LiveJournal 11/23/2003

Paris Day 2
Nov 15th 7:50 AM

Yesterday was a challenge due to the 6 hour difference in time zones but we were able to get to Le Louvre in time to really explore and get lost several times. We got a chance to see the most famous pieces of artwork on Earth, The Mona Lisa, The Winged Victory, and Aphrodite. The thing I wasn’t prepared for was how surprisingly small The Mona Lisa really is. For some reason I always thought it was larger. Yesterday we enjoyed our lunch at Le Louvre, Scott and I both enjoyed a chicken & mayo baguette and a bottle of water. For dinner we stopped at this wonderful little shop in the heart of the Latin Quarter, where we had a wonderful meal and got a chance to exercise our spoken french. Everyone here is either not-bothersome or very friendly. Our waiter was wonderful and definitely re-affirmed that if you scrabble at the french language that they will honor you and let you converse later in English for speed and accuracy. It just turned 8am and I think I just heard a giant set of bells ring announcing the new day. Paris functions like every other immense city, after midnight only the most awake Parisians are out and about, and the city gets wonderfully quiet at night.

Nov 15th 10:36 AM – Musee Picasso & The Marais

In The Marais, water runs in the streets constantly. I’m noticing that my ability to understand simple french is increasing. At the Musee Picasso I saw a picture of the artist himself and I’ve noticed that his art appears to be more playful than meant to be clear to the subject. In one piece “L’Arbre” I don’t see a tree, I see fish. I think how funny it is that this entire place was constructed because of Picasso’s unpaid tax lien to France. Pablo worked in wood, boxwood, pencil, oils, and photography. I can’t help but wonder what he could have accomplished with modern implements of art-making.

Walking through the downstairs sections of the museum, I couldn’t help but notice how dark Picasso’s work became right after the war. Everything he did got blacker, more gaunt, and more desolate – as if the war was shining through his art.

Nov 15th 12:25 PM – Musee Carnavale

Touring through the relics of old Parisian artwork and associated objects I’m moved by just how over-the-top the gaud is that surrounds nearly every object. While browsing the 16th and 17 century artifacts there really isn’t any surprise why the french fermented their revolution.

Nov 15 2:40 PM – Le Benjamin Cafe

Stopped for a bite to eat and were wondering what the rest of the day holds for us. Scott is busy searching out restaurants after we do the Pompidou Center.

Nov 15th – Centre Pompidou

Some of the weakest hand driers in existence are here. The center itself is physically vast however the 1st floor is composed primarily of functional components, the second and third level are off limits while the fourth level is open to the browsing public. The fourth level provides quite a stunning quantity of modern artwork and I was very pleased with what I saw. I have to admit that my suspicions that modern artists are merely collected and prized because they are insane, dead, and wholly inexplicable. Their artwork must have some deeper meaning, but since they are dead we can only assume that they were all plugged into some higher muse and that their works should be collected, displayed, and valued.

Nov 15th – Montmartre

Shortly after the Pompidou Center, Scott and I made a quick trip around the Hotel de Ville. Then we went to Montmartre to snap a picture of the Moulin Rouge. I actually prefer the reality of the Moulin Rouge as portrayed in the past to the reality of the 21st centuries shell. Scott and I couldn’t agree on where to eat so we left Montmartre and headed back to the left bank. We had dinner in this little Italian place across the street from our hotel and while we were eating Scott told me that “Le Chat Noir” was the famous restaurant and I made the mistake of thinking it was a cover for a nookie palace because it was between a peep show and a dildo shop. While in Montmartre several guys tried to convince us to check out their all-female sex revue. HA! Anyhow, we are sitting here refusing to let our Saturday night just evaporate in Paris.

– LATER –

Well, we certainly didn’t let the night evaporate! Instead we did the gay bar jaunt and ended up walking all over Paris. We ended up at Le Pied de Cochon where we had the best French Onion Soup either one of us has ever had. At about 5:30AM we decided to walk back to the hotel since the metro was closed. The hotel opened at 6:30AM so we toured our local neighborhood. We got in finally, showered, I rested my aching feet and then planned the upcoming day. On our late night return trip back to the left bank we noticed a solitary green balloon floating down the road with us, as we were approaching Pont Neuf. Later on it appeared to cross our path on purpose so we grabbed it and took it home with us. It suddenly started to take on great meaning so we left it in the hotel room as a symbol of good luck while traveling Paris. Scott was successful later on in properly untying the balloon and safely deflating it for travel, it came with us back to the United States.

Saturday marked the first time Montmartre “kicked our ass” as it were. It took us three visits before we could discover some of the hidden beauty in that part of town. The whole time we toured Paris I realized that my sneakers weren’t quite up to the task of all that walking and I was damn lucky to have packed an extra set of gel insoles to avoid the sheer agony of all that walking about with nothing more between my feet and the hard pavement (or sometimes cobblestones). As always, we captured pictures of our journeys through Paris…

This statuary was across the street from our hotel, on Rue des Ecoles. Neither Scott nor I could determine what it meant or what its purpose was for however I did notice that this particular statue never seemed to exist without flowers being constantly stuffed in crevices and cornices surrounding the statue itself.

After walking across the river to the right bank we started our walking tour of The Marais. The streets in The Marais are very windey and narrow, harking back to an older Paris, before the grand boulevards. As the street progressed all of a sudden we discovered this little garden stuffed in a courtyard between a host of buildings. While it looked open for public use we had a determination to get to the Musee Picasso, so all we did was snap these pictures of the natural scenes deep in the heart of Paris.

This is a perfect example of the narrow streets we were walking while in The Marais section. It was during the taking of this photograph that I realized that I can’t hold a candle to the awesome skill that is Parisian parallel parking.

This is “L’Arbre”. One of the first pieces of art in the Musee Picasso that we saw after walking in the front door. All art is subjective by design, the person who sees it brings their own set of perceptions to the work and can sometimes radically alter the entire design of what was intended. In this piece I see fish, Picasso, by the title, saw a tree. It was a tie between this one and “The Guitar” that caught my attention and became my favorite pieces of artwork in Musee Picasso.

This work, “The Guitar” really caught my attention. While browsing Picasso’s work I was actively engaged with thoughts about what the art might mean and trying to hack away at a little bit of art appreciation. I instantly started creating deeper meaning to this work the minute I laid eyes on it. I saw the whole of the guitar in the wooden rod behind the canvas, the canvas itself the physical representation of the anticipation of the sound the string will make and the string in perpetual displacement as the note that can be, but will never be. I also considered that maybe the canvas was a surface between the guitarist who hides behind his instrument and the music that the string makes when the pluck is allowed to release, painting sound on a canvas and linking the visual art here with the art of the music of a played guitar. Damn Picasso for dying on us all without explaining his work! 🙂

This is the Musee Carnevale, an exterior view. This is where Paris keeps many of it’s own pieces of antiquity and artwork. What gripped me most of all here was all the gaudy gilt antiques and opulence which clearly defined the surface between the 18th and 19th centuries in Paris and why France went through a revolution.

Near the end of the tour inside Musee Carnevale is it’s beautiful courtyard garden. The sculpted hedge is visually stunning and the buildings are covered in a wonderful creeping vine. If it was possible to sneak food into the Musee, this would make for a fabulous picnic spot.

The Musee is like a lot of other Parisian art attractions, completely filled with art. This staircase is a perfect example of the art that surrounds you all the time while in Paris. Again, with many other Musee’s in the area, flash was verboten so many of my pictures had to be adjusted or amplified, which really trashes lots of the colors but brings out the finer details, such as Scott standing on the staircase.