Going to the Louvre

Having a membership to the Louvre has been great. We’ve already visited four times in our first month. On a recent weekend, we went two days in a row. We didn’t plan to do that– on Saturday we had decided ahead of time to go, but on Sunday afternoon we simply found ourselves in the neighborhood and thought we might as well stop in for a visit. We have a map of the museum at home, and we’ve started marking the areas of the museum that we’ve visited, so we can make sure to see them all at least once. I think it will take us about five or six more visits to do that. It’s truly a gigantic museum!

Click on each image to see a larger version.

The entrance to the Louvre was designed in the eighties and was controversial at the time. Now it’s an iconic part of the museum. I find myself drawn to repeating patterns and textures in my photography, so I was happy with this shot I got from under the pyramid including part of a cement staircase. The clouds were doing interesting things that day too. Most of the time recently, the sky in Paris has been a uniform grey, so it was nice to see some blue mixed in for once.

The Louvre has several big indoor courtyards filled with sculpture. They are airy and open with high glass ceilings, so it feels a lot like you’re outdoors. In fact, many of the sculptures in these courtyards actually used to be outdoors in various cities, but were later moved to the Louvre to protect them from the elements. On Saturday’s visit we decided to focus on these courtyards, since we both enjoy sculpture so much.

In one of the courtyards, we saw a compelling interpretation of Perseus rescuing Andromeda, completed by Pierre Puget in 1684. We didn’t actually get a good photo of it, but here is a picture of it on Wikipedia. I like the sculpture because my eyes keep wanting to move around and examine different parts; they don’t just get drawn to one place and stuck there. There is a lot of motion implied in it, and I think it strongly evokes the ocean wind and the sense that the people are up on a high cliff. Greg commented that the statue looks equally interesting no matter what side you stand on to look at it. It’s hard to do this statue justice in a photo, so please take my word for it that it is really cool-looking in person.

In case you need a refresher on the backstory: Perseus rescued Andromeda from a sea monster using the head of Medusa (whom he had recently killed) to turn the sea monster to stone. In the sculpture Medusa’s head is down by Perseus’ foot, and I thought it was appropriately scary. Greg had brought a sketchbook that day, and he decided that he would settle in to work on a drawing of this statue.

Just next to Perseus and Andromeda was a series of four statues representing the four seasons incarnated as people. The statues of summer, spring, and fall were all beautiful women, but winter was depicted as an old man. I wish we had noted the name and date of the sculptor, but we didn’t. All four statues were appealing, but old man winter was especially well done.

Another statue I liked was this much-larger-than-life bronze man. It is part of a group called the Four Captives, by Martin Desjardins. They represent Holland, Spain, Brandenburg, and the Holy Roman Empire. I learned on the Louvre’s page about this work that these were the four nations defeated in the treaty of Nimegen in 1679, ending the Dutch War. The statue I photographed represents Holland.

There is a longitude line that runs directly through the Paris Observatory (2°20′14.025″ east) and the French were angling for it to become the prime meridian for the world. Of course, now we have Greenwich Mean Time instead of Paris Mean Time, so we know how that turned out. In any case, all around Paris there are these little gold markers showing where the line passes. We’ve run into them unexpectedly several times in our explorations around town, and we found one in the marble floor of the Louvre Museum. They are featured in a popular book, too.

While Greg got going on his sketch of Perseus, I decided to explore another area of the museum. I was still feeling sculpturey, so I headed over to the wing with Greek antiquities. Going from the later marble sculpture to the earlier stuff was really interesting. The later marble sculptors were often trying to imitate the ancient Greeks, and you can definitely see the resemblance in subject matter and style. Completely by accident, I suddenly found myself in front of the Venus de Milo, which is a fairly famous example of ancient Greek sculpture. While I did find it appealing, I couldn’t really tell why it was so famous. The galleries all around were filled with beautiful, finely crafted sculptures, and I couldn’t see what made this particular example better than the others. I dutifully took a picture, but since we weren’t allowed to use flash and the light in the room itself was quite poor, I didn’t get a usable shot.

The Louvre used to be a royal residence. I couldn’t find any information about these amazing painted and gilded ceilings in the ancient Greek galleries, but I theorize that these were put there when the palace was actually being used by the French royalty and court.

I passed by a room that had been fenced off and was being used for storage while another area of the museum underwent a remodel. These sculptures were draped with plastic veils. I found them creepy and surreal.

