Ah, I love it when, once a month, the first Sunday rolls around because that can mean only one thing... time to check out a museum of your choice for the bargain price of... free! Yesterday, Morgen and I decided to wander our way to Musee d'Orsay and after I had a few choice words for the metro and it's lateness, I arrived.
The museum itself was formerly Gare d'Orsay and way back in the day it was a railway station until 1939, when it's platform became out of date. After that it was used as a mailing center during the war, as a home for a theatre company, a movie set, and a hotel. Then, in 1977 the government decided to convert it into a museum, where today, it holds mostly French art dating from 1848 to 1915.
Orsay from across the Seine
The Rhino out front
Because the museum was formerly a train station, the main room itself is a huge, open, bright space where most of the sculptures are on display. Then, there are various rooms that house a large collection of pre to post impressionist art. So, artists like Monet, Renoir, Van Gough, Degas, and Cezanne. I don't doubt the beauty of pieces such as
Starry Night, or the amazingness that is Monet but I thought that I would show you some pieces that I really enjoyed by aritists that you may not know.
The museum has a special exhibition on called Mystery and Glitter which is a collection of pastel pieces. I personal find work with pastels amazing. Whenever we used them in school it always seemed that you finished with more color on your arms and face than what was on the paper, but artists like Jean-Francois Millet have some pastel work that looks like it could be done in oil. The realism of pieces like his are so amazing that you sometimes have to walk right up to it before you believe it's done in pastel.
The Bouquet of Daisies by Millet
Another amazing piece was by French symbolist Odilon Redon. His work is often reflective of a world with intense spirituality and has a dream like quality to it. His use of bright colors is a nice contrast in an art gallery that is often filled with dreary oil paintings! "My drawings
inspire, and are not to be defined." Redon wrote, "They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined."
The Buddha- Redon (1904)
Sam Szafran is another more contemporary French artist that has some amazing pastels. This one is called
Lilette dans les feuillages
After wandering through the pastel collection I found that they had a really nice selection of pointilism paintings. I've always found it fascinating that with the use of primary colors in a specific pattern, an artist can create the illusion of secondary and tertiary colors. I love how, from far away, a painting can look like a photograph but as you come closer it is simply a pattern of various color blotches!
Here is a gorgeous piece by Paul Signac called The Papal Palace, Avignon (1900)
This next one is a piece by Maximillien Luce called
Le Louvre. Luce was an interesting fellow, in that, he was an anarchist, and spent some time in prison. He often depicted war scenes as well as scenes of the working class and because he was born in Paris and spent his entire life here, many of his works are Paris landscapes. Check out this site if you want to see more:
http://the-athenaeum.org/art/by_artist.php?Artist_ID=1705
Finally, I was impressed with the work of Henri-Edmond Cross and his use of color in his landscapes. This piece is called
Afternoon in Pardigon. Checkout more here:
http://the-athenaeum.org/art/by_artist.php?id=385
On the ground floor and second level, the museum also has a nice collection of sculptures. Many are by influential French sculpture Auguste Rodin, who is responsible for sculptures such as
The Gates of Hell, and
The Kiss. Perhaps less well known is Rodin's apprentice Camille Claudel. She was often the source of his inspiration, his model, and his mistress. But, she is a brilliant sculptor in her own right. A famous art critic of the time, Mirbeau wrote: "A revolt against nature: a woman genius." and that's exactly what she was. Unfortunately she never managed to establish herself as an artist in the shadows of Rodin and her talent was never fully recognized. She lived much of her life in poverty and was abandoned by Rodin after he refused to leave his wife. Claudet, poor and alone, began showing signs of paranoia and sadly, destroyed much of her work. Here is one of her pieces that survived called,
L'Age Mur (The Age of Maturity). There is an interesting commentary of the piece at
http://www.boheme-magazine.net/php/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=724, which discusses the meaning of the sculpture and whether or not it is an interpretation of maturing and time passing as the name suggests or whether in fact it is a representation of Rodin walking away from her with his wife.
Finally, here's some shots of the building itself which is, of course, gorgeous.
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