L'art pour l'art

What is art?

This pretentious question gets bandied around college courses as often as a ping pong ball during a game of beer pong. I tend to tune out whenever someone starts distinguishing between "high" and "low" art because it seems like such a pointless discernment, doomed from the beginning. However, I found myself asking that question when in Paris.


With one of the highest concentrations of art museums in the world, it's impossible to go to Paris without taking in a painting or 2,000. Art aficionados that we are, my mother and I went to a museum or two almost every day (except the day when we decided that getting lost in Saint Germain was an art form in itself.) The Centre Pompidou (pictured above), The Musée d'Orsay (pictured below), The Musée de l'Orangerie (which contains Monet's large water lilies and for once I agree with the terrible Inez character in "Midnight in Paris," they are overwhelming to see in person.), and The Rodin Museum (although Carla Bruni wasn't a tour guide, I'm sad to report.) Consequently, the only things I can stare at for any length of time this week are bad Paul Rudd comedies.As much as I appreciated seeing Toulouse-Lautrec's sketch marks at the d'Orsay and art I couldn't even understand at the Pompidou, by the end of the trip I was walking through museums like they were a check-list. Degas's dancers, check! Tourists crowding around Van Gogh, check! I even managed to miss some of the biggest checks like Manet's "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe"- the highlight of the entire d'Orsay for my mother. I was completely missing the point as well. The temperature regulated rooms were regulating how I viewed the experience of seeing art- long lines for tickets, the irony of shoving fellow spectators to see a painting of a tranquil pond, and spending more time reading descriptions than looking at paintings.

A sampling of the Pompidou.

[This actually isn't abstract art, it's a very definable object, I just shot it this way to confuse you. Can anyone guess what this sculpture is in full?]However, the best "art work" is probably the view.

From the Pompidou's balcony, you can start to see some of the city's alternative art. Say hello to the Cheshire Cat.

However, Paris's art scene didn't end with the closure of the brothels, although I'm sure Matisse was sad. It left the squalid studios full of oil paints, misery, and disease and entered the open air. With the sunlight came a slightly cheerier disposition, a sense of irreverence, a bit of cheek. The city's graffiti introduces the humor that is lacking in the museums.
[I love the irony of such an ostentatious mural being a "secret."][This man was found throughout town. I wonder what traffic law it depicts?]
[Translate to, "look at the sky", so I did when it wasn't raining.]

[The expression tromp l'oeil is French so I guess they know what they're doing.]
[Jack Russell Terriers and pigeons are the most evident animals running throughout Paris, but the graffiti artists are turning the boulevards into a jungle.]
[Oddly written in English, but still ominous.]

Parisian artists were harbingers of some of the great artistic movements, and although this legacy must be intimidating for contemporary Parisian artists, they made a movement of their own. There's no audio guide to it, but take a turn down a picturesque alley and you'll find it. Photography is definitely allowed!


Some of the shop signs could even hang in the Pompidou.
There's almost a full zoo running across the awnings of Paris.




Of course, some may argue that a Ladurée pastry is an art form, I'm one of those people. Although, attempting to eat this thing was a fiasco.
Paris is one of those amazing cities that has such an abundance of art that you start to take it for granted. However, the real shame would be to miss the art all around you.

Paris, Je t'aime?

[You can see the Eiffel Tower from almost every part of the city. It became my compass needle, considering I lack any natural sense of direction.]

Paris. The City of Lights. The City of Love. The City that wouldn't let me in.


When I was 18, as a high school graduation and a "welcome to adulthood!" gift, I went on a trip to Paris with my parents. After eleven years of learning French in school, I was ready to test out those skills. Surely, I had absorbed some conversational French from watching "Muzzy" in class (never mind, that the French aren't fuzzy clock munching monsters). What I didn't know linguistically, I tried to make up for in culture. I created my own Parisian culture syllabi before the trip: reading Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and a biography of Coco Chanel and watching "Paris, Je t'aime","Amélie", and "Marie Antoinette" more than stills of those films are reblogged on tumblr. I understood the language and I had done my "research"; I was ready for Paris to welcome me.

[Sacré Coeur as viewed through a sculpture at the Centre Pompidou.]
However, when I was actually in Paris, I felt snubbed. Treating me like an under-dressed party guest, Paris let me into the fête, but totally ignored me when I was there. Whenever I tried to speak French, I would be quickly dressed down to English. As if the humble crêpe I wanted didn't deserve to be ordered in butchered French. Nevertheless, I persevered to see as much as the city as quickly as they did in "Paris, Je t'aime", consequently, by the end of the trip my exhausted parents resented me as much as the city seemed to. I had tried too hard and no one appreciated it, especially Paris.

[My attitude towards Paris after my first visit when I was 18 was similar to this Rodin statue.]
[Four years ago, Paris was like a sphinx's riddle, something I couldn't unravel.]

