couldn't quite understand why they still hadn't left for that, but I wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to spend time with them, so told them I was willing and ready to meet them (and bring sandwiches). We met outside of the Sainte-Chapelle at 12:15, and I finally got an umbrella, which was needed in the absolute downpour (I had been getting by on my excellent red rain-jacket). Dad needed nourishment (which I hadn't known, thinking we would visit first, and eat second) and the rain was the hardest I've seen since I arrived in Paris (that is not an idle statement). Dad wanted to find a public place where we could sit indoors and eat, and Mom and I agreed, but I told them that I didn't know of any place closer than Paris Pantheon-Sorbonne, which is for them about a 30-minute walk. They decided that that was a good idea, so they found the closest cafe (we were still on the Ile de la Cite), a decision that rather surprised me. We sat indoors, out of the rain, warming up and drying out as much as possible (I was somewhat wetter, having stood out in the rain for some time). We ordered crepes and hot drinks: this is only the second time that I've eaten crepes here in France, not because I don't enjoy them, but because I've simply been too stingy. We warmed up, and ate and talked until around 1:30 pm, and then headed off, our first stop being the Sainte-Chapelle.
As I mentioned the first time, the Sainte-Chapelle is stunningly beautiful, and also quite cold. We were as bundled up as possible, and after admiring the lower chapel, ascended to the upper chapel, and sat where Louis IX himself used to sit, right across from the stained-glass window depicting the book of Esther. There were dozens of tiny panels, and we tried our best to recognize a few familiar scenes: Haman constructing a scaffold, Moredechai being led through the streets on the king's mount, Achashverosh removing Vashti's crown (or possibly, crowning Esther), various people drinking. The panes were just too distant, however; was there once a time when people actually could read and understand the stories depicted in the stained-glass windows? I've seen a woman with binoculars at the Sainte-Chapelle -- not a bad idea! We eventually stood up and switched sides, sitting on the opposite side of the chapel's aisle so that we were looking at some other familiar books, those of the Torah (five books of Moses). There, too, we had more difficulty than success in recognizing what was what, although the Menorah is iconic enough that it's easy to distinguish. There was a figure in yellow carrying a shield with an emblem of a black scorpion who appeared multiple times in the window of Bamidbar (Numbers): I wonder who that was? I simply have no idea. There seemed to be a fair amount of combat and battles in that window, especially in the later sections...
We headed back out, into the rain (at least I had an umbrella now), and over to the other side of the Ile de la Cite, to Notre-Dame de Paris. Notre-Dame is large, famous, well-stocked in gargoyles and in stained glass, and cold. It is also surprisingly uninteresting, for such a famous building. Really, I mean that -- the stained-glass roses are beautiful, as is the rest of the stained glass, but there really isn't that much of it, relative to the rest of the building. Notre-Dame de Chartres remains my favorite French cathedral named Notre-Dame.
It had been a long enough day for my parents, and I was rather wet and cold by this point. We returned to their hotel room together; Dad dozed for a little bit, and I told Mom a little bit about the chateaux of the Loire (something you all read a little too much about back in August, I imagine). For dinner, we ate the sandwiches I had brought from my room. They called it a day, and I took the Metro back to my dorm, wearing Dad's sweater, which had helped me stay warm.
~JD
Friday, December 16, 2011
Paris with Mom & Dad I
Guess who showed up in Paris on Wednesday night? On Wednesday night, I had dinner with my wonderful parents at the Cite U cafeteria (first time I had been there, because they don't accept my meal tickets), following a typical mix-up. We spent a good evening together, catching up. My Dad was out of town when I left on July 30th, so it's been nearly five months since I've seen him (as you all know, I don't have a mic, so I haven't been able to Skype anyone, either). I showed them my room, gave them a few things I thought might be useful in Paris (a couple of maps, a waiter's corkscrew, a copy of Moliere's L'Ecole des Femmes, the usual), and sent them on their way back to the Metro. I hadn't realized it until now, but after spending three and a half months in Paris, I've grown accustomed to a city walking-pace, although I still can't walk as quickly as the Parisians. In Lettres Persanes, Montesquieu wrote that a stranger could spend several months in Paris, and never see anybody walk: everybody ran or flew. Not much has changed in this respect in the past 300 years, except for the introduction of the Metro, the RER, and Velib.
After I somehow managed to fall out of bed in time to make it to my last 8:00 a.m. class at the Sorbonne (Contemporary Arab World CM), I walked over to EDUCO to give Valerie all the homework and tests I have completed the whole semester, and to write up a commentaire sur texte for my Louis XIV class, I headed over to the 2:00 pm rendez-vous at the Musee Carnavalet with my parents. I had given them my Paris par Arrondissement, so although I (proudly) made it to the Place des Vosges, I didn't know where, from there, to travel in order to arrive at the Musee. I eventually had to ask directions, and scurried off, spying them in the giftshop. We checked our bags, and after some agonizing over the maps, found the period rooms that Mom wanted to visit (guess which Louis). Eventually, we split up, the two going off to investigate the section on Medieval Paris, while I moved forward through time, historically. I found the Mme. de Sevigne room, where the house's famous Louisquatorzien proprietor, author of a posthumously-published famous series of letters to her beloved daughter. There were portraits of Mme. de Sevigne and of the (rather beautiful) famous daughter, as well as Mme. de Sevigne's writing desk, and several of the original manuscripts of the letters. Because I know that all of you are terribly interested in the contents of these letters, I've decided to translate an example, simply dated "Monday."
