Nouveau pour Nous
/Today was museum day. We had a tight schedule and throbbing feet, and sadly we saw more of the Louvre than we wanted (IMO, Louvre = Met = meh) and not nearly as much of the D'Orsay as we wanted (IMO, D'Orsay ~ MOMA = <3<3<3). At the Louvre, we did the essentials and said "bonjour" to Mona, Venus, and the Winged Victory, but we also got terribly lost and saw a lot of antiquities, which Marcus appreciates a lot more than I do. At the D'Orsay, Marcus fell in love with all of Monet's haystacks, and we got to see Van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhone. There were more A-List paintings than I've ever seen in one place at one time... a large assortment from Van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne, Chegall, Renoir, Gaugin, Klimt, Munch, Carr, O'Keefe, and a single stray Schiele at the D'Orsay's current exhibit, "Beyond the Stars: The Mystical Landscape from Monet to Kadinsky." Amongst my top 10 favorite art exhibits I've seen. As someone who doesn't stray too far from what's popular in my tastes, I was excited to see so many big hits but was really delighted by other painters/paintings I'd never heard of before. Marcus, too.
Below, we've included some of our favorites that were entirely new to us -- all paintings (alas, you must imagine more vivid colors), plus one quote that I enjoyed enough to write down:
Art is an abstraction: as you dream amid nature, extrapolate it and think more about the creation than the result. This is the only way to ascend towards God, by doing what our divine master did -- creating. -- Gaugin
Speaking of dreaming amid nature, Marcus and I are off to camp on the fjords tomorrow.