When I went to the Louvre the first time about ten years ago, Greg took me to see this statue of Cupid and Psyche by Antonio Canova. It was neat to see it again; it kind of felt like visiting an old friend. The first time I saw it, I remember feeling really moved by it. At the time, Greg and I were in the giddy early stages of our romance. Seeing it again brought me back to that time.

And on Sunday’s visit, we accidentally stumbled upon the Winged Victory of Samothrace, which is another quite famous ancient Greek sculpture. Unlike the Venus de Milo, I thought this sculpture was more impressive in person than in the photos I’d seen, and I did feel like I could understand why it is so famous. Even without its head, it’s a wonderfully expressive statue. The body has a posture of power and dignity, and the clothes look like they’re truly being blown by a strong sea breeze (it was originally set facing the ocean). Even the body itself looks like it’s leaning into the wind.

It was a great weekend of art. I feel so lucky that we get to live here in Paris!

Art or Science?

Jen and I did a project for an art show at Cafe A in Paris last year before Christmas. The title of the show was “Art or Science?” and the subject was the sometimes blurry connection between art and science. Some images from the Hubble Space Telescope venture into the realm of art.  Jackson Pollack’s paintings or Hokusai’s  famous woodcut print “The Great Wave” make some conceptual contact with fractals, venturing into the realm of math and science.

The Cartier Foundation is having an exhibit on a similar subject right now entitled “Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere.”  Their exhibition is an admirable if a bit uneven effort.  Mostly interesting, sometimes compelling, occasionally less than impressive.  David Lynch did a project for the show that I was excited to see, being a fan of his films.  His piece, however, didn’t engage with the mathematical and scientific side of the exhibition with sufficient rigor and came off as amateurish.

Anyway, “admirable but uneven” can probably be used to describe the exhibition of which we were a part at Cafe A as well, so I’m not in a position to criticize.  Although I do think that the piece that Jen and I did was better than David Lynch’s.

Our video was projected in what used to be the chapel of a monastery onto a screen that was probably 30 feet across.  I think it’s by far the biggest that anything I’ve done has ever been.

The video explains the features of rainbows in a non-verbal way.  If you pay close attention (and maybe watch the video more than once), you’ll know how light is reflected inside rain drops to produce rainbows and double rainbows, as well as why the sky is brighter inside the rainbow than outside.  Even if the video doesn’t teach you how rainbows work, hopefully the diagrams are aesthetically pleasing in their own right.

We provided a description for the exhibit itself, but it’s difficult to translate it.  French draws a distinction between different ways of knowing things—there are two different verbs.  Savoir is used for things that you know “in your head,” like facts or skills.  Connaître is used for things that you know “in your heart,” like people.  Both are translated as into English as “know” so the title of our work, “Savoir et Connaître les arcs-en-ciel” becomes “Knowing and Knowing rainbows.”

Our description plays on the different ways of knowing things in French in what I hope is a clever way.  The point is that it’s possible to appreciate rainbows in an intuitive way just by seeing one in the sky, even if you don’t have any idea how it works.  It’s also possible to appreciate them in a more abstract, intellectual way by knowing how the light rays and water rain drops interact to produce what you see. And there is beauty in both ways of understanding them.

At last, here’s the video itself, in three inch rather than thirty foot format:

Savoir et Connaître les arcs-en-ciel

On connait les arcs-en-ciel quand on les voit, même si on ne sait pas comment ils marchent. On sait les arcs-en-ciel quand on comprend comment la lumière et les gouttes de pluie travaillent ensemble pour les faire. Les arcs-en-ciel sont plus jolie quand on les sait et on les connait au même temps. La musique représente un arc-en-ciel en segmentant une mélodie en flux distincts, dans la même façon qu’un rayon de soleil est divisé en ses consituents fréquences.

An Amazing Bakery

There are five boulangeries/patisseries within a five-minute walk of our apartment. Five that I know of, anyway– there may be some that we haven’t discovered yet. Each of them is wonderful, and each has a slightly different atmosphere and selection of treats. So we tend to rotate through all of them regularly.

But there is one that stands out from the others. It’s the place we go when we want something really special. It’s where we got the Bûche de Noël that Greg recently referred to as “mind-altering,” and I also spoke highly of it when I posted about our holiday food.

The boulangerie we love so much is Dominique Saibron.