"Since you absolutely want me to return your little box to you, here it is. I pray you to open it and to receive, as tenderly as I give, a small present that I have long meant for you to have; I have with pleasure had the diamond re-cut, pleased by the thought that you will keep it all your life. I ask, my dear good girl, to never see it in the hands of others, but in yours alone! May it be a souvenir of me, and of the great tenderness which I have for you, and by how many things I would like you to be able to witness it on all occasions; whatever you can believe of the above, you will not believe enough.
For my daughter."
The Musee Carnavalet has collected quite a few curiosities over the years, having been built up largely from private donations. For instance, it has the entire Art Nouveau interior of Monsieur Georges Fouquet's jewelry shop, as it was decorated in 1900. In 1899, Fouquet had worked with a famous poster-artist to advertise his shop, to great success; he went on to commission a complete redesign of his shop from the same artist. Despite being considered dangerously fashionable at the beginning, by 1901, it had completely gone out of style, and so Fouquet decided to donate all the decorations to a museum.
In spite of the heterogeneity of its collections, the Musee Carnavalet has done an excellent job cataloging many of the well-known places and views I have come to recognized since I arrived in Paris. I saw a 1949 painting of the bouquinistes on one bank of the Seine. Except for the clothing of the men in the painting, it seems as if little, if anything, has changed in the past 60 years, regarding that particular institution! For those of you who have never been to Paris, the bouqinistes are dealers of used books, posters, and knickknacks, who keep their wares in large green wooden boxes located along the quais on the Seine. Bouquin is a French slang term for "book," of which we really don't have an equivalent in English. There was also a neo-impressionist-style painting of the Parc Montsouris (where I used to take my runs, back when I actually used to run in this town), from the 1860s. Other paintings depicted famous Parisian residents, from Moliere to Cocteau; someone even had the idea of reconstructing the room of Marcel Proust, complete with bed, walking stick, bureau, bedside table, etc. There was a whole slew of paintings on the topic of World War I and the Paris Peace Conference: paintings of zeppelin raids, of the great French generals Foch and Joffre, and the escort of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. A wonderful surprise was finding 19th-century paintings of the Sorbonne! The old school building, constructed by the Cardinal de Richelieu and still containing his body in the chapel, looks identical, and the Place de la Sorbonne looks nearly identical, the only difference being the addition of several (dirty and unnecessary, in my opinion) fountains.
Mom eventually found me looking at this painting, and told me that Dad was feeling ready to go. After some unnecessary silliness that was all my fault, caused by my loss of my hat and gloves (I had left them in the boutique, which I had entered when I saw Mom and Dad inside), the two of them left. The museum was still open for another hour, and I hadn't yet seen the section on the French Revolution, which had been highly recommended to me, I decided to stay as long as possible. I was very glad that I did -- the Musee Carnavalet has done an excellent job in giving a very straightforward, very understandable, very lucid, and somewhat traditional description of the French Revolution through art and artifacts. Semi-chronological and semi-thematic, the various rooms take the viewer through such events as the taking of the Bastille, the Tennis Court Oath, the creation of the national assembly, the invasion of Versailles, the storming of the Tuileries, the fate of the royal family, the division between the Montagnards and the Girondins, the reaction of Thermidor, etc. There were busts and paintings of many of the principal actors, many of whose roles I learned somewhat better. To a foreigner, who is not necessarily familiar with every action and faction of the French Revolution, the room gives a good narrative, with informative artifacts. Back in Tours, I had been reading the "New History of Contemporary France," an excellent series, but which nonetheless assumed a certain level of knowledge. It was really a revisionist history, and therefore assumes the existence of a solid base of falsehoods needing revision; although Mrs. P-B gave me as good a classroom grounding as I ever could have asked for, to understand something, I really need to read about it myself.
I made it back to my dorm, via the student cafeteria, and got ready for my last day of classes in Paris.
~JD
"Depuis la charte de la Compagnie des Cent-Associes en 1627, pour etre reconnu sujet francais avec les memes droits, privileges et honneurs, il suffit a l'autochtone d'accepter le bapteme" [Since the 1627 charter of the Company of the Hundred Associates, to to recognized as a French subject with the same rights, privileges, and honors, it sufficed for the Native American to accept baptism] (Jacques Mathieu, La Nouvelle-France: Les Francais en Amerique du Nord XVIe-XVIIIe siecle, p. 182).
After I somehow managed to fall out of bed in time to make it to my last 8:00 a.m. class at the Sorbonne (Contemporary Arab World CM), I walked over to EDUCO to give Valerie all the homework and tests I have completed the whole semester, and to write up a commentaire sur texte for my Louis XIV class, I headed over to the 2:00 pm rendez-vous at the Musee Carnavalet with my parents. I had given them my Paris par Arrondissement, so although I (proudly) made it to the Place des Vosges, I didn't know where, from there, to travel in order to arrive at the Musee. I eventually had to ask directions, and scurried off, spying them in the giftshop. We checked our bags, and after some agonizing over the maps, found the period rooms that Mom wanted to visit (guess which Louis). Eventually, we split up, the two going off to investigate the section on Medieval Paris, while I moved forward through time, historically. I found the Mme. de Sevigne room, where the house's famous Louisquatorzien proprietor, author of a posthumously-published famous series of letters to her beloved daughter. There were portraits of Mme. de Sevigne and of the (rather beautiful) famous daughter, as well as Mme. de Sevigne's writing desk, and several of the original manuscripts of the letters. Because I know that all of you are terribly interested in the contents of these letters, I've decided to translate an example, simply dated "Monday."
