École des Arts

It's been wonderful traveling with Dick and Jeanne, since they both know so much about so many things. Jeanne's perspective as an artist, especially as I navigate my way through Modernism and Post-Modernism, has been invaluable. Art of course is not just dead relics from a bygone era, but the creative life-force of humanity. Artists simultaneously seek self-expression and a way to make a living.


On Tuesday we set out to see the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, in what used to be the Japanese Pavilion. We saw a marvelous set of Matisse murals, but the rest of the museum was closed for some kind of social event, so we shifted gears and hopped a 69 bus right through the middle of Paris to the Place de la Bastille. There we bought wonderful sandwiches and made our way to the Place des Vosges for a picnic.

This was originally built as a summer home for Henri IV, but he never used it. Now it is a lovely park and neighborhood for people with more money than me. One of the most important pilgrimage sites is the home of Victor Hugo.









Yesterday's main event was a visit to the Pompidou Centre, which houses Paris's largest collection of modern art. The galleries on the fourth floor has art from around 1970 to the present, and the fifth floor from the turn of the 20th century to around 1970. So much modern art is about originality, as artists seek to do something that has never been done before. Part of the story is the journey toward abstraction, a a journey to make painting less about likeness and more about paint and the nature of painting itself. With the advent of photography in the later 1800s painting lost its traditional job of representing nature. Artists ever since have struggled to find a purpose for their work. The Impressionists took a first crack at it by focusing more on the light that strikes objects than on the objects themselves. Van Gogh expressed his emotions on canvas, Picasso reduced objects to their geometric forms. Kandinsky abstracted his figures to the point that they become like music, a disembodied representation of pure emotion.

I was particularly fascinated by an untitled painting by Mark Rothko. It's easy to dismiss  this as pure pretense. It's nothing but two rectangles, black on red, not even precisely drawn. And yet the artist has labored over this work, laying on layer after layer of paint of various shades and consistencies. Little by little it draws us in, and the more we look, the more we see. Art like this takes some patience, and an open mind. It's also much better in person, and in the company of someone who already loves it and can tell you why.

Tonight we ate at the brasserie next to our house and wandered the streets looking at local galleries. Jeanne found some pottery she liked, and as she was shooting pictures of it through the window the artist came by and let us in. Jeanne bought one of his pieces, they exchanged cards, and a professional friendship was born.