Alicante, Spain, is a great place to live, but it is an art desert. You have to look pretty hard to find a gallery, and if you want a very good gallery, you have to look on the other side of the Pyrenees.
Madrid boasts the Prado, which has an abundance of masterpiece oil paintings depicting the crucified Christ, and almost as many life-size images of slaughtered soldiers. Seriously, if ever you find yourself excessively happy, just too darn gleeful, spend an hour in the Prado. Unnecessary optimism will burst from you like methane from an old fat man after an all-bean breakfast. The Prado is to joy what Narcan is to heroin.
Paris is where artists went when art started getting really interesting. Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Diego Rivera, James Whistler, Mary Cassatt, Vincent Van Gogh, and tons of other brilliant innovators, flocked to Paris, presumably because other brilliant artists were flocking to Paris. What started that ball rolling? I have no idea. All I know is that the same people who idolized Jerry Lewis, and are somehow entertained by mimes, host the best art museums and galleries in the world.
Go figure.
Of course you know about the Louvre. It has the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo and lots of other really old stuff. I know that doesn’t sound sufficiently respectful, but I have to be honest, even though I am not under oath. I went to the Louvre in 1985 and I was impressed, but maybe not as much as I was supposed to be. “Impressed” is the wrong word. The art made me think, but it didn’t make me feel.
That is why this year Denise and I skipped the Louvre. We went directly to the Musée d’Orsay. This smaller museum is much less crowded than the Louvre. It displays works by Monet, by Manet, by Van Gogh, by Renoir, and by numerous other artists who experimented with new ways to make their audiences feel. Does that sound a little academic? Somewhat pretentious? Of course it does. So I will explain myself with this iota of biography.
By the time I was a freshman at the University of Iowa I had heard classical music on the radio. I was unimpressed. Then one day I somehow landed in an Iowa City theater, Hancher Auditorium, where a symphony orchestra started playing Beethoven’s Fifth. I was stunned. Speechless. Agog. It was like I unexpectedly discovered a new pleasure center after someone snuck up and smashed that hedonic hotspot with a mallet. Seeing my first Van Gogh, one of his later self-portraits, was like that.
If you have never seen Van Gogh originals, especially his later stuff, you may be looking at this image and wondering what is wrong with me. You are like me after hearing classical music only through a transistor radio. The reproductions do not do justice to the original. Not even close.
Musée d’Orsay features art by impressionists and post-impressionists. These are the artists I love. I’m pretty sure Denise feels the same way. This is a picture I took of her after she examined Van Gogh’s paintings for only an hour.
As you can see, it really made an impression of her.
We also went to Musée de l’Orangerie. It’s the museum that houses Claude Monet’s monumental “Water Lilies” murals (Nymphéas). There are two oval-shaped rooms, specifically designed by Monet himself to display massive panels in a continuous, immersive loop. The effect supposedly is like being at the Giverny pond — quiet and meditative. Supposedly. A sign cautions visitors to be quiet, so as not to disturb other visitors’ reveries.
People were, in fact, speaking, if at all, in respectful whispers. Still, the water lilies did not leave me in a Zen state of quietude. Maybe it had something to do with the teen girls insisting that the previous ten or twelve photographs of themselves were not quite good enough, there should be five or six more from slightly different angles, while standing in front of some other lilies. One of the worst teens finally sat down to look at Monet’s painting. That’s when Denise and I decided it was a good time to stand between her and the art to have our picture taken. Just the one time.
Paris offers a very nice show called Atelier des Lumières. Here, digitized masterpieces are projected onto the walls, floors, and ceilings of an expansive space, accompanied by music to create a fully immersive environment. Our show featured first the works of Pablo Piccasso, then of Henri Rousseau.
I do not have the skill to do the show justice, there are just too many moving pieces, so I will just say this: Before the Picasso show I did not like Picasso. After the show I did. Before the second half I thought I liked Rousseau. After the show I did not.
Go figure.
Bottom line, a thumb’s up on Atelier des Lumières.
But maybe you don’t want to see art in stuffy museums, or pay to see digitized reproductions. Mainly you don’t want to pay admission fees. Well, you cheap bastard, Paris still has plenty to offer.
You can, of course, walk along the Seine, where artists sell their wares. Most of it is kitschy tourist stuff, but some of it is pretty good. But you will get more bang for your buck if you go to the Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen, often just called “Les Puces” (be careful of your pronunciation when asking for directions to “Les Puces”). This is the largest antiques and secondhand market in the world, and it includes a lot of great art. I want to go back, but this time with money and a car so that I can haul my loot back home.
Alas, eventually it is time to go back to Alicante. There aren’t a lot of art museums or galleries, but it is not without beauty.
We will survive.