"Since you absolutely want me to return your little box to you, here it is. I pray you to open it and to receive, as tenderly as I give, a small present that I have long meant for you to have; I have with pleasure had the diamond re-cut, pleased by the thought that you will keep it all your life. I ask, my dear good girl, to never see it in the hands of others, but in yours alone! May it be a souvenir of me, and of the great tenderness which I have for you, and by how many things I would like you to be able to witness it on all occasions; whatever you can believe of the above, you will not believe enough.
For my daughter."
The Musee Carnavalet has collected quite a few curiosities over the years, having been built up largely from private donations. For instance, it has the entire Art Nouveau interior of Monsieur Georges Fouquet's jewelry shop, as it was decorated in 1900. In 1899, Fouquet had worked with a famous poster-artist to advertise his shop, to great success; he went on to commission a complete redesign of his shop from the same artist. Despite being considered dangerously fashionable at the beginning, by 1901, it had completely gone out of style, and so Fouquet decided to donate all the decorations to a museum.
In spite of the heterogeneity of its collections, the Musee Carnavalet has done an excellent job cataloging many of the well-known places and views I have come to recognized since I arrived in Paris. I saw a 1949 painting of the bouquinistes on one bank of the Seine. Except for the clothing of the men in the painting, it seems as if little, if anything, has changed in the past 60 years, regarding that particular institution! For those of you who have never been to Paris, the bouqinistes are dealers of used books, posters, and knickknacks, who keep their wares in large green wooden boxes located along the quais on the Seine. Bouquin is a French slang term for "book," of which we really don't have an equivalent in English. There was also a neo-impressionist-style painting of the Parc Montsouris (where I used to take my runs, back when I actually used to run in this town), from the 1860s. Other paintings depicted famous Parisian residents, from Moliere to Cocteau; someone even had the idea of reconstructing the room of Marcel Proust, complete with bed, walking stick, bureau, bedside table, etc. There was a whole slew of paintings on the topic of World War I and the Paris Peace Conference: paintings of zeppelin raids, of the great French generals Foch and Joffre, and the escort of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. A wonderful surprise was finding 19th-century paintings of the Sorbonne! The old school building, constructed by the Cardinal de Richelieu and still containing his body in the chapel, looks identical, and the Place de la Sorbonne looks nearly identical, the only difference being the addition of several (dirty and unnecessary, in my opinion) fountains.
Mom eventually found me looking at this painting, and told me that Dad was feeling ready to go. After some unnecessary silliness that was all my fault, caused by my loss of my hat and gloves (I had left them in the boutique, which I had entered when I saw Mom and Dad inside), the two of them left. The museum was still open for another hour, and I hadn't yet seen the section on the French Revolution, which had been highly recommended to me, I decided to stay as long as possible. I was very glad that I did -- the Musee Carnavalet has done an excellent job in giving a very straightforward, very understandable, very lucid, and somewhat traditional description of the French Revolution through art and artifacts. Semi-chronological and semi-thematic, the various rooms take the viewer through such events as the taking of the Bastille, the Tennis Court Oath, the creation of the national assembly, the invasion of Versailles, the storming of the Tuileries, the fate of the royal family, the division between the Montagnards and the Girondins, the reaction of Thermidor, etc. There were busts and paintings of many of the principal actors, many of whose roles I learned somewhat better. To a foreigner, who is not necessarily familiar with every action and faction of the French Revolution, the room gives a good narrative, with informative artifacts. Back in Tours, I had been reading the "New History of Contemporary France," an excellent series, but which nonetheless assumed a certain level of knowledge. It was really a revisionist history, and therefore assumes the existence of a solid base of falsehoods needing revision; although Mrs. P-B gave me as good a classroom grounding as I ever could have asked for, to understand something, I really need to read about it myself.
I made it back to my dorm, via the student cafeteria, and got ready for my last day of classes in Paris.
~JD
"Depuis la charte de la Compagnie des Cent-Associes en 1627, pour etre reconnu sujet francais avec les memes droits, privileges et honneurs, il suffit a l'autochtone d'accepter le bapteme" [Since the 1627 charter of the Company of the Hundred Associates, to to recognized as a French subject with the same rights, privileges, and honors, it sufficed for the Native American to accept baptism] (Jacques Mathieu, La Nouvelle-France: Les Francais en Amerique du Nord XVIe-XVIIIe siecle, p. 182).
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Visiting the Dutch
It was a perfect day to spend indoors, at the Louvre, looking at Dutch paintings: cold, dreary, wet, and miserable. At least there aren't any dikes to overflow, here in Paris. On my way, I finally stopped by the large domed building which I pass every day on my way to the Sorbonne, having finally decided that I ought to figure out exactly what it was. It turns out that it is the Val-de-Grace church, equipped with a benedictine monastery. The founder of Val-de-Grace is none other than Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII, who founded the monastery in thanks for the birth of a son (guess who that was). When Louis XIV was seven years old, he laid the first foundation stone of the edifice: the AA motif on the walls still recalls the original patroness. Mass was in session at the time, but the church is open to visitors most days of the week, and moreover, has become the museum of military health.
