Free museum day

Last sunday was free museum day, and given my tight purse strings these days, I planned to take full advantage of it. The day got off to a slow start. I got out of bed at 10 instead of the planned 9, but I managed to get out of the house relatively quickly and went directly to Musee d'Orsay. Imagine for a moment if all of the Star Wars movies were released at the same time, with the same amount of hype, for the first time. What you are imagining, with some slight demographic adjustments, resembled the line in front of the Orsay. I've seen the museum a hundred times, and I find the impressionists a bit boring anymore. Plus, I can go later in the week. So, needless to say, I quickly opted for Plan B.

The Delacroix museum wasn't too far from the Orsay. I walked right in with no line only to find that all the lovely pictures of the naked women in Turkish baths were replaced with paintings by another man altogether, of horses, battles, and people on horses heading into battle. The most hilarious of them, to me, was a portrait of a white horses head, as if it were a beautiful lady. I couldn't help but wonder if this man loved his wife (if he had one) as much as he clearly loved that horse.

So, I thought I had learned my lesson to stick with the smaller museums to avoid lines. I am nothing if not open to new experiences, and my little book listed plenty of small museum featuring some obscure artist not mentioned in any of my art history classes in college. I began my hike south towards the Musee Hebert because it looked like it was close by. Along the way, of course, I was distracted by the farmers' market. It was gorgeous and amazing, as farmers' markets tend to be, and made me feel deeply sad for days of farmers' markets gone by when we bought peaches and the weather was better, etc. When I finally found the elegant building which housed the Musee Hebert, it was closed for "work" (literal translation).

I am always delighted when I can use my Carte Orange unexpectedly -- I rode the metro back towards to center of Paris and began looking for the Conciergerie where kings lived and lots of people were imprisoned before being guiotined (sp?). The most famous of which is Marie Antoinette, whose table napkin, among other things, is on display. (It's just a plain white napkin like you might use in a decent restaurant.) They have several mediocre wax models, the ceiling is volted in the usual gorgeous manner, and I am not surprised that after 400 visits to Paris, I only just saw this site.

I was torn about whether to give the Louvre a try or go directly to the Centre Pompidu (which closes much later than the others) but my feet were already rather tired, and I was sure there would be a long line at the Louvre. I proceeded to the Pompidu to see their recent acquisitions and perminant collection. First, I must observe that the Pompidu restaurant looks totally burning man inspired. Strange, silver, asymetrical "pod people" structures are placed throughout the large room. A single red rose decorates each white plastic table, and elegantly-dressed, long-fingered and -limbed patrons chat pleasantly below techno music.

I don't know what art is supposed to be about, or what it is about when it moves me, but the recent acquisitions are all about color, light, material, time, sound, and space -- the fusion of technology and its subsequent consciousness into a 4-walled gallery space. Maybe art doesn't have to be about anything. Maybe it can just be nice to look it or emotionally evocative. These thoughts bothered me for some time before I realized that all this contemporary art is just too self-conscious for my tastes. ("It depends on what your definition of 'is' is.") And actually, the architecture and graphic design stuff was fascinating. Maybe art needs limits, a tether, for me to be able to relate to it, whether the tether is convention or use.

Upstairs (and there is not escalator) are the older, better works. So, you have to work for it, and might not even have energy for it by the time you find it anyway. A man held his baby up to a bronze scupture of a woman's face (Braque). The baby laughed and laughed, bring light into the room, and I thought to myself, that baby really likes Braque. Later, I examined the sculpture more closely only to realize that the baby was laughing at his and his father's reflection in the side of the shiny bronze, not at anything about the sculpture itself.

After about 3 hours at the Pompidu (and 8 hours museuming) I felt myself losing touch with reality (more even than usual!). For example, let's say there was an attractive young man at the coat check. I imagined how we might meet and fall in love. Our wedding was beautiful in the Swiss Alps (because that is where his mother was born). But shortly afterwards, just long enough for me to become pregnant, he runs off with an airline stewartess. Darn him. I found myself furious while examining Giocometti. (Just an example, of course -- sorry, I crack myself up.)