It’s 11 a.m., and I sit in the Place d’Italie Metro station in Paris, France. Tourist that je suis, I could’ve boarded a car a minute ago, but wasn’t certain it was the right one. It was. I’ll have to wait for the next train.
I’ll manage. All I need to do is look like I’m busy, occupe, and I don’t think anyone will bother me. And I look busy by looking, I don’t know, sort of annoyed. Remember that episode of Seinfeld, where George convinces people he’s busy by always looking annoyed when they walk into his office? Well, I’ve taken that to heart--I walk around here with a sour look on my face, in the hope I don’t look like an American tourist but an ordinary Frenchman with a looming work deadline. Last year the cute waitress at Caribou Coffee said I look “European,” so maybe I’m blending in.
And I’ve found myself a nice little prop--a French newspaper. I carry it with me, and when I sit in the subway station and write in Le Monde’s margins, perhaps anyone watching thinks I’m doing a crossword puzzle. What they don’t know is that I’m writing these words you’re reading now.
Or maybe I flatter myself, thinking I’m so important and so noticeable that every Parisian grifter is obsessed with every move I make. I guess I read too many horror stories on the web the past six months.
(And, by the way, I get a mild joy from reading the signs in the Metro tunnels--or, rather, understanding a few words.)
It’s 2:35 p.m., and I’m in the RER station at Gare Austerlitz, waiting to allez to the Orsay. I had planned on visiting the Louvre aujourd’hui, as I thought it was open until 9:45 on Friday; however, I consulted my guidebook one last time and discovered I was wrong--don’t know where I had read that before. So I should have at least a few hours at the smaller Orsay, and, if that isn’t enough, I’ll go back.
(By the way, I know it’s d’Orsay, but isn’t Musee d’Orsay translated as “Museum of Orsay,” so saying “the d’Orsay” would be saying “the of Orsay” in English?)
I enjoyed the Tour Montparnasse this morning. Wonderful views of Paris. I love the architecture of this city, the diagonal streets and buildings that fit right in.
(Here’s a pic I took, looking toward Sacre Coeur. The one at the top of the page was also taken from the roof of the Tour Montparnasse.)
Hey. It’s 9 p.m., and I’m in my hotel room.
L’hotel is situated against a small street, Rue Buffon, and across from my window is, I guess, the paleontology section of the National Museum of Natural History. When it’s light outside, I can easily peer from my third-floor perch into the giant windows and see dozens and dozens of skeletons--dinosaurs, primates, saber-tooths.
This evening, as the first signs of night crept into the streets, I opened my hotel room window, leaned outside, and, in this relative solitude, I watched the people on the street below. One dude rode a bike and held another bike beside him, so he rolled four wheels down the street. And I saw a pretty young femme, dressed in black, curvy European butt--big and slender all at once. “Oui, oui, indeed,” I whispered. Only the pigeons rule Paris more than she.
(Here’s a view of Rue Buffon from my window, taken earlier in the day.)
Okay, the Orsay. I had a little trouble figuring out which RER train to take—actually, I had trouble figuring out which line was the RER, which is the Metro but isn’t the Metro, I guess. However, I eventually figured it out, and rolled over to the museum I have looked forward to the most.
I saw some biggies on the first floor. Millet’s Les glaneuses, peasant women gathering straw, their aching backs bent, their outstretched arms throwing shadows on the ground. Mountains of hay in the distance.
Many Corots, stately landscapes of long-ago workdays, lined one of the walls.
Languages of all kinds all around me as I wandered the hallways--I recognized German, Spanish, and something Asian, maybe Japanese.
Was it the second floor where I saw a number of my favorites? I’m pretty sure it was. Some of these I may get mixed up, but I’m almost positive there was Pissarro, Sisley. Love those two, love Pissarro’s winding paths—some of which I’m certain I saw in Memphis last year--love Sisley’s street scenes that look slow but still move. And I loved a work by Bazille--poor, doomed Bazille. I read that Renoir took his death hard.
Speaking of, I found, by accident, the Renoir room. I had read earlier this year about his last important painting, The Two Bathers, in Jean Renoir’s memoir of his father. And there it was. Renoir even makes tits more lovely than lustful--no small feat in my book. Or in any guy's book.
(I hate the way that sounds: “Renoir’s memoir.")
And I saw the Young Girls at the Piano, a favorite of mine. I love the sweeping strokes of their cheeks, the smooth brilliance of the piano, the blue vase with its gobs of color which produce its explosive pattern. And either Renoir made two of those or it was on loan last summer, for I’m certain I saw it as the Met during the dazed excursion I spoke of yesterday.
