BAM MAM!

The MAM is the Musée d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, and the MAM is awesome.  Both the collection and the traveling exhibits were very cool.

There were lots of things I'd never seen or heard of before:  An artist who makes images appear out of layer upon layer of gloppy, random-looking dollops of paint.  An owl motif running through one exhibit.  An installation that looked like a giant Popsicle-stick house made with rowing oars and bowling balls.

Delphine Coindet, Cosmos

A dark room with a black box in which tiny pin holes light up like orbiting constellations.  A whole section with works from a school called SMS (Shit Must Stop) that included, ironically, Paul Steiner's "Johns in Art Galeries," a series of index cards describing toilets that includes "small, but definitely has atmosphere. EAST HAMPTON"

Steiner, Johns in Art Galeries

(image taken from Washington University in St. Louis' Kemper Art Museum) 

In the basement there is a very strange video installation by Turkish artist Inci Eviner.  Tiny images of dogs, playing cards, cancan-ing legs, belly dancers, buildings, fires, stacks of people, people wearing gray jogging suits and blue plastic dog-cones, doing repetitive actions play over and over to music made of the sounds of whistling, the cheering of a crowd, dogs barking, clapping, and a guitar playing.

Inci Eviner, Broken Manifestos

Looking for a museum off the tourist-beaten path?  Try this one.

Amusée par Art Moderne,
Maria

Guernica

In Madrid, I spent a day just seeing art.  I imagine I could have spent a week there seeing art and not have seen it all, like I could in Paris.  The best seeing, in my opinion, is to be had at the Reina Sofia, which houses modern and contemporary art. Its most famous resident work of art is without a doubt Picasso’s Guernica.

Guernica is a piece of art with a big bad rep.  I’m not a huge fan of Picasso and I don’t think seeing Guernica really changes that.  However I cannot pretend that seeing it was not surprisingly emotional. 

First of all, the painting packs a punch because it is enormous.  Second of all, it gave me the chills.  Maybe that was because I know its history, maybe not.  When I looked at pictures of Guernica, I felt like the painting was committing violence against me, but in person, it was the painting and not me that was the victim: the world was covered in ash; color was dead, killed along with sunlight and gentle touches.  

Perhaps what I’m about to say is silly, because after all Picasso does have a habit of abstracting reality so an abstract image is nothing new, but there’s half a woman engulfed in flames, reaching up in pain on the far right of the painting, and when I thought, “Where’s the rest of her body?” it almost made me cry.

I had to leave the museum after that and go sit in the sun.

A witness,

Maria

L'Orangerie

One of my favorite cures for the blues, or the grays, or even the angry reds is a trip to the Musée de l'Orangerie.  It might be my favorite place in Paris, and by extension, the world.  The museum holds lots of good art by artists that I like a lot, but the only reason I go is for the Nymphéas.

Monet's Nymphéas, or Waterlilies, live on the ground floor of the museum.  Natural light filters down to them through the old greenhouse's glass roof.  The eight paintings are hung in two ovular rooms that together make an infinity sign.  Somehow the space itself becomes liquid and refreshing; it makes me want to be alone and quiet.  It is beauty, distilled.

In front of my favorite panel.

Floating,
Maria

Frida + Diego

On an afternoon foray out of the ultra-touristy Sultanahmet district, I saw a beautiful exhibit at the Pera Museum, not of Turkish art, but of the works of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

I like Diego Rivera just fine - he had a real way with calla lilies - but, I kind of love Frida.  Why?  I love the honesty of her exploration of self, I love the mysticism of her art and her persona, I love that she was a woman who was a force of nature, I love her outfits and her unabashed portrayal of her traditionally unfeminine facial hair.

Portraits of Frida taken by Nicholas Murray, her longtime lover.

I'm already planning my Frida Kahlo costume for Halloween 2011.  The Pera Cafe was also outstanding - all leather chairs, cerulean banquettes, and warm chadeliers, A+ hot chocolate, too.

Un Frido,
Maria

Diaghilev

We went to the V&A (Victoria and Albert) to see an exhibit on Diaghilev, the creator of the famous Ballets Russes.

Basically the exhibit was excuse to show the most magnificent ballet costumes : hand-painted silks, futurist creations, diaphanous tutus, richly embroidered maharaja's suits, ikat togas and tiny shoes.  They almost conjured the scenes of Léon Bakst, the music of Stravinsky, the skill of Najinsky.

Videos of a 1964 re-imagining of Les Biches the cocktail party scene from "The Graduate" turned musical dance number.

I fell in love with the drawings Jean Cocteau did of the dancers with their shadow-deep eyes and feathering hands.

Projectors played a performance of Firebird larger than life on the walls of one room; the outline of a ballerina danced against backgrounds of art and fire.

In the museum store, I found funkily-printed silk shirts that almost made me break my rule about not wearing clothes sold by museums.

My heart dances - does that count?
Maria

More Tate, Please

I won't go on about the Tate again, though I could, but I just wanted to share this one thing that ignited my imagination during my last visit:

John Latham, Film Star 1960
Books burned around the edged that can be opened to differently colored pages.  The day I was there is was opened to a neon yellow-chartreuse, making the books look like lightening bugs.

Chasing things that glow,
Maria

Artsy Fartsy

Today was the first gray, rainy day of many, I'm sure.  It was a perfect day for a visit to the Musée des Beaux Arts.  Our tour guide was Jean-Paul, a wildly-gesturing whirligig of a Frenchman.

Jean-Paul : man, myth, legend

If he had spoken with a little more enthusiasm, I think his mustache would have taken off and carried him, helicopter-like, through an open window into the great blue yonder.

Donc, je vous présente un ode à Jean-Paul :

Also in the Musée, a four-hundred-year-old wooden fireplace.  Think about it.

I was incredibly stirred by the work of Olivier Debré.

Gros bisoux,
Maria