You can tell I've grown a lot personally by my willingness to spend time in an art gallery. The first time I came to Paris, I skipped all the art museums, knowing I wasn't interested, as a 21 year old man boy, in art. I didn't even want to go to the Louvre.
I'm now able to spend upwards of three hours in an art museum before my head explodes. You might not think so, but Carol knows it's major progress.
In 2013, when Carol, Maddy, Torie, and I went to the Orsay Museum, it was a revelation. I always had a positive impression of impressionism, but my perspective was cemented when we went there. Not only is the museum stunning, but the top floor, featuring impressionist artists, was my kind of art!
This trip Carol and I covered the statues and paintings on some chunk of the first floor. It's called the "conservative art of the French schools," and it hearkens back to ancient Greek and Roman art. The first few rooms we went to focus on idealized beauty and mythology. This art came out of the Academy (the nationally-funded art school, and the Salon, where works were exhibited to be sold.
One of the paintings is called Venus, by Alexandre Cabanel. It was quite popular with the French, so much so that Emperor Napoleon III bought it.
"A Goddess on the mountaintop
Was burning like a silver flame
The summit of beauty and love
And Venus was her name"
We headed upstairs to level two for Rodin's "Thinker" (it's a model he made for his final, more famed version of it). Right behind it is his Gates of Hell, which took Rodin nearly 40 years to finish. It's a model for a ceremonial door depicting the lost souls of Dante's hell. The gates (doors) include small statue that he later created in large, individual format.
The impressionists are up the famed fifth floor of the Orsay. It's the most popular floor, so you have to patient going through it. Monet is the featured artist, the best of the Impressionists. His painting "Impression Sunrise" gave name to the type of painting, and to me his brilliance is undeniable.
(Feel free to deny Monet's brilliance, but I don't want to hear your critique. I know what I like, and I like his work a lot.)
(Editor's note: That's not very open-minded of you toward other people's opinions. Writer: This is one of those cases where I don't care.)
(Editor's note: Oh I see, any chance you get
to use the Tommy Lee Jones gif, you will.
Writer: Guilty as charged.)
Along with many Monets, there's Renoirs, Manets, Sisleys, Pissarro, Degas, Cezanne, and more. (By the way, if you go to Madrid, make time to go to the home/museum of Spanish impressionist Joaquin Sorolla -- absolutely brilliant works that transport you to the scenes and bring you back in time.)
There's also Van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec -- the so-called "post-Impressionists."
Anyhow, with my stomach giving 110% effort to make me not trust it, we did not get through the whole museum, but we could easily go back another time.
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