However, last year, I found myself smitten with Paris again and have Woody Allen to blame. I'm not going to yammer on about why "Midnight in Paris" is amazing, but it's proof enough that I saw it three times in theaters. It was pure fantasy that allowed me to fall in love with Paris again, while realizing it was all a romance, something I failed to do with other French films. So when my mother suggested we travel there for my Easter break last week, I said "oui!" She knew I needed an escape after the craziest two months of my college career (2 essays, 2 visitors, 2 sinus infections, 2 balls, 8 issues of the newspaper to edit as editor in chief, and 1 dissertation- add it all up and that explains why I haven't been blogging) and what's more of an diversion than a country where a cookie is a macaroon?

[Cafe de Flore's chocolate tart, which I ordered on top of their decadent famous hot chocolate, but as Edith Piaf would sing, "Non, je ne regrette rien!"]


I had no expectations for the trip other than eating my weight in pastry and attempting to take a non-cliche photo (achieved the former with daily chausson aux pommes from Angelina and you can judge the latter). I wasn't trying to woo Paris this time, but contrarily, it wooed me. As Andrea, one of my two visitors this past semester, said, "Edinburgh is very gray," so seeing the rainbow in Ladurée's macaroons or cherry blossoms punctuating the Parisian architecture cheered me and opened my eyes to how beautiful the rest of the city is.

I became as fanciful and cliche as Gil Pender: feeling inspired as I walked by Haussmann buildings, drinking wine with lunch, people watching in the Tuileries- in short, giving myself permission to just sit back and enjoy, something that was nearly impossible this semester when I existed from deadline to deadline. Paris reminded me it's okay to take pleasure in the little things instead of panicking over the big things.
And weirdly enough, I seemed to be getting respect from the Parisians for it. No one ever assumed I was American by default; maybe my trench coat, also sported by the so-chic-it's-annoying Parisians, helped. I had "un peu" of my high school French intact, certainly enough to competently order at a restaurant (and considering how much food vocab we studied in my French classes, that's really all that matters anyway). Even if they eventually switched to English, waiters approved of me trying and sometimes let me interact with them totally in French. This encouraged me to order dessert more frequently than I should've.
Navigating the city was less forgiving. I always used to find Paris's arrondissements confusing, but maybe that was just because I couldn't pronounce the word. However, once I discovered every street sign has the arrondissement in the corner, I felt let in on a city secret. And even when I got lost (let's be honest here, about 5 times a day), there was always the metro, which was surprisingly easy to use. Once I master a city's metro, I feel less like a tourist. Paradoxically, feeling less like a tourist is always my goal as a tourist, but thankfully, Paris, a city of contradictions, understood that and indulged me.

With my new found ability to get my way around Paris linguistically and geographically, Paris opened up for me like it never had before. I may not have understood all the French I heard around me, but I was starting to understand the lifestyle. Like the ridiculously whimsical Chagall painting at the Pompidou, I was enjoying the romance and escapism of it all. And as Julia Robert's says in "Notting Hill", "Happiness isn't happiness without a violin-playing goat."
I've fallen in love with Paris, as you should see from the next few posts!

The Mild West

I apologize for my blogging absence. First there were exams, when I was so busy and brain addled that I could barely write my own name let alone a blog post. Then I flew home on the most boring transatlantic flight ever where the in-flight entertainment system died within an hour of takeoff (no bad Katherine Heigl films for me) and my reading light didn't work. I swear it was cruel karmic payback for putting my takehome exam off for so long that I nearly pulled an all-nighter. Finally I was home and ready to write in something other than a blue book and then I got the stomach flu. I recovered in time to eat my weight in cheese during Christmas, as you do. I was hoping to take photos of a beautiful Minnesota white Christmas, except we never got one. The weather is so warm that I'm forced to admit that the only reason why I'm wearing flannel is because I'm a hipster, not because it's cold out. But finally I have something to share with you that isn't contagious, the father-daughter ski trip in Utah we took before 2012!
I say ski trip, but a snow globe probably had more snow than Park City did, as you can see from these photos. The skiing itself was like the Dairy Queen menu. The first day it was akin to a blizzard, snow mixed with nice rocks to crunch over every so often. I like softserve, but I don't appreciate skiing on it. This was the result of the second day when it rained in the morning and warmed up enough in the afternoon to induce sundae style ski conditions. Day three was a crunch cone from hell as ice pellets smacked into my face. We finally got good ski conditions on our last day and by that I mean gale force wind in the morning, sheets of ice to glide over, but at least sun. Global warming, we got the message.




What the slopes lacked in entertainment, the city and tourists made up for. If you didn't know this already, I'm the real life version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. While running late to a dinner reservation one night, I ran into a girl I took racquetball with during my sophomore year at GW. It's a small world after all. Therefore, it was no surprise when my dad and I shared a chairlift with two Glaswegians. I can't avoid the Scots! With my luck, I was sure I was going to run into Robert Redford (years ago, my mother claims to have spotted him on the chairlift) or Aaron Eckhart (who I saw going incognito with a strategically grown beard over his famous chin a few years back). Sadly, neither celebrity nor snow materialized.



Although the bottom of my skis looked a little worse for the wear after that trip, it was nice to get a change of scenery. I fell victim to my pattern of shooting upward when in cities, but the sky is so brilliantly blue over the Rockies that I hope you'll forgive me. Park City is as commercial as its Hollywood Sundance film festival, but I appreciate good paint jobs and Western kitsch in any form.