On their window, it says that they won Third Prize in the Competition for the Best Artisanal Baguette in Paris in 2010.  I don’t know who won first and second place that year, but Dominique Saibron’s baguettes are definitely my favorites in Paris so far. However, I have not made an exhaustive survey because I am too lazy. Why would I trek all around the city comparing baguettes when I have so many good choices in my neighborhood? This is also the reason that I haven’t yet tried a macaron from Ladurée. I am sure this fact will horrify many! However, the macarons in our neighborhood are already, as Greg would say, mind-blowing. If Ladurée is truly the best of Paris as everyone says it is, I am afraid my head will explode with excitement if I try one of their macarons. And I need my head.

In addition to their baguettes, we’ve gotten small desserts from Dominique Saibron several times. I also like their quiches. It’s a fast, filling, delicious lunch for under 4 euros, and it’s very French. I have not yet tried their macarons, but I certainly will do so soon.

Coupez la tête!

Going to Annecy over the holidays was probably the best thing we did for our French since we’ve been here. We did speak a little English there, but there were enough people who spoke only French that the center of gravity of the conversations was always French. It was immersion, albeit only for a few days.

During our stay, “Coupez la tête!” (“Off with their heads!”) became a running joke with Leslie’s father. Referring, of course, the the historical French inclination to behead the nobility. We would be driving through the countryside and someone would point out a château; then Leslie’s father would exclaim “Coupez la tête!” While passing another château, I remarked that I had heard it’s privately owned and someone still lives there. He remarked “On a oublié de couper la tête.” (People forgot to cut off their head.)

One time it was Jen’s turn to extend the joke, but she instead exclaimed:

“Coupez les cheveux!”

(“Cut their hair!”)

A decidedly different approach to handling the nobility.

French Television

Greg and I bought a TV recently. We hadn’t had one for several years in the States, but we decided to get one for help with language acquisition. I’ll admit that my comparing French TV to American TV may not be terribly useful, since we didn’t watch too much in the years before we moved. We had a few favorite TV shows that we watched regularly with online streaming, but we didn’t channel-surf the way we are doing here in France. In any case, I’ve noticed several interesting things about French TV.

• In movies/fiction shows, a lot of the basic dialogue involves people yelling. That is apparently a normal conversational style. Usually the person doing the yelling is all worked up, and the other person looks completely blasé or stoic about it. They will reply in either a completely flat tone of voice (much more common), or they will yell back.
• You can watch the Simpsons in French, and the voices sound almost the same as in the original version.
• There is a (satirical) news show which is performed by puppets. The puppet-version of Barack Obama makes frequent appearances (along with other leaders of countries such as Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel). Sylvester Stallone also appears a lot– he is a sort of embodiment of the concept of “greedy Americans working on Wall St.” Sometimes there are several clones of him onscreen at a time. In one recent sequence we watched, two Stallones go into a church during mass and steal money out of the collection plate. I’m not sure exactly what the joke was about, since I couldn’t understand all of the dialogue. But in any case, the show doesn’t only poke fun at America. It makes fun of France just as often, portraying its bureaucracy as ridiculous and frequently painting public figures in a less-than-flattering light.
• There seem to be more artsy channels and programs available here.
• Also, the educational stuff is actually educational (in contrast to, for instance, the US’s “History” channel which I’ve often caught showing speculative unsubstantiated conspiracy theories espoused by crackpots).
• There are fewer flashing graphics and swooshing colors, and more screen time devoted to people actually talking or doing stuff. It’s a bit calmer than TV in the US.

And if I had to summarize the differences between French and American TV in one sentence, it would be this: In French TV there is less action, more talking.

Unexpected Pleasures

One of the lame things about getting older (listen up, young ‘uns) is that it becomes rare for your mind to be blown.

When you’re young, every experience is new and hence interesting. With time, the range of your experience grows, and while the brand-new experiences aren’t as frequent, there’s satisfaction in feeling like you know what’s going on. Eventually, though, the time between eye-opening experiences becomes ever longer, and the feeling of competence that comes with experience is no longer sufficient consolation.

Which makes such experiences all the more precious.

It also makes it all the more important to seek out such experiences, because if you don’t go looking for them they won’t necessarily come looking for you. On the other hand, you never know when or where you’re going to be treated to such an experience.

Our Bûche de Noël. That was a mind-altering experience. I didn’t expect it. But we saw them all over Paris, and everyone gets one, so we did too. I’ve had a lot of desserts in my life. Some were good, some weren’t, but very few have made me say “I didn’t know such a thing existed in the world.”

Now I have to wait a whole year for them to come back!