In any case, I had agreed to meet up with Nick later that afternoon, to visit the galleries of the Louvre together, but I had about three hours to spend alone with the Dutch paintings. I had told myself ahead of time that I was only going to look at paintings I enjoyed, but I nevertheless stopped to look at the 15th- and 16th-century religious paintings and portraits of dead important people. One of them, van Eyck's "The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin," from 1444, was apparently quite famous. It depicts Philippe le Bon (comte de Bourgogne) kneeling and praying before the Madonna: it's the background, depicting a sort of heavenly cityscape of Jerusalem, that makes the piece so famous, I think. However, for a while, there really isn't anything in these earlier Dutch paintings that interests me. But it's around 1580 that you begin to see some of the detail, such as the grime under Saint-Jerome's fingernails, that makes the Dutch paintings so interesting to look at. Beggars appear in certain compositions, and war makes its appearance as destructive brutality, alongside more glorious images. This is the age of the early Brueghels, a multi-generational clan of painters. I saw Jan "Velvet" Brueghel's masterpiece, depicting one of the battles of Alexander the Great; however, I far preferred a four-part series depicting the essences of the four classical elements. I particularly liked looking at "Fire," a scene of dwarven blacksmiths hard at work underground; in the foreground are piles of the masterpieces which they have crafted: suits of armor, metal urns, tools, jewelry, etc. This is one of the wonderful aspects of Dutch paintings: the piles of stuff which often clutter their foregrounds! I often wonder how they painted many of these, such as "Fish Merchants at their Stall." Did they paint from real models, or from books, or out of their heads? I wonder exactly how anatomically correct all of these fishy wares are...
In any case, I quickly got into the Rubens, the Van Dyck, and their contemporaries. There was even a double portrait of the two Dutch masters, isn't that neat? Perhaps my favorite part of this section was the Hall of the Medicis. Marie de' Medici, the wife of Henri IV, commissioned a 24-piece series of paintings chronicling her life's story, which now take up the entire hallway. To us, the idea seems ridiculously egotistic, and even laughable; at the time, though, it must have been a grand series of paintings. The story begins before her birth, showing the Fates spinning out her destiny, and different episodes include her marriage, coronation, reception of the regency when Henri IV leaves for war in Germany, her acceptance of the regency upon his untimely death, her diplomatic missions, etc. The episodes are highly romanticized -- one canvas doesn't even contain any human beings, only the classical Greco-Roman gods deciding the destiny of France and Spain. At the end of the epic, I was more impressed with Rubens than with Marie de' Medici!
Eventually, I arrived at the section on Rembrandt and his circle -- only to find that I really don't like the Rembrandt selection at the Louvre. Now that I've seen the original "The Night Watch" in Amsterdam, perhaps my standards are too high, but there was really only one painting that really impressed me, a 1660 self-portrait titled "Portrait of the artist with an easel." It has that truly Rembrandt je-ne-sais-quoi to it; half of the painting is obscured in shadow, and it is the way that the visible part emerges that makes it so wonderful to admire. Around this time, I looked at my watch, and realized that I only had a little while left in the galleries before I met Nick. I sped up, and made it at last to the final Dutch room, where I found the work of my other favorite Dutch painter, Vermeer. The Louvre owns two Vermeer paintings; one of them, the iconic "Lacemaker," is currently on loan in Philadelphia. The other, "The Astronomer, or rather the Astrologer," painted in 1668, is less well-known, but no less beautiful. It has light shining in through the window; what could be better? The folds of the tablecloth, the details of the globe, the sketches on the book before the scholar: all are detailed and accurate. Scholars now think that it is likely that Vermeer used a device known as a camera obscura, lent to him (?) by his friend Van Leeuwenhoek (yes, the same guy we learned about in Bio glass when learning the history of the microscope), which allowed him to trace his subjects. Perhaps this is true, I don't know; however, if Vermeer owed the quality of his work exclusively to a camera obscura, why can't anyone else paint like him? Camera obscura or not, Vermeer will never cease to interest me (fun fact: according to Wikipedia, the subject of "The Astronomer" could be Van Leeuwenhoek, who might even have commissioned the painting).
I headed outside into the light drizzle, and Nick found me while I was in the middle of taking the picture of a newly-engaged couple, who had asked me to take a photograph of them in front of the glass pyramid (very common). He and I bopped around the the 17th- and 18th- century French sculptures, before heading over to the Mesopotamian and Iranian antiquities. We found the famous Code of Hammurabi, one of the western world's most ancient of legal documents, and also a stele of "Baal of the Lightning," one of the Mesopotamian gods who features prominently in the Tanakh. Sitting down for a moment, I happened to look at some Iranian pottery, dating from around 1200 B.C.E. -- only to notice the very same aspects found in "Orientalizing" Greek pottery! The connection is now so obvious; the stylized flower blossoms interspersed with rows of stylized animals in profiles is clearly the same! I always knew that "Orientalizing" indicated eastern influence, but I had never before seen any examples of that eastern influence; now I have.
We meandered through the French painting section. We saw the famous "Turkish Bath" painting my Indres, which represents quite well the Ottoman harem in the European mind (note: when we think "harem," the image we conjure up of naked empty-headed hedonistic beauties surrounded by fierce eunuchs is that of the late Ottoman harem; a "harem," in, say, Middle Kingdom Egypt, was a completely different institution). The painter was 82 when he finished this work, which seems a little old, to me, to still be obsessed with naked women. That's the job of people my age, isn't it? We moved on, and Nick pointed out the only Impressionist paintings in the entire Louvre; there are only about eight of them, with a Monet and a Renoir, as well as a few Pissaro. The collections of the Louvre are just too old, for the most part, to have any significant possessions later than the mid-19th century. We also saw an extremely eye-catching 1780 painting of "The Eruption of Vesuvius" by an Austrian artist, and we kept on running into more portraits and busts of Diderot. Near the end of the visit, we came across a computer monitor that showed us how art historians analyzed paintings, using a portrait of Madame de Pompadour as a model. We both realized that, as much as we enjoy looking at certain paintings, we're never going to be able to read a painting like that. Good grief, those art historians even read the titles of the books on the shelves, and pick out complimentary shades of blue in completely different parts of the painting!
So, I'm all done with my work. Time to hit up the museums while I still can! Mom and Dad arrived yesterday, and we met for dinner; today, we visited the Musee Carnavalet together; and tomorrow, when they return from Versailles, we're eating dinner again together.
