Sunday, October 25, 2009

Musee Rodin

Yesterday my friend Emily and I (most of my other friends have already left for other countries) decided to visit the Musee Rodin. I woke up and got ready to go meet her, but by the time I was ready to leave my apartment, it had started raining. I was a little disappointed, because a lot of the fun of the museum is the garden, but I figured we could skip the garden if we didn't want to be in the rain.

At this museum using my student ID card and speaking French got us in free (success!), and we started in the museum itself.

I didn't know much about Rodin before I went, except that he sculpted "The Thinker". There were some handy pamphlets that did a really good job of describing his entire life which made me appreciate his works even more.

Rodin was a struggling sculptor who grew up on a road in Paris close to where I live now. After his sister died when he was young, he wanted to become a priest, but his father made him keep on track to be a sculptor. He kept getting criticized because, first, people thought his work was too realistic, then they said it was too unrealistic. Eventually he found a following and was hired by France to create works. He did a lot of things that made people mad like sculpt Blazac and Victor Hugo nude.

He worked in clay, marble, and bronze.



I didn't know that he also did paintings, but I really liked his style.



Below was his first famous sculpture. It represents the failure of France in the Franco-Prussian war.
This is also very famous: "The Kiss"
Another sculpture, entitled "Forever spring"
"Walking Man"


This is a bust of Rodin done by his protege Camille Claudel


This is a sculptre of Camille Claudel done by Rodin
Minerva with a ruin on her head:



These guys look like they're doing the "All the Single Ladies" dance.


A random van Gogh
Scary scary mask
Another van Gogh
A pretty Monet
At this point, Emily and I had been looking out the windows and seeing the garden. It seemed so pretty that we didn't care if it was raining outside. We decided to brave the rain once we had finished the inside stuff.




There was a beautiful rose garden. I kept thinking about the song from the Sound of Music "My favorite things..." Now I know why they said "raindrops on roses." It was beautiful.



The Thinker was in the middle of the garden.


We walked around the rest of the grounds. There were random statues and beautiful fall colors.




The museum from the garden:

I kept seeing this dome all over Paris, and didn't know what it belonged to. Emily and I decided to go investigate after leaving.


I loved being in the garden because it was so green and fresh smelling! I hate how Paris smells like smoke all the time. It was crazy that stuff like this existed in the middle of the city. I am glad it does!


This is the "Gates of Hell" sculpture that was the door to the Musee des Arts Decoratifs for many years. Rodin was obsessed with Dante, the Italian poet who wrote the Divine Comedy. The Thinker is supposed to be Dante thinking about his work. This door represents all of the layers of hell and illustrates famous people from the book. I recognized some of it from when I read part of "The Inferno". It was very realistic.
After a short walk where my shoes filled entirely with water, we were in front of Les Invalides. This is the military complex in Paris (it's the museum of the army and other buildings with the military academy close by). It cost money to go in, and we were both pretty tired, and so decided to leave that experience for another day.

We could go into the gardens for free though. We passed throuh this awesome gate:

And basked in the fall colors.

My feet were drenched and I was tired, so we walked to a cafe by the museum. I got a hot chocolate and a croissant and Emily got some limonade and a pain au chocolat. It felt good to sit in a warm cafe and talk about nothing to do with school.


Later that night, I was curled up in my bed when Laura (my host mom's daughter) came in my room and told me that her aunt and cousin were coming over to celebrate her cousin's 19th birthday and I was invited to eat with them. We had appetizers and talked for a bit. My host mom is from the island of Guadeloupe (in the Carribean), so she and her sister made me a small drink that is a speciality of the island. It was pretty strong, so I was glad they didn't give me too much, but it was good.

We had something super interesting for dinner. A "raclette" is a table cheese melter. You put a slice of cheese in it, it gets all bubbly and melty and then you put the cheese on top of whatever you want like potatoes, ham, tomatos, pickles, etc. You can also put stuff on top to cook it. It was SO GOOD. It was much easier than fondue and just as fun. It would be great for an informal dinner party. I hope they have these machines in the U.S.

*Note: not my picture. I just found this online.

People did look at me strange when I ate the skin on the potatoes. Apparently they don't do potato skins here. To me it seemed kind of silly to was time peeling the potatos when they were already boiled. To each their own.

The evening ended with my and Laura watching a variety show on TV. There were a lot of magicians and acrobats. We tried to figure out the magician's tricks and talked about how the acrobats must have death wishes to do those things.

Here in France it was daylight saving's time last night, so I gained an hour. In theory at least. I still ended up waking up at 8:30.

No comments:

Post a Comment