And next to each other, two dancing scenes, similar to the one I saw at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston last year. I even remember the order: the more cheerful La danse a la campagne (1883) on the left, the more formal Dance a la ville (1883) on the right. Strange--the former sounds more formal, but it’s not. The chubby lady wearing a floppy red bonnet and Palmolive gloves, she sees that Auguste takes her picture, so she smiles for his camera. And in the latter, I leaned close to see how he creates the effect of a bouncy and crumply tail of the white gown—with choppy gray lines and smudges of silver in a planned here-and-there. Or maybe it wasn’t planned and I just don’t get it.
(Here they are.)
Monet and Degas were well represented in adjoining rooms.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Gauguin, who fits in here in time only. Crazy self-portraits and the exotic Arearea, sexy Polynesian girls with stumpy arms sitting Indian-style behind their rusty dog, which sniffs the ground.
Then I made it to the fifth floor, the museum’s place to be, and be they were. Just some of the highlights…
Manet had many excellent works there. Three that stood out: Berthe Morisot au bouquet de violettes. I love Morisot, so it was great to see her huge eyes and pouty lips right into me; Vase de piviones sur piedouche, I looked close to see how Manet throws darkness into a leaf, how he makes the effect of a flower viewed from the side—something I have trouble with when I dabble in pastels; and L’Evasion de Ruchefort, I got as close as decorum would allow, closed one eye, took in the lines of gray and green and olive and white and swirls of blue and black, then stepped back to see how it all comes together.
Another one I enjoyed, de Chavanne’s Le Pauvre pecheur. A man in a canoe against the shore, digging for crawfish, perhaps? His bowed head, beard, closed eyes--it’s Christ-like. His wife picks small flowers on the shore as their baby naps.
(I must confess, some of these, if not all, may have been on the second floor.)
Caillebotte’s Raboteur’s de parquet, three shirtless workers stripping a parquet floor. The room is dark and musky, save for the light coming through a window and throwing a shine on an unstripped part of the floor. And, of course, a bottle of wine near the wall--they’re Frenchman, after all.
Monet again. The landscape, the Bridge at Governey, his two almost faceless umbrella ladies standing stop a flowery hill.
To be honest, I didn’t know that Vincent had a room all to himself: I always thought he was post-Impressionism. But there was a self-portrait, a vase of flowers, and melancholy old Dr. Gachet in his groovy dark blue coat, resting his head against his fist. And a coaster-makers dream, Vincent’s room at Arles. I had seen it so many times--in gift shops, on cubicle walls, on my refrigerator. So it was cool to see the genuine article.
(And, here it is. A teacher lectured a class of middle-schoolers as I took this.)
And then, the next room (perhaps it was two over), the main reason I came: Renoir’s Bal du Moulin de la Galette. Everyone focuses on the two ladies leaning over the back of the bench, or the tall couple noticing the camera. And with good reason, they’re so joyous and so alive. However, as with Luncheon of the Boating Party, I marvelled at the rounding sweep of the hats, and I zeroed in on a bystanding reveler far in the background, noticed how he was made. This painting is one of those rare things that deserves every last morsel of praise it gets.
In the next gallery I ran into someone I had forgotten would be there: the mother of James McNeil Whistler, or, should I say, Arrangement en gris et noir: Portrait de la mere de l’artiste. I gazed into the white speckled pattern of the curtains.
And I doubled back and saw it all again, everything I listed and most of what I did not. Wonderful experience.
On the way back to my hotel room, I took a walk along the Seine, stopped at a few trinket stands for postcards and a fridge magnet, made sure I said “Bonjour” to the merchants, and went on my way. I felt a thrill when I saw the spires of Notre Dame rose into view when I emerged from beneath an overpass.
(Something like this…)
I could’ve hit an RER stop, but I decided to take a walk in the part of the Latin Quarter near the Seine. I strolled from the Pont des Arts Bridge to the Cardinal Lemoine Metro stop. Tons of quaint cafes, restaurants, flower shops. No hucksters or pickpockets (at least none that targeted me), just Parisians going about their evening. I think I need to mellow out about the whole pickpocket thing.
I love the architecture here, the way a large apartment is built into the curves of the street. Or is it the other way around? That’s some of the best views, just walking through the neighborhoods, and admiring the slanted, white four-story building where Parisians rest when they are not bustling through the streets of one of the most-famous places on earth.