~JD
"L’Etat fixe les prix et les cours de la monnaie, achète la production, contrôle la circulation des biens et des hommes" [The state fixed the prices and the weights of the coinage, purchased finished goods, and regulated the circulation of goods and of men] (Jacques Mathieu, La Nouvelle-France, p. 150).
In any case, I had agreed to meet up with Nick later that afternoon, to visit the galleries of the Louvre together, but I had about three hours to spend alone with the Dutch paintings. I had told myself ahead of time that I was only going to look at paintings I enjoyed, but I nevertheless stopped to look at the 15th- and 16th-century religious paintings and portraits of dead important people. One of them, van Eyck's "The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin," from 1444, was apparently quite famous. It depicts Philippe le Bon (comte de Bourgogne) kneeling and praying before the Madonna: it's the background, depicting a sort of heavenly cityscape of Jerusalem, that makes the piece so famous, I think. However, for a while, there really isn't anything in these earlier Dutch paintings that interests me. But it's around 1580 that you begin to see some of the detail, such as the grime under Saint-Jerome's fingernails, that makes the Dutch paintings so interesting to look at. Beggars appear in certain compositions, and war makes its appearance as destructive brutality, alongside more glorious images. This is the age of the early Brueghels, a multi-generational clan of painters. I saw Jan "Velvet" Brueghel's masterpiece, depicting one of the battles of Alexander the Great; however, I far preferred a four-part series depicting the essences of the four classical elements. I particularly liked looking at "Fire," a scene of dwarven blacksmiths hard at work underground; in the foreground are piles of the masterpieces which they have crafted: suits of armor, metal urns, tools, jewelry, etc. This is one of the wonderful aspects of Dutch paintings: the piles of stuff which often clutter their foregrounds! I often wonder how they painted many of these, such as "Fish Merchants at their Stall." Did they paint from real models, or from books, or out of their heads? I wonder exactly how anatomically correct all of these fishy wares are...
In any case, I quickly got into the Rubens, the Van Dyck, and their contemporaries. There was even a double portrait of the two Dutch masters, isn't that neat? Perhaps my favorite part of this section was the Hall of the Medicis. Marie de' Medici, the wife of Henri IV, commissioned a 24-piece series of paintings chronicling her life's story, which now take up the entire hallway. To us, the idea seems ridiculously egotistic, and even laughable; at the time, though, it must have been a grand series of paintings. The story begins before her birth, showing the Fates spinning out her destiny, and different episodes include her marriage, coronation, reception of the regency when Henri IV leaves for war in Germany, her acceptance of the regency upon his untimely death, her diplomatic missions, etc. The episodes are highly romanticized -- one canvas doesn't even contain any human beings, only the classical Greco-Roman gods deciding the destiny of France and Spain. At the end of the epic, I was more impressed with Rubens than with Marie de' Medici!
Eventually, I arrived at the section on Rembrandt and his circle -- only to find that I really don't like the Rembrandt selection at the Louvre. Now that I've seen the original "The Night Watch" in Amsterdam, perhaps my standards are too high, but there was really only one painting that really impressed me, a 1660 self-portrait titled "Portrait of the artist with an easel." It has that truly Rembrandt je-ne-sais-quoi to it; half of the painting is obscured in shadow, and it is the way that the visible part emerges that makes it so wonderful to admire. Around this time, I looked at my watch, and realized that I only had a little while left in the galleries before I met Nick. I sped up, and made it at last to the final Dutch room, where I found the work of my other favorite Dutch painter, Vermeer. The Louvre owns two Vermeer paintings; one of them, the iconic "Lacemaker," is currently on loan in Philadelphia. The other, "The Astronomer, or rather the Astrologer," painted in 1668, is less well-known, but no less beautiful. It has light shining in through the window; what could be better? The folds of the tablecloth, the details of the globe, the sketches on the book before the scholar: all are detailed and accurate. Scholars now think that it is likely that Vermeer used a device known as a camera obscura, lent to him (?) by his friend Van Leeuwenhoek (yes, the same guy we learned about in Bio glass when learning the history of the microscope), which allowed him to trace his subjects. Perhaps this is true, I don't know; however, if Vermeer owed the quality of his work exclusively to a camera obscura, why can't anyone else paint like him? Camera obscura or not, Vermeer will never cease to interest me (fun fact: according to Wikipedia, the subject of "The Astronomer" could be Van Leeuwenhoek, who might even have commissioned the painting).
I headed outside into the light drizzle, and Nick found me while I was in the middle of taking the picture of a newly-engaged couple, who had asked me to take a photograph of them in front of the glass pyramid (very common). He and I bopped around the the 17th- and 18th- century French sculptures, before heading over to the Mesopotamian and Iranian antiquities. We found the famous Code of Hammurabi, one of the western world's most ancient of legal documents, and also a stele of "Baal of the Lightning," one of the Mesopotamian gods who features prominently in the Tanakh. Sitting down for a moment, I happened to look at some Iranian pottery, dating from around 1200 B.C.E. -- only to notice the very same aspects found in "Orientalizing" Greek pottery! The connection is now so obvious; the stylized flower blossoms interspersed with rows of stylized animals in profiles is clearly the same! I always knew that "Orientalizing" indicated eastern influence, but I had never before seen any examples of that eastern influence; now I have.
