Yesterday and the day before I spent most of my time at one museum or another, trying to cram in all the art-viewing within my 2 day admission pass. You might notice if you look at my flickr that I took a lot of painting photos. I'm not posting them here because I don't think anyone else really wants to look at bad pictures of random paintings - it's hard to take a good one with crowds jostling you - I took them to remind myself of what I thought was good/dumb/ugly/interesting, or had good clothes. Mostly that last one.
So the Musee D'Orsay (I am not even going to try with the accents here) is in an old converted train station, and the building is super cool.
The collection is a lot of impressionists and other art sort of around that timeframe. I really liked the painting and also their exhibit of Art Nouveau furniture. I have to say, furniture is definitely the thing that style is most suited to in my opinion. It gets kind of overdone in 2d and the buildings can be a little much for me but I do love the curvy beds & desks. I wonder does anyone make stuff like this anymore to sell, I bet you could make a shit-ton of money at it.
This is actually part of a larger theory I have that if you manufactured, say, cars, that looked exactly like the old "classic" models, and not just vaguely vintage-style, they would sell like crazy. Laurie and I were talking about this one day, making an MP3 player or Ipod case that looked like an old cassette tape. I know so many people who would eat that kind of thing up, including me.
The middle ages museum in a castle-thing on top of some old ruins, which is another good building choice.
My favorite thing about looking at middle ages stuff is when it's completely nutty, like say a drinking horn with chicken feet or a hourse with a spout.
I'm also always interested in why people from 1000 years ago in Europe had such bad posture that they couldn't even make their damn statues stand up straight.
The gallery of disembodied heads and the gallery of disenheaded bodies were in the same room.
So then it was onto the Musee des Arts Decoratifs/Musee de la Publicite/Musee de la Mode, which is like a 3-museums-in-1 deal. I hear there is a good historical collection in the fashion museum, but all they had out was a temporary exhibit of Balenciaga dresses from the early 20th century, which was boring. The Publicite exhibit also did not thrill me (as my grandmother would say.) My favorite, again, was the furniture stuff, especially an Art Deco office and a lot of other rooms put together in the complete style of one era. Unfortunately my batteries died after 3 pictures so I don't have much to look at.
Last but I do not dare to say least, I went to the Louvre. Despite dire crowd warnings it was actually not all that bad, except right around the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. And as soon as I got on a different floor, I was walking through empty rooms.
Celebrity works of art are a weird phenomenon. Why are people insane to see those 2 pieces, who otherwise couldn't tell a Leonardo from a Picasso and don't care, either? Just because they're famous, but why are they famous? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Mona Lisa isn't great, but I spent like 20 minutes looking at some other Leonardo paintings which the hordes walking by never spared a glance at, and which are just as good, important, whatever.
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that for people who are not very much into visual art, they don't know what to look at, especially in a huge museum, and even if they have a painting pointed out to them they don't know where to start with appreciating it. But with a superfamous one like Mona Lisa, they've seen it so many times it's already familiar and they understand what they're supposed to get out of it, so they do get something out of it...maybe.
Important Art Lesson I learned: No matter what you are painting or sculpting, be it religious, historical, portrait, abstract, or anything else, it is always appropriate - perhaps even necessary - to include a naked lady fondling her own breasts. Seriously. Everywhere.
So then this happened to me.
Man with Cam: Picture? (pointing at self and GF)
(I take their picture.)
Man with Cam #2, nearby: Picture?
Me: Um, you want me to take your picture?
MwC2: No, no. I take sexy video girls in Louvre.
Me: What?
MwC2: I take sexy video. In the toilet if you want!
(I laugh.)
MwC2, offendedly: Is not funny! Is not a joke!
Then he followed me around for a while until I managed to convey to him that I really didn't want to take sexy videos in the toilet. But seriously, what the hell? Is there like a market for Girls Gone Wild Louvre Edition?
Recent Comments