Man, what a day. Well, since I wasn't going to the Louvre at the original time of nine am, I decided to head out to the Picasso museum. You know, that dude is a little weird, a little bizarro, and I say that with true esteem. His quotes profess that he sees things in terms of their essential forms, lines, shapes and volumes, he tries to picture the essential egg - the term he uses to describe the inner essence - of each character, and then flesh out into the true portrait by adding the superficial lines and textures; but pausing at the artistic moment, thus furnishing his work. The world and all that is in it are shapes, intersecting lines and angles, abstract curves and surfaces, interconnected facets; and yet somehow it comes together on the canvas, the whole dysfunctionality captivates. It's not immediately a work that lends itself to visual appreciation, it's not beautiful, but it shines with a different sensitivity, its own beauty in spite of asymmetry and unnaturalness. It has its own special sensuality, sense of self-awareness and purposeful identity. It's so hard to explain - it's almost a deeper, elemental metaphysic which still charms the viewer enough, invites him/her to relax his own norms of appreciation. It's also not ridiculously post-modern, which to me is often more anti-art for its own sake. But perhaps that is harsh. In any case, it was almost a sort of relief to leave Picasso behind, and return to the more recognisable types of art in the Louvre.
Well, as I was walking through the Louvre today, it kinda occurred to me, hey, that's my third Cezanne today. That was pretty funny: what a preposterous attitude. Yeah, I should have been trying harder with Cezanne. His is a sort, if I may be so bold, his is a sort of splotchy melded textures in the way he depicts surfaces. It looks a little like every surface has a sort of patchy liquid sheen, swathes of strokes blending into each other to depict the play of light over rough surfaces, rocks, roads, trees, walls and buildings all have their own magical coat of interweaved colours. Well, the way he does shadows and the edges is magnificent. Up close, it doesn't seem to work, like why would anyone put a dash of purple there next to the brown, blue next to beige, green next to white, but you know, you take a few steps back, find a sweet spot at medium range before the whole picture, just before it becomes an icon, and the image simply forms, with all its painterly charm intact - perfect. It's magic, simply magic.
Breakfast was pasta with curry sauce. I put in too much salt. That was lame. Anyway, it was ok. After the Picasso, I went out for lunch at the famous Paul Bert Bistrot. It had a set going for twenty two euro, which was okay. I think it was good for value, not like the one I had in Firenze, but still it was worth the cost. Starter was zucchini with sour salad, main was mashed potatoes with fish and crispy bread, and the dessert was raspberry sorbet with a delightful honey crispy biscuit. I could have had steak for the main, but I didn't feel particularly like having steak. And the mashed potatoes were very tasty and sufficiently filling. I packed a little of the bistrot's bread with me for a snack in the Louvre. That really helped later on, actually. I even bought another chicken baguette for tea.
The Louvre is a really big place, well, that almost goes without saying. It's actually slightly confusing in its layout. I want to say it seems to have three nicely separated wings, each with different portions dedicated to different segments of art history, but it wasn't easy knowing where one floor started and another ended. Well, it had the same sort of decorated ceilings that the Chateau de Vesailles did, having itself been a royal palace at one point, but unfortunately I didn't pay too much attention to the ceilings. Anyway, yeah, I really liked the ancient art on display, the Egyptian artifacts, the ancient Middle East, Babylonians and Persians, the ancient Greeks stuff. That was actually all very exciting. Hieroglyphic writing, cuneiform script, it really blows me away, stuff that freaking ancient that was once part and parcel of everyday life. A little edict from a king to his courtiers, a little religious diatribe from a priest to his servants. Naturally, the museums had translations of those languages, mostly in french - and isn't it amazing that there exist people in this world that can read this stuff, understand the whole syntax of the pictures and the grammar of the scripts? Well, these things are so old that most of the stuff is reconstructed around the original fragments. Some have survived for four thousand years. I can't even say that figure without feeling awe, four thousand years of bloody, awful, irreplaceable human history.
The Mona Lisa was okay. I thought the copy of Da Vinci's Leda and the Swan was better, and his John the Baptist was a lot more expressive, the whole intriguing smile and secretive gesture. And the whole Louvre being that big, gee, it was just walking past the masters like Delacroix, Ingres, Raphael, Cezanne, Sisley, Rubens, Titian, David, like it was nothing, you know. And the Louvre is my fifteenth museum on this trip, counting cathedrals and palaces. I've been true all this time to my word - I love museums. I've been stuffed with art, but I'm not in peril of losing the thrill of seeing art. Well, my favourite today was David's portrait of Madame Verninac, who as it turns out, is the elder sister of Delacroix. It's just a perfect painting, it's simply flawless, so warm, so delicate, so sensitive, so beautifully painted in the light and shadow of her curves, the folds of her garments. It's so whole, so perfect.
Well, tomorrow is going to be a little more perfect. The final boss, the Musee d'Orsay. In some ways, the starting place; my first love for art began with the exhibition they had at the National Museum. Goodnight.
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I spent (in EUR):
15 - Picasso museum
22 - Paul Bert Bistrot lunch
6 - train
4 - supporting a classical ensemble in the metro
6 - baguette
20 - Louvre
52 - apartment in Duroc