We meandered through the French painting section. We saw the famous "Turkish Bath" painting my Indres, which represents quite well the Ottoman harem in the European mind (note: when we think "harem," the image we conjure up of naked empty-headed hedonistic beauties surrounded by fierce eunuchs is that of the late Ottoman harem; a "harem," in, say, Middle Kingdom Egypt, was a completely different institution). The painter was 82 when he finished this work, which seems a little old, to me, to still be obsessed with naked women. That's the job of people my age, isn't it? We moved on, and Nick pointed out the only Impressionist paintings in the entire Louvre; there are only about eight of them, with a Monet and a Renoir, as well as a few Pissaro. The collections of the Louvre are just too old, for the most part, to have any significant possessions later than the mid-19th century. We also saw an extremely eye-catching 1780 painting of "The Eruption of Vesuvius" by an Austrian artist, and we kept on running into more portraits and busts of Diderot. Near the end of the visit, we came across a computer monitor that showed us how art historians analyzed paintings, using a portrait of Madame de Pompadour as a model. We both realized that, as much as we enjoy looking at certain paintings, we're never going to be able to read a painting like that. Good grief, those art historians even read the titles of the books on the shelves, and pick out complimentary shades of blue in completely different parts of the painting!
So, I'm all done with my work. Time to hit up the museums while I still can! Mom and Dad arrived yesterday, and we met for dinner; today, we visited the Musee Carnavalet together; and tomorrow, when they return from Versailles, we're eating dinner again together.
~JD
"L’Etat fixe les prix et les cours de la monnaie, achète la production, contrôle la circulation des biens et des hommes" [The state fixed the prices and the weights of the coinage, purchased finished goods, and regulated the circulation of goods and of men] (Jacques Mathieu, La Nouvelle-France, p. 150).
Sunday, December 11, 2011
A Beautiful Walk to Java
Sunshine is becoming so rare here that when it does appear, I have learned to take advantage of it, while I have the chance. Yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day, so I decided to walk to the northern half of the 16th arrondissement, which took me most of the morning. In addition to seeing ordinary Parisian life and buildings (there are so many statues and churches in this town!), I walked past the Tour Montparnasse, a large, black, ugly skyscraper that has become quite iconic, through the Champ de Mars, famous for the massacre that took place there during the French Revolution (1791), and past the Tour Eiffel. Yes, now I've walked past it, and can go home and answer everyone's first question.
My first stop was a museum which Valerie had told me about, knowing my taste for castles and cathedrals: the Cite de l'architecture et du patrimoine is a museum dedicated to French architecture. The ground floor is a very long and exceptionally high-ceilinged hallway, full of full-sized plaster casts and scaled-down models of examples of religious, civil, and military architecture, arranged chronologically. The earliest pieces were the facades of Romanesque Longuedocien churches. Because architecture is so simple, these highly-ornate facades, which commonly featured assemblages of the vices and the virtues in a motif known as the "psychomache," were often the most decorative elements of a church. I made my way to the Gothic (introduced in France at Saint-Denis, which I visited several weeks ago, by the Abbe Suger in the mid-12th century), and was quite impressed by some of the models of the early cathedrals -- the transformation was quite quick, and although some of these Gothic churches possessed Romanesque elements, there was no real "transition phase," as far as I could notice. Such a church just might not have been able to support its weight, perhaps! Anyway, as I went along the Gothic, I saw a few reproductions of pieces whose originals I had visited, such as Notre-Dame de Chartres. Because this museum managed to reassemble so much statuary from so many different regions and epochs, it was easy to see certain trends. For instance, the garments of the statues of saints and apostles which often decorate the facades and porticoes become increasingly more complex, eventually draping over and over in a crazy fractal of unrealistic folds. Another trend is that the shape of the body becomes increasingly more evident as time progresses.
I eventually made my way into the 15th-century Burgundian examples of Gothic Flamboyant architecture, which most people can recognize without being able to name. Even though we refer to it as an architectural design, it's really a form of ornamentation; it is mostly just a superficial modification of the earlier Gothic style, steeper, pointier, with more tufts, etc. When I arrived at the Renaissance, I immediately recognized the Francois I spiral staircase from Blois: it's so iconic! The chronology stopped rather abruptly, and there was only a very small room for the 17th and 18th centuries. Had I not known that this was the era of Versailles, I would have thought that nothing important had been built in this era!
The upper stories of the museum are of a very different character than the ground floor, and are far less interesting. They contain more models, reproductions of famous wall paintings, and some uninteresting temporary exhibits. I saw a few interesting pieces, such as a facsimile of the plans for the Eiffel Tower, a to-scale model of the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve (I had no idea it was so famous), a model of the beautiful Marseilles Cathedral (which I now wish to visit), and a beautiful model of the Palais du Trocadero, a majestic building built for the World's Fair, which no longer exists. There was also a fairly good description given of the Haussmanian transformations of Paris made under Napoleon III. On the whole, though, the museum is second-rate, and not even very good second-rate. Anything that it has which is interesting is a reproduction: nothing there is anything but a model.
It was only a quick walk from the Cite de l'Architecture to the Musee Guimet, the museum of Asian art (it's strategically located in the neighborhood of many of the southern, eastern, and southeast Asian embassies). I'll admit, I was a little bit hesitant to visit a museum dedicated to Asian art; not that I dislike Asian art, but seeing as I'm in Europe, there should be no better place to study Europe; so why study Asia? I only rationalized the trip to myself on the grounds that France had looted and stolen piles and piles of Vietnamese treasures, and so the legacy of colonialism was worth reporting.
