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More of The Art Tourist series:
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Tourist in Paris 2
- *Art
Tourist in Paris 3
- *Sante
Fe with the Art Tourist
- *Art
Tourist in Paris 2
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Art
Tourist a
novice in Paris,
The Art Tourist in Paris, part 1
PARIS -- Here we are -- Art Tourists in Paris, and the last thing my
companion, an artist, wants to see in Paris are the old paintings in
the Louve. They are so low on his list, that we have been all over
Paris and never set foot into the Louve. We went to see the IM Pei
pyramid, when it first opened, and saw some remarkable art without even
going inside. There was a flesh colored version of Rodin's The thinker, and it wasn’t until it
moved into the pose of Michaelango's David
that we realized it was actually a man. Then he became a Hansen
sculpture covered by a trench coat as police hauled him off for
indecent exposure.
When asked what was her favorite part of the trip to
Europe, my nine-year-old daughter said, “The Naked Man at the Louvre.”
Ha, ha, her listeners chuckle, "A painting, a sculpture?” they ask. “A
naked man,” she said, “and the police took him away.” Our Parisian
friend and guide had been very upset that this was my daughters’
foremost impression of Paris.
As a follow-up to the naked man, what is a family of
four -- the impressionable daughter and her brother, a miserable
13-year-old -- to do. Kids will not be awed by architecture, nor fancy
French food - my daughter was trying to trump us by ordering directly
with the waiter, and saying “grilled cheese sandwich, please,” instead
of the plat du jour - a terrine of trout and incredibly delicious
things. She was determined to show us that she valued American food
even if we didn’t. But the joke was on her, the sandwich Fromage Grille
arrived and voila, it was goat cheese - fragrant, cheesy and nothing
wax-like with which to annoy her haute cuisine eating parents.
So her dad -- the artist -- who can only do a
museum a day, maybe two, because of stimulation overload, decided our
next, and really only, move would be the Musee d’Orsay, and it would
tide him over and we could just hang around and get whipped cream
filled crepes and ride the metro for the rest of the day, as the kids
wanted to do.
You cannot be an art tourist is you don’t have the
Musee d’Orsay in your repertoire. It’s required -- a train station
remodeled when the French, after years of squeezing impressionist art
L'orangerie and strangling in around in other museums, realized the
tourist value of impressionist art, and decided to put it all in one
place and wow the world. They did.
The d’Orsay teases you with some early works by
Matisse that suggest you go to the Pompideau Center to see the more
modern stuff, and all that follows: DuChamp, the Abstract
Impressionists from the 50s and pop/op art from the 60s. But in the old
Gare d'Orsay is full frontal impressionism -- a room for every major
artist of the period. It feels endless.
And here is an art tourist parent trick. I asked my
kids to run around the museum like nuts and find the painting they
liked the best. They are big enough not to get stolen or trampled, so
we let them go. They would come back to us, the adults, who were
sonnambulistically following the paintings around the room looking at
everything: painting A, Renoir, painting B, Renoir. Don’t get me wrong,
this is a trance induced by the awesome, but not a kids pace. So they
move around a lot, and report back on things they think are great. My
son liked the Gates of Hell; my daughter -- the escalator. I gues naked
women paintings could not top a real, live naked man. |
M
More Out to Lunch
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