Unless one fancies discovering the plan-reliefs on the last floor of the Army Museum or the ancient Greek pottery at the Louvre on Friday nights, it is difficult to find a moment of solitude in the often overcrowded public spaces of Paris, especially its museums. A 2018 piece by art journalist Scott Reyburn analyzed how our digital obsessions had completely transformed the way people visit museums, cellphone in hand to take pictures and selfies in front of the most recognizable paintings. In late 2019, art critic Jason Farago doubled down on complaints of overcrowding in front of the Mona Lisa. There is a lot to say about the impact of crowds on the museum visitors' experience, education, and overall enjoyment (I reserve this discussion for a another post). But whoever has had the chance to enter a totally empty room in an otherwise crowded museum and to notice how the murmur of hundreds of voices fades in the distance, knows how transformative the experience can be. One of my favorite places in Paris is the last room dedicated to Monet's Water Lilies at the Orangerie. On a regular day, it usually looks like this... It is impossible to appreciate the sheer scale of Monet's enormous work with such a crowd. Some people move around the room filming the whole thing, or they shamelessly ask visitors to step aside so that they can be photographed in front of one of the canvases with an inappropriate amount of faked happiness, while others make use of the somewhat not-too-uncomfortable benches to check their Twitter feeds and update us all on their friends' urgent news. There is no wrong way to visit a museum, and although I usually refuse to be shoved aside when people take selfies, I respect the various modes of enjoyment and engagement that visitors bring to the museum. Especially when it is not the Mona Lisa. But in some cases, being alone reveals something important about our surroundings that is lost otherwise. When I first found myself alone at the Orangerie, during off-peak hours in winter, I felt submerged in a sort of overwhelming peace that I had not felt there before, and that I realized was key to appreciating the space. As described by the museum curators, Monet's intent lies behind the superficial appraisal of the aging artist's technique: The painter wanted visitors to be able to immerse themselves completely in the painting and to forget about the outside world. The end of the First World War in 1918 reinforced his desire to offer beauty to wounded souls. The peaceful beauty that Monet was striving for still matters to us today. And it is as difficult to come by as it was a hundred years ago. How much more would we learn about the city and about ourselves if more spaces of introspective "immersion" were possible? Don't get me wrong, I also seek out crowds (as I will show in later posts), for the life, energy and pleasure they bring to the city in so many different ways. But a lot of my favorite wandering places in Paris are far away from the crowds. For instance, the Coulée verte is a miles-long elevated urban park/walkway that stretches from Bastille to Bercy. Unfrequented by tourists (and, I am sure, most Parisians), it is relatively easy to find a quiet spot to rest, read, write, exercise, or simply relax on that charming promenade in the heart of the city. The Coulée verte is just one among the many parks and gardens of Paris where solitude is possible, especially in winter. In summer, only the Bois de Boulogne and de Vincennes are large enough to accommodate true moments of lonely escapism from the hubbub of the city. A hundred years ago, one would have come to the Bois de Vincennes as a spectator to the events of the Summer Olympics of 1900, or to visit pavilions of the Colonial Expositions of 1907 and 1931, traces of which remain. Since its foundation, the park has repeatedly been used for social gatherings—it is partly for that purpose that it was designed in the first place. But nowadays, the sight of a lone fisherman on the shore of Lac Daumesnil in the Bois de Vincennes is not so unusual. It is a vivid reminder of the natural beauty that once surrounded Paris before being replaced by elegantly designed and artificially planned (and planted) gardens. The man in this picture has reappropriated for himself a form of natural and solitary experience that is inaccessible to most Parisians on a day-to-day basis. I believe that he found the kind of introspective immersion completely detached from the outside world that Monet tirelessly wished to create with his art. Something in that picture—in that man's patient dedication to catching a fish there—brings to mind the countless hours that Monet spent contemplating this view in his garden in Giverny...