The visit was perhaps the greatest breath of fresh air I have had in some time. The Musee Guimet, after the Louvre, I would say, is the best-curated art museum in Paris. Great care has been taken to present objects that are interesting, many of which have stories behind them (free audioguide). I only had about 90 minutes before the museum closed, and I decided that I absolutely needed to visit the Southeast Asian galleries, first of all because of France's relationship with Vietnam, and second of all because I have taken two Southeast Asian history courses, with the excellent Prof.s Tagliacozzo and Loos. In the Cambodian rooms, I saw a portrait-bust believed to be of Jayavarman VII, as well as a statue believed to be of his wife. Jayavarman VII is a notable ruler for many reasons; ruling as a contemporary of Henry II of England, Philippe-Auguste of France, and Saladin of Ayyubid Egypt, he rallied his country after a devastating military defeat in 1177, in which the Cambodian capital was sacked by the Chams. He instituted Buddhism in the kingdom of Cambodia, made great conquests, and established hundreds of charitable institutions throughout the kingdom. He also built on a monumental scale at his capital of Angkor Thom. It may or may not be a coincidence, but there seemed to be an awful lot of the Cambodian artifacts in the Musee Guimet seem to date from his rule.
There were also some nifty artifacts from Java, including Buddhist votive statues and Muslim funerary steles. This sounds like an unusual combination, and it is; when speaking of religion in Southeast Asia, one necessarily speaks of waves. Hinduism arrived first, perhaps brought by traders, or perhaps by groups of Brahmans (not necessarily mutually exclusive). Legends tell of Indian princes granted magical weapons, sailing east, and subduing local queens, whom they marry, founding new dynasties. The caste system never really caught on in the rigid way that it did in India, but there were still elements of it, Brahmans remaining as a powerful priestly presence for centuries. However, unlike in India, Brahmans had a lower status than the Kshatriya warrior-class. Buddhism, the first "world religion," arrived next, and was taken up, in one form or another, and somewhat slowly, throughout the various Southeast Asian lands. Vietnam is largely Mahayana Buddhist (relatively more "orthodox"), whereas the Buddhism of Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and the Buddhist regions of Indonesia is Theravada (relatively more "fundamentalist"). Islam came later, followed relatively quickly by Christianity. Both religions spread extraordinary quickly; in the first half of the 17th century, one half of the 20-million-person population of Southeast Asia converted to either Christianity or Islam. Islam came from the west, by way of trade, and by way of itinerant Sufis. Quite often, sufis converted local populations by telling them that what they were already were doing was Islam, just performed imperfectly; local religious systems were thus changed only superficially, perhaps by the addition of the Five Pillars; local spirits and deities were renamed djinni, and life went on more or less as it always had before (it wasn't until the 19th century that Sumatra got all Wahhabi). The Spanish Jesuit priests who arrived from the east, by way of the Spanish Empire in South America, were somewhat less flexible, but the Catholicism which they brought to the Philippines was not nearly as brutal as what we imagine as occurring in South America. There was something of a friarocracy, and a feudal system of land distribution among monasteries; but there was an element of counter-reform humanism that motivated the priests to try to learn Tagalog, rather than enforcing Catalan upon the locals (although they had no choice when it came to certain words that formerly didn't exist in the Philippines).
But I digress. The most amazing thing I saw at the Musee Guimet was a 2500-year-old "Dong Son" drum from Vietnam. These bronze drums, associated with water spirits, were among the earliest artifacts from Vietnam, from the region's late Bronze Age (the Greek Bronze Age ended around 1200 B.C.E., for comparison, when violent upheavals caused a lack of trade to deprive them of the necessary materials for bronze forging). When the Chinese invaded Vietnam several centuries later, they destroyed the Dong Son drums, melting down the bronze, and recasting it as a martial horse, a kind of cultural attack on the traditional Vietnamese gods. I'm glad that they didn't get this one.
My only regrets? That I didn't get to play the Dong Son drum.
~JD
"Une gratification et une pension furent promises et parfois accordees aux familles comptant de dix a douze enfants" [A bonus and a stipend were promised and sometimes even awarded to families with ten to twelve children] (Jacques Mathieu, La Nouvelle-France: Les Francais en Amerique du Nord XVIe-XVIIIe siecle, p. 68).
My first stop was a museum which Valerie had told me about, knowing my taste for castles and cathedrals: the Cite de l'architecture et du patrimoine is a museum dedicated to French architecture. The ground floor is a very long and exceptionally high-ceilinged hallway, full of full-sized plaster casts and scaled-down models of examples of religious, civil, and military architecture, arranged chronologically. The earliest pieces were the facades of Romanesque Longuedocien churches. Because architecture is so simple, these highly-ornate facades, which commonly featured assemblages of the vices and the virtues in a motif known as the "psychomache," were often the most decorative elements of a church. I made my way to the Gothic (introduced in France at Saint-Denis, which I visited several weeks ago, by the Abbe Suger in the mid-12th century), and was quite impressed by some of the models of the early cathedrals -- the transformation was quite quick, and although some of these Gothic churches possessed Romanesque elements, there was no real "transition phase," as far as I could notice. Such a church just might not have been able to support its weight, perhaps! Anyway, as I went along the Gothic, I saw a few reproductions of pieces whose originals I had visited, such as Notre-Dame de Chartres. Because this museum managed to reassemble so much statuary from so many different regions and epochs, it was easy to see certain trends. For instance, the garments of the statues of saints and apostles which often decorate the facades and porticoes become increasingly more complex, eventually draping over and over in a crazy fractal of unrealistic folds. Another trend is that the shape of the body becomes increasingly more evident as time progresses.
I eventually made my way into the 15th-century Burgundian examples of Gothic Flamboyant architecture, which most people can recognize without being able to name. Even though we refer to it as an architectural design, it's really a form of ornamentation; it is mostly just a superficial modification of the earlier Gothic style, steeper, pointier, with more tufts, etc. When I arrived at the Renaissance, I immediately recognized the Francois I spiral staircase from Blois: it's so iconic! The chronology stopped rather abruptly, and there was only a very small room for the 17th and 18th centuries. Had I not known that this was the era of Versailles, I would have thought that nothing important had been built in this era!
