Paris Finale with Waterlilies
The last few days of Paris…
On my second last day in Paris, I persuaded Fran to join me in visiting the catacombs. The tunnels started with a tight spiral staircase, which opened onto the remains of a quarry. There was a small space where someone had made a sculpture from the rock into a miniature city! What a way to spend your lunch break! The tunnels carried on and eventually we came across the walls of bones. Leg and arm bones were stacked head on, with skulls in lines creating oddly decorative patterns. I had thought this place would be creepy and have a strange feel to it, similar to what I thought Pére Lachaise would be like, but again I was wrong. The spirits were so long departed the skulls and bones were just part of the walls now.
The amount of bones was incredible though! Apparently they had been moved because the overflowing cemeteries close to the centre of Paris was becoming a public health risk. The work was done by night for years and years! It was dimly lit and the skulls gleamed like golden cobbles. It was strange, though, because I felt like I could touch the bones without feeling like an intruder or feeling bad in any way, but I felt like taking photos would be inappropriate. I took a few, to remember the place, photography wasn’t forbidden and other people were taking photos. But it didn’t feel right so I only ended up with four.
There was one area in the place which had apparently been used in sort of macabre events where poets and artists and musicians snuck in and held a private party in the spooky setting! In this part there was a pillar that had been covered in skulls, and the tunnel opened up into a reasonably sized space. Apparently the people who had let in the visitors had been sacked. Guts.
A shop I saw that same day caught my fancy enormously! Ever since I watched ‘Mirrormask’ and possibly even before then, I have been in love with the Venice carnival and its masks. They are beautiful! I love the style of them, not disneyfied (lol) or stylized in the normal Western way, but in their own mysterious Venetian way which seems to have much more history and enigma. I love them! Plus they use gold a fair bit haha. Anyway, back to the story, we came across an amazing shop filled to the ceiling with Venetian masks! There was glittery jewellery as well, and the room glowed with warm golden light, it was beautiful! The lady of the shop allowed me to take one, and only one, photograph. Right in the centre of my photo is a mask which hung from the ceiling, crowned with glorious black feathers exactly like one of the masks in that movie.
That evening was the late night of the Louvre, so we went back for me to visit the Napoleonic Apartments which I could not find last time. Gosh, what a rich guy! Every room was so ornate! There were numerous chandeliers, and the walls were rich colours of crimson or teal, some of them patterned with silky looking embellishments. The ceilings were lined with gold, as were the doorways and everything else, and each was painted like the Sistine Chapel.
When I got to the dining room I found myself behind a group of people. When I say dining room, it was one of many. This one had an enormous long table which must have sat at least fifty people. There was about three glittering chandeliers and golden pillars. The lady in front of me wanted her photo taken with the dining room in the back ground, so I politely waited for my turn to be able to see the room. The lady’s friend, however, had the brains of a flea, and could not figure out how to press the big, shiny button that takes the picture. You know when it says point and click, that’s exactly what it means! Ah well, eventually I got a chance to see the place, only to suddenly find someone back to back with me! I got such a shock and turned around; I was not expecting someone to be touching my back and ass right at that moment. When I turned I realized it was a woman. She was having her picture taken in front of the massive dining room. What the hell?!? I was in that flipping photo!? Why!? I could only imagine these women wanted to pretend they were rich enough to have such a massive dining room. Haha Yes, that’ll do me. ‘If you have a dining room like this, call the number at the bottom of the ad and I will come to you!’ Gees…women..
Before we left Paris on February 20th, Fran and I visited the Orangerie gallery. The morning was gorgeous, with the Siene softly lit with pink and blue. The attraction of the Orangerie is Monet’s famous ‘Waterlilies’. Monet is one of Fran’s favourite artists, and since seeing him in the Musée D’Orsay, I now fully appreciate his genius. In this gallery there were two rooms on the top floor, each was circular with diffused natural lighting. Around the walls were Monet’s long narrow paintings. Each one worth five minutes’ perusal at least. His colour sense is just incredible! I cannot imagine what it must have been like to have his eyes! To see all the colours that he could… It would be amazing, although I suppose you can train yourself to see more colours than usual. Except these days I suppose Monet would have got a migrane rather a lot from seeing the colours advertisers use to grab our attention. If he looked so intensely to see the purples and ochres in white, imagine what it would be like to step into a supermarket…
It’s amazing when you begin to recognize the ‘hand’ of an artist. Some are really easy to recognize, like Van Gogh, but others are more difficult. I think Monet is pretty easy, but I was amazed by the ease of his hand. His lines are so energetic and yet gentle! Every one is like a lyric in a song, which links perfectly to the next and melts into the whole to create a masterpiece. And while working so closely, with such detail to the movements and colours, he still manages to step back and keep the lilies and reflections making sense and not getting tangled up in themselves.
In the lower section of the gallery were even more paintings, many works by Cezanne and also some by Soutine and other French artists. Ah!
As we left I bought a pack of cards…
And then it was off back to England, and now to explore London! Exciting times await, but for now – Ciao! xoxox