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In France, all roads start at Notre-Dame. Although there is arguably no road that actually "start" at Notre-Dame, the historical importance of this monument and its national symbolism (that resonates to this day, as the reactions to the 2019 fire definitely showed once again) justifiably made it a tempting candidate for the center of France. So, in 1924 a plaque engraved as the "point zéro des routes de France" was placed on the parvis of the cathedral. Personally, I believe that the Arc de Triomphe would have been a more sensible choice. After all, the Arc de Triomphe functions as a sort of central signpost, a tall landmark visible from miles around whose arms point in twelve directions, a sort of gathering hub from which traffic is dispatched. Walking to the Arc de Triomphe all the way from the Tuileries and through the Champs-Élysées really feels like being pulled by a magnetic force. That is also why I am drawn to write about it first at the onset of this blog. To choose the Arc de Triomphe as the point zéro seems like an even more obvious choice for 1924, when Notre-Dame was agreed upon. In July 1919, French soldiers paraded through the arch to celebrate the victory. In November 1920, the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the Third Republic, coupled with those of the second anniversary of the Armistice, converged to the monument to inaugurate the resting place of the Unknown Soldier, symbol of all the French soldiers who fell in its wars. The Unknown Soldier was finally buried there a few months later in 1921. Historically, the Arc de Triomphe has been the symbolic entrance gate to Paris, under which armies paraded (the French as well as the German), and through which passed the remains of such figures as Napoleon and Victor Hugo. And this is to say nothing of Charles Godefroy's reckless flight through the arch, immortalized on film in 1919. Because of its importance as a site of national history, celebration, and memory after the Great War, I spent some time researching the Arc de Triomphe for my doctoral dissertation (which is about nostalgia in postwar Paris). It is very easy to find historical drawings and pictures of it to see how the surrounding landscape gradually evolved and how it was used in various occasions over the years. But for me the most interesting depictions of the Arc de Triomphe are the playful deconstructions and reinventions of the monument done by artists in the early 1900s. One fascinating collection I've come across is an album of 120 postcards collected privately between 1900 and 1924 and now archived at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Among my favorite postcards is the 1901 depiction of the Arc de Triomphe enclosed under Napoleon's bicorne hat overlooking a battlefield on which the nation's heroes rest in all eternity, a patriotic tribute to the leader who was responsible for the country's triumphal military history. Another postcard, from 1915, is quite daring in its mockery of the German zeppelins used in World War I. Part of a series of surrealist postcards, the "Abduction of the Arc de Triomphe by the Zeppelin K. K. 100" is a playful photographic collage made in the darkest of times that can remind us that Paris' landmarks are always open to reinterpretation, their long-lasting symbols always liable to be stripped away and toyed with. (That is another thing that the 2019 fire of Notre-Dame reminded us when absurd proposals for reconstruction started showing up online). Of course, the Arc de Triomphe remains one of the most famous monuments of Paris, but however permanent these monuments seem to be with their durable masonry and through the codification of their features in touristic images and shop trinkets, they can be as inspiring or unpredictable as we want them to be. Sometimes, a storefront display will try to attract passersby by imaginatively recreating one of these monuments. The gigantic chocolate (by the chocolatier Leonidas) and Lego sculptures below are among my favorites. It is tempting to only see in these sculptures mere examples of the commodification of Paris for impressionable tourists, perhaps with a touch of kitsch, a way to draw them in to get them to spend money inside (although, to be honest, the Leonidas chocolate replica is on display in a museum), but we can also try to avoid these trappings to appreciate the pleasure and liberty gained from rethinking Paris as a playground for our senses. I believe this might be the only way to fully enjoy Paris today behind its (thick) façade of commodity-city.
There is a word in French whose thought-provoking etymology is lost in its translation into English. The word is comprendre, and it simply means "to understand." But it also literally means to "take with [you]," com-prendre, prendre avec [soi]. I love words like that: common, everyday words that conceal poetic and ontological layers of meaning from which we can appreciate language in a different or oblique way. In the course of my three research trips to Paris (in the summer of 2017, the winter of 2018, and the summer of 2018, totaling six months), I spent much time thinking about the "meaning" of "Paris" as a city but also as an idea. After all, I wrote my doctoral dissertation about music in Paris: "understanding" Paris was a necessary first step. This is the first entry in the journal I kept of my daily thoughts and sketches of the city:
Books (and countless blogs) about Paris aim to provide the reader with an understanding of the city through descriptions of the must-see monuments, guides to the essential streets and shops, and lists of the top activities to do. How convenient. Other books (and several other blogs) draw the reader's attention to the unknown Paris, the hidden Paris, the private Paris, the forgotten Paris, to all these Parisian things that you never thought were there, and that you would never had seen otherwise. Do you know where to find a replica of the Statue of Liberty?
My experience of Paris is different. I am interested in the middle ground between the obvious and the obscure. In this blog, I intend to write about different ways of looking at the well-known Paris and its people, in ways that guidebooks leave aside. I do not disregard a famous sight just because everybody knows it (it is still possible to defamiliarize the Eiffel Tower: it doesn't look the same from every angle, at every hour and every season), but I also do not seek the unknown for the mere thrill of novelty. More importantly, I am fascinated by the juxtapositions of disparate objects and people (like someone screaming from a slingshot ball on Rue de Rivoli) that make Paris such a remarkably awkward and eclectic organism — and my favorite place in the world. I hope you enjoy the ride! |
About this pageDuring six months of research in Paris in 2017 and 2018, I gathered thousands of pictures documenting usual and unusual sights and people of Paris. Here I post short thoughts and comments about some of these pictures and what they represent. ArchivesCategories |