The upper stories of the museum are of a very different character than the ground floor, and are far less interesting. They contain more models, reproductions of famous wall paintings, and some uninteresting temporary exhibits. I saw a few interesting pieces, such as a facsimile of the plans for the Eiffel Tower, a to-scale model of the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve (I had no idea it was so famous), a model of the beautiful Marseilles Cathedral (which I now wish to visit), and a beautiful model of the Palais du Trocadero, a majestic building built for the World's Fair, which no longer exists. There was also a fairly good description given of the Haussmanian transformations of Paris made under Napoleon III. On the whole, though, the museum is second-rate, and not even very good second-rate. Anything that it has which is interesting is a reproduction: nothing there is anything but a model.
It was only a quick walk from the Cite de l'Architecture to the Musee Guimet, the museum of Asian art (it's strategically located in the neighborhood of many of the southern, eastern, and southeast Asian embassies). I'll admit, I was a little bit hesitant to visit a museum dedicated to Asian art; not that I dislike Asian art, but seeing as I'm in Europe, there should be no better place to study Europe; so why study Asia? I only rationalized the trip to myself on the grounds that France had looted and stolen piles and piles of Vietnamese treasures, and so the legacy of colonialism was worth reporting.
The visit was perhaps the greatest breath of fresh air I have had in some time. The Musee Guimet, after the Louvre, I would say, is the best-curated art museum in Paris. Great care has been taken to present objects that are interesting, many of which have stories behind them (free audioguide). I only had about 90 minutes before the museum closed, and I decided that I absolutely needed to visit the Southeast Asian galleries, first of all because of France's relationship with Vietnam, and second of all because I have taken two Southeast Asian history courses, with the excellent Prof.s Tagliacozzo and Loos. In the Cambodian rooms, I saw a portrait-bust believed to be of Jayavarman VII, as well as a statue believed to be of his wife. Jayavarman VII is a notable ruler for many reasons; ruling as a contemporary of Henry II of England, Philippe-Auguste of France, and Saladin of Ayyubid Egypt, he rallied his country after a devastating military defeat in 1177, in which the Cambodian capital was sacked by the Chams. He instituted Buddhism in the kingdom of Cambodia, made great conquests, and established hundreds of charitable institutions throughout the kingdom. He also built on a monumental scale at his capital of Angkor Thom. It may or may not be a coincidence, but there seemed to be an awful lot of the Cambodian artifacts in the Musee Guimet seem to date from his rule.
There were also some nifty artifacts from Java, including Buddhist votive statues and Muslim funerary steles. This sounds like an unusual combination, and it is; when speaking of religion in Southeast Asia, one necessarily speaks of waves. Hinduism arrived first, perhaps brought by traders, or perhaps by groups of Brahmans (not necessarily mutually exclusive). Legends tell of Indian princes granted magical weapons, sailing east, and subduing local queens, whom they marry, founding new dynasties. The caste system never really caught on in the rigid way that it did in India, but there were still elements of it, Brahmans remaining as a powerful priestly presence for centuries. However, unlike in India, Brahmans had a lower status than the Kshatriya warrior-class. Buddhism, the first "world religion," arrived next, and was taken up, in one form or another, and somewhat slowly, throughout the various Southeast Asian lands. Vietnam is largely Mahayana Buddhist (relatively more "orthodox"), whereas the Buddhism of Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and the Buddhist regions of Indonesia is Theravada (relatively more "fundamentalist"). Islam came later, followed relatively quickly by Christianity. Both religions spread extraordinary quickly; in the first half of the 17th century, one half of the 20-million-person population of Southeast Asia converted to either Christianity or Islam. Islam came from the west, by way of trade, and by way of itinerant Sufis. Quite often, sufis converted local populations by telling them that what they were already were doing was Islam, just performed imperfectly; local religious systems were thus changed only superficially, perhaps by the addition of the Five Pillars; local spirits and deities were renamed djinni, and life went on more or less as it always had before (it wasn't until the 19th century that Sumatra got all Wahhabi). The Spanish Jesuit priests who arrived from the east, by way of the Spanish Empire in South America, were somewhat less flexible, but the Catholicism which they brought to the Philippines was not nearly as brutal as what we imagine as occurring in South America. There was something of a friarocracy, and a feudal system of land distribution among monasteries; but there was an element of counter-reform humanism that motivated the priests to try to learn Tagalog, rather than enforcing Catalan upon the locals (although they had no choice when it came to certain words that formerly didn't exist in the Philippines).
But I digress. The most amazing thing I saw at the Musee Guimet was a 2500-year-old "Dong Son" drum from Vietnam. These bronze drums, associated with water spirits, were among the earliest artifacts from Vietnam, from the region's late Bronze Age (the Greek Bronze Age ended around 1200 B.C.E., for comparison, when violent upheavals caused a lack of trade to deprive them of the necessary materials for bronze forging). When the Chinese invaded Vietnam several centuries later, they destroyed the Dong Son drums, melting down the bronze, and recasting it as a martial horse, a kind of cultural attack on the traditional Vietnamese gods. I'm glad that they didn't get this one.
My only regrets? That I didn't get to play the Dong Son drum.
~JD
"Une gratification et une pension furent promises et parfois accordees aux familles comptant de dix a douze enfants" [A bonus and a stipend were promised and sometimes even awarded to families with ten to twelve children] (Jacques Mathieu, La Nouvelle-France: Les Francais en Amerique du Nord XVIe-XVIIIe siecle, p. 68).
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