Paris et le Musée du Louvre

While there is more to look at in the Louvre than almost any other building, scenes outside occasionally appear and capture your attention...

Deux jours au musée du Louvre

Our Paris cards were good for Sunday and Monday, and we decided to spend both days at the Louvre. I think we have now graduated to the class of hard-core museum-goers: less than a day would have seemed like torture, and less than two certainly painful. We had fortified ourselves the past couple weeks watching art history videos again, especially Richard Brettell's Museum Masterpieces: The Louvre, from The Great Courses. And, of course, we--especially Vicki--have been there before. Lots of times. So, accordingly, this will not be my first post on the Louvre. Others will have appeared in 2009 and 2012, some before that. For now, I'll try to stick to just a few personal favorites and a whole bunch of curiosities and out-takes, leaving the rest to Google Art.

Venus was still there but Sam
O'Thrace was away for renovation
or whatever; Delacroix's Liberty 
was back from Lens, as was the
marble Hermaphrodite...

David's sketch of General Bonaparte, 1796

Assassination of Marat: love these historical works that
themselves become historic

Millett; easy to see why Van Gogh (and others...Proust) liked his work

Ingres' study of hands for...

His Apotheosis of Homer, with its embedded portrait of Poussin; in a museum
of this size, you come to look for connections among the works, the artists, etc.,
sometimes leading you pretty far off the beaten track...

For example...on the ceiling somewhere, I noticed this interesting depiction
of a pope, an architect, an artist...Vicki immediately recognized Julius II,
which led us to see Bramante, Rafael, and, oh yes, Michaelangelo brooding
over there on the right; the plan for the church is not quite right, since
Bramante's St. Peter's was to be a Greek cross, not the cruciform depicted...
but I digress

I spent quite a bit of time, as before, sitting in front of
Watteau's enigmatic Pierrot; all the more enigmatic
considering what he mostly painted--happy elites in
happy times for elites, before the Deluge--somehow this
clown speaks to me; we are all clowns, and it's not always
fun; ecce homo

One of my other favorite paintings, Giorgione's Fete Champetre, also pretty
enigmatic, and also nested deeply in the history of art and the history of this
museum; they say Manet walked by the Fete Champetre daily...and came up
with Le déjeuner sur l'herbe

In the Claude Lorraine room; thinking of Turner...

Alas, I took half a dozen pix before I saw the "no fotos!" sign;
sorry; but, damn, he was good (and one of many artists copying
these two days)

Francois Premier (as John the Baptist), founder of the
Louvre and its first great collector (he collected Leonardo,
and therefore Leonardo's unsold works too)

Hubert Robert's 1796 depiction of the grand gallery; the Louvre and its
collections were now public property...

Not pictured department: apart from this Medieval Islamic glass, 300,000 other
artifacts; we spent a good deal of time looking at the antiquities, the objects of
art (household goods, as I call them), sculpture, etc.; as always, we were
transfixed by Van Eyck's Virgin and Chancellor Rolin and bowed before Durer's
first self-portrait...

Plus out-takes

Sellin' baguettes, hand over fist, near the Marche d'Aligre; they were all gone
a few minutes later

A foosball game--as we Americaines might call it--in a public park in Saint-Antoine,
one of two; not vandalized

Lady on stilts at Marche d'Aligre

Closer up

Kid-shaped hamburger patties

Cafe Purple...somewhere in the 11th

Le mort d'un pigeon, episode trois; la mort de pigeons!; OK, it's a running gag;
sort of

Gendarmes gearing up near the Bastille; turns out they were probably an escort for
QE2, who was in town

Another secluded alley in Saint Antoine

This in an alley leading to a warehouse, in the10th

Clean-up after a neighborhood market

Adjacent to the Bibliotheque Nationale

By the Metro at Denfert Rocherau, an Aussie restaurant (!); which occasions the
following digression: I have diligently researched the matter and discovered that
Paris, the gastronomic and taste capital of the world, has no New Zealand
restaurant; it has Senegalese and Ivory Coast and restaurants of every other nation
and culture one can imagine; Parisians and visitors are thus missing an important
cuisine and ingredients...Bluff oyster, whitebait, green lip mussels (God, how they
are missing these!), great lamb, and some of the world's better sauvignon blancs
and other wines; not to mention authentic Maori cooking, Polynesian flavors and
techniques; someone of means and imagination needs to found ...Le Kiwi...I would
be pleased to advise...and taste...

Checking out the action over at the Bibliotheque Nationale

One last look at the Vespacienne on Boulevard Arago...I think it needs to be moved
now to the historical museum of Paris, the Carnavalet; isn't it amazing how you live
somewhere merely for a month and already have all these wonderfully great ideas
and suggestions?!

Une promenade dans le 13ème et 14ème arrondissements, avec un arrêt à la bibliothèque nationale

Our Friday walk had some obscure goals: the purchase of an obscure souvenir and the finding of an obscure, not to say, unique, sight. The former took us into the 13th, with an enjoyable side-trip to the impressive national library, and the latter further into the 14th, through more areas not likely seen by tourists.

Our first stop was at one of the offices of the Paris water works, where they sell
marvelous carafes for each of the 20 arrondissements; we thought an 11th
arrondissement carafe would be cool...

Alas, the boutique was closed ("c'est exceptionnel!"), but we did get to look
at an interesting display of cartoonists' takes on water pollution

Thus; flippable art; most of it not very kind to the US, but
then, what did you expect?

We moved on to the vast Bibliotheque Nationale Francois
Mitterand, another exemplar of new architecture and new
Paris, where we hoped to reconnoiter the Ete 14 exhibit for
future visitors

In the bookstore, the audio version of Proust's In Search of  Lost Time has been
marked down

Does the Library of Congress have an espace pique-nique?

Raisinettes, anyone? In the concession area of one of the mega-theaters adjoined
to the library; note the neon display, unthinkable in the US

Outside view; the whole area has been raised 3-4 stories above the original ground

The entire complex consists of 4 sky-scrapers (here are two
them), with connecting multi-level buildings, all surrounding
a sizable little forest

Another of the BNF towers

On the plaza, looking at more of the amazing architecture

Walking further on, under an elevated Metro we later took
from Denfert Rocherau back to Nation

And the 19th century Ionic capitals on its piers 

They love jazz here, always have

And Satchmo gets a very nice little park among the high-rises

Now walking on the beautiful Boulevard Arago

By all manner of interesting shoppes...here The Little Prince
boutique

And past the vast, historic La Sante prison 

Finally reaching our goal--"our quest is at an end"--the last,
the very last, of Paris' famous pissoirs, or Vespaciennes, as
they are more properly called; dating from 1841; we think
this is not Art Nouveau; someone else characterized it as
the Smell Epoche