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Ah, August has come, and the last day of my adventure has arrived. Searching my thoughts, I find no sadness; all things are as they should be, serendipitously. I'm - so happy. Naturally, the arduous parts, I wish had gone a little better, but I can think of only two moments where I'd felt a little discouraged, and they were not long in being remedied either. Every minute of every day was enjoyable, and the days have been kind to me. And how beautiful the feet of those who are sent - most of the people I've met have been decent and hospitable, even warm.
Today was probably the most relaxed day I've had while out here, and it's a nice way to end. Capping it with the Musee d'Orsay was probably the best planning decision I've made, however fortuitously. It's a beautiful, simple museum in itself - five floors, two of them mostly structural, and the whole simply laid out in a large rectangle, but not so plainly as to be like an exposition floor. This museum's travelling exhibit was to be start of my love for art, when it came to Singapore. My first moment of awe was in seeing Cabanel's The Birth of Venus - a lovely nude woman lain on the waves; and I was also struck by the painterly sensitivity of Hans Thoma's Siesta, of the delicious sunlight falling over the trees and on the meadow. Well, crazily enough, that first exhibit also had Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night over the Rhone, to my mind the first great piece of art I'd seen. The play of the various lamplights over the slipping waves, the dark, deep blue of swirling night, and the soft blooms of starlight glimmering over the darkness. The one kept in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Starry Night, would be famous for its brazen curls of yellow moonlight and evening cloud over the dark, sleepened landscape.
The famed impressionists! The past couple weeks of Rome, Firenze and the Louvre had mostly early 15th and 16th century classical and renaissance paintings, which you know, is awe-inspiring but not terribly soul-inspiring for a twentieth century man such as myself; although I certainly had my moments, especially with Andrea Del Sarto's Christ as the Man of Sorrows. But the religious iconography and all that, I mean, it takes so much effort to be steeped in that culture, to appreciate it as more than just "old stuff" - I wince as I say that. Well, even for me, that old stuff is hard. And in comparison, the Orsay had all the great painters I know and love, you know? Every work here deserves at least fifteen minutes' contemplation, not that I could have physically done that. I simply had to breeze by at some points, stopping here and there, and correct myself by returning to certain rooms.
The crazy thing is that most of these artists were rejected out of hand - they were simply deemed too sloppy by the old standards, too spontaneous in light and colour, too sentimental, too vulgar (as in vulgus, or common). Why would you paint simple farmers and watery landscapes and, for goodness sake, nude commoners when the whole idea of high art is to draw vast and visionary pictures, to give tribute to God and his great works, and the high Greek and Roman ideals and allegories? Well, all that sort of wishy-washy art was brought into a sort of underground movement, defended by Degas and Renoir, among others, and allowed to flourish by Napolean III in a newly established, aptly-named Salon des Refusés. Certain criticisms included: "Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that [Monet] seascape." Women as well were invited to join, including one Berthe Morisot, later the sister-in-law and close friend of Edouard Manet. Manet is, I think, my favourite painter - he paints so plainly and so expressively, so caringly. A whole room was given to Manet, and a short term gallery of six rooms to Morisot. Cezanne had one, Pisarro, Monet, etc. Well, I had a ball of a time. All these wonderful painters, and so much of them! Oh, my dear and esteemed painters.
Okay, so I managed to finish up around five thirty. Well, I went home and had pasta and sausages, and went out for a jaunt to buy some souvenirs. I realised that there was a nicer supermarket, a carrefour near my place, where I could have been getting much better supermarket fare, ah the deuce. Well, I walked into a department store type place which had a whole level just for food and snacks. It was wonderful - La Grande Epicerie. So I got some mini paninis with olives, gingerbread with caramel and pistachio flavoured madeleines to bring back. Supper was mostly the same, with wine. Ah, the gentle peasant life.
Well, what a simply lovely way to end. The weather was nicer too, for a summer. On the whole, I think the schedule might have been taxing for anyone else, and being alone, I wouldn't have had to worry about soldiering on. Soldiering on was just right for me, actually, I don't like not having anything to do, and having to improvise too much would have been more tiring than following a regimented sort of plan. Well, perhaps I will look forward to travelling with companions in the future. But perhaps not in the heat of summer! Ciao, Italia! and au revoir, Paris.
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I spent (in EUR):
8 - food
15 - Musee d'Orsay
26 - two calendars of Van Gogh's work
26 - paninis, gingerbread and madeleines
52 - apartment in Duroc
329 - flight on Etihad Airways from Paris to Singapore, stopping over in Abu Dhabi
