Mumbling Madly

The D’Orsey is the gentle younger sibling of the Louvre. It houses the later works, the more impractical impressionists, the smooth easy-on-the-eyes Art Nouveau, and a single work of Gustav Klimpt (a practical flower painting versus the trademark voluptuous redheads I had hoped to see). There are reproductions done by Rodin of his own sculptures, black and white photography from the turn of the 20th century (an installation), and old pieces of marble building hanging from the ceiling.

For some reason I keep calling this museum the D’Orlee…I can not put D’Orsey in my brain and have it stick. However, I was so hell bent on seeing a Klimpt that I returned on my own two days after my own visit. I walked there, photo-copied map in hand, all by myself feeling very French. On the way there I spotted the most painfully obvious Americans: bright white sneakers, polar fleece (a material I never once saw in Europe), and big cameras hanging from their bulbous necks. They stumbled in front of the cannons guarding the military museum, their hands flapping around, their large English words shouting to each other. (”At least I don’t stand out like them,” I snottily thought to myself, a true Parisian).

I slipped past the lines and flashed my handy four day museum pass. I put my purse in a tray and handed it to the screener while I went through the metal detector. It started beeping and I embarrassingly dumped out several heavy 1 and 2 Euro coins from my pockets and into the tray. “Parlevous Francais?” the security asked, he had been speaking to me but must have realized I wasn’t listening to him accurately. I shook my head, ‘no,’ and inside I thought, “He thinks I speak French!”

When I had gone with my parents, my mother and I had gone straight to the fifth floor, (sans Dad of course) looking at the most recent work. We saw a few weird jungle paintings from the turn of the century mixed with Pointillism , a series of dots creating an image. I stuck my nose as close to the painting as I dared, staring at the little points that made up a circus performer riding a pony around a ring. I carefully aimed my camera, and crap! The flash went off! I received a horrible look from a fellow museum patron who had one of those audio tours stuck to her ear like a leach. I apologized and disappeared into the dark rooms that housed the pastels–which are quick to fade and always sheltered in dim light.

Impressionism was gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. I cheered when I saw Degas’ “Little Dancer of Fourteen Years;” Look at her real little hair ribbon, the gentle tufts of her real tutu, and the casual way she stands in a lax fourth position. I devoured Degas, especially his dance sculptures, the famous paintings of ballerinas at rehearsal, and his self portrait oddly facing away from the viewer. You could tell, you could really tell that he had been sitting and observing dancers. Missing was the cheesy, bad, posed ballerinas one sees over and over in everything from poster art to graphic design. I can’t tell you how much I despise the terrible dancer tableau of a girl in a tutu balanced precariously on a turned in foot while her back leg is bent in an anatomically impossible position. Instead Degas sculpted the image of a dancer checking the back of her foot–something you see all the time in dance class–repeatedly. And he got it right! Again and again…

Monet paints flowers, and women with parasols, and people having picnics. I thought he would be a little edgier but must have confused him with the radical Manet. This man painted a naked woman hanging out at a picnic with a bunch of clothed men (“The Luncheon on the Grass“). Instead of getting all gushy and painting voluptious goddesses, Manet painted a prostitute lounging in bed with a ribbon tied around her neck (“Olympia”). Dang! Even in the present day this painting is a bit shocking.

Van Gogh’s, going-crazy-portrait he painted while in an asylum was so simple and yet so fantastic: Sadly, unlike many of his fellow painters who were huge womanizers and drunks, Van Gogh was simply crazy. He famously cut off part of his ear, was epically depressed, and shot himself in the chest at age 37 (although he didn’t realize he was fatally wounded and went back home where he died in bed two days later). If you look real closely at this painting of “Starry Night Over The Rhone” you can see each and every paint stroke:

Outside the D’Orsey I write in my journal: “I miss Josh terribly as I watch all the young couples embrace. A bunch of French teenagers lounge outside The Orly on the steps. One of them crack jokes into an enormous bullhorn. You can hear him burping from a mile away. I’m concerned he is insulting me in French when I walk by. It’s nice to know that bodily functions are funny in any foreign country.”