Well, obviously the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and Winged Victory are the most famous ladies of the Musee de Louvre. They weren’t the ones I enjoyed the most, though. The Mona Lisa is very difficult to even get close to, with the crowds, and poor Winged Victory stands in the hall with people rushing by her everywhere. Poor Venus is damaged, of course, as is the Winged Victory, and that limits their enjoyment a bit for me. I cringe at the very thought of anyone damaging such magnificence, or letting it deteriotate due to age and neglect. It makes me sad, even understanding how ancient they are.
The ladies I enjoyed much more were those of the gardens, the lesser known works, and the gorgeous, stunning nude sculptures that are just about everywhere. This one had so much power and energy, I just had to copy her pose.
Grace, elegance and beauty, and with dogs, too! The hound under her leg on the back was a nice touch.
The ladies who were painting, copying the masterpieces of the Louvre, were intriguing, too.
The Louvre is an exhausting place to visit — we were glad to go on a day when it was open late into the evening, and took a break mid-day to stroll the jardin de Tuileries and get sorbet:
visit the Musee de l’Orangerie, and wander some nearby streets looking at the haute couture shops, visiting Pierre Hermes and Michel Cluizel and just enjoying the beautiful day. Even so, we were quite worn out trying to take in as much as we could.
Many more Louvre and Musee de l’Orangerie photos are here.
Oh, and the Paris Museum Pass is the way to go here — skip all the lines for tickets and walk right in. With the two-day pass we skipped the lines the next day at the Musee d’Orsay and Musee Rodin too!
4 Responses
I have a love/hate relationship with museums. On one hand, I want to know everything about the pieces I’m looking at; the histories of such things are often fascinating, and the connections that art has with culture (and other pieces of art) is intriguing to me. On the other hand, I can blow through a museum in record time just by taking things in visually (rather than intellectually). I’m not sure which method is “better” (if such a distinction even exists), so I’m often conflicted when I go to museums.
Yes, Mrs. Chili, I was in a very visual mood in Paris. I don’t think I read the descriptions of anything. But a lot of that was already being familiar with the artists I wasmost interested in, I think.
With the Louvre, the entire collection is actually online, so I figured I could look it up later if I really wanted to.
I, too, have a conflicted response to art museums. It seems to me sometimes that the very act of putting a work of “art” in a museum is inimical to the nature of “art”. I don’t have an articulate explanation for that at the moment.
Hope to get a chance to enjoy that museum pass thing one day, thanks for the tip.
I think of museums as more historical than anything else; you see the history of what was considered art when. Galleries are kind of what is considered art now. For me, art is an everyday thing, whatever one creates or is inspired by. It saddens me when people are not creative, when I am not being creative myself. I feel I haven’t done “Art” for a long time, yet I post almost daily, so I AM doing art in my own way. Perhaps it wouldn’t be considered that by tohers, or even by myself, but there it is.