Cheeses of the Week

Here are the cheeses that we picked up this week. We didn’t have time to go to the Bastille market on Sunday morning, so we got them at the cheese shop on rue Daguerre, which is quite close to our apartment.

We have had Camembert many times, but this is the first time we’d seen Camembert au Calvados. As the name implies, the cheese is soaked in Calvados (an apple brandy made in the same region as Camembert). The rind was looking pretty funky, so I asked the cheese-seller if it is edible, and he assured me that one can eat the whole cheese. So when we got around to eating it, I bravely left the rind on. It’s a good thing, too, since most of the Calvados flavor is in there. I am not sure what the brown grainy stuff is, but I don’t think it’s mold. I think it’s mainly there to hold onto the Calvados. It looks like it should be crunchy, but it isn’t.

This cheese is called a Langres, which my cheese book tells me is also the name of a town in the Champagne region, where the cheese is made. Langres is a fermier cheese. Fermier (farm) cheeses are made in small batches on a individual farms, using milk supplied only from the farm where the cheese is made, rather than being made at a plant where milk from many farms is mixed. In fermier cheeses the milk is not pasteurized. In the Langres cheese, there is usually a hollow well on top (though ours looks pretty shallow) which is meant to hold some champagne when the cheese is served. Sounds interesting! We didn’t try that, since we’re only eating a little piece each night. I really like this cheese. I think it ties with the Mont d’Or for my favorite cheese we’ve tried in Paris so far. The smell is pretty pronounced, and the flavor is somewhat strong, though not overpowering. The interior is soft and creamy and doesn’t hold its shape, so we ate the cheese by simply squashing it onto a piece of bread. The rind doesn’t have a noticeable flavor or texture, either. (With the Mont d’Or the rind didn’t taste bad, but the chewy texture bothered me a little. Both cheeses have the same soft, barely-solid interior. I sense a theme developing with my cheese preferences.)

We also got a cheese labelled simply “Brebis fermier.” A brebis is a ewe, and you already know what fermier means. Since the name is so general, I can’t say for sure where in France this cheese came from. Since it’s a fermier, though, at least we know it was made with care on someone’s farm. In any case, it was very tasty. The flavor was similar to Manchego, but with a smoother, moister, less crumbly texture. For this cheese, we elected not to try eating the rind. I think with harder cheeses this is usually less advisable.

Some Holiday Photos

When I wrote about our holiday adventures earlier, I was too lazy to go through our photos and choose some for the blog, but I finally got around to it today. So here they are. As always, click to enlarge them.

To accompany Christmas Eve dinner, we made ourselves a massive cheese plate. Unfortunately, a month later, we can’t remember the names of all the cheeses we had. The orange one is a young Mimolette. The semi-circular cheese in the center is some kind of goat cheese. In the upper right is the Munster that Greg loved so much. Closest to the camera is the Fougerus that Greg mentioned in an earlier post; we cut the soft white washed rind off, though we probably didn’t need to. And in between that and the Mimolette is some kind of hard cheese. I think it was a Tomette, but honestly I can’t say for sure. In any case, it all tasted good.

We also indulged ourselves with a Bûche de Noël (Christmas Log) for Christmas Eve (and Christmas, and the day after Christmas) dinner. The smallest cake we could get was labelled as feeding 4-6 people. The first night,we cut ourselves pieces that were 1/4 the size of the cake, but they were so rich that we had trouble finishing them. The rest of the time, we cut pieces that were 1/8 of the size of the cake, and they were perfect. I think this cake should be labelled for 6-8 people. The cake is bookended by squares of dark chocolate. The outer layer was chocolate mousse. Inside there were several different layers of crunchy things. It was somehow simultaneously crunchy and creamy and nutty. It might be the best cake I’ve ever had in my life.

In Annecy, we took a lot of photos, but instead of boring you with an exhaustive visual catalog, here are a handful of interesting shots.

In the old center of Annecy, there are still many buildings standing from centuries gone by. Every tourist has their picture taken with the prison of Annecy, which has been extensively photographed.  But since we don’t want to be just like everyone else, instead I’ll present quick a shot of Greg and me by the river in the old city center, wearing our coats that make us look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

There’s a chateau on the top of the hill overlooking Annecy, and from there you can get nice views of the town. The rooftops of old Annecy are made with beautiful red tile. I am not sure what it’s made of– looks like terra-cotta, but I don’t remember for sure.

Annecy had some lights up for the holidays. I took this next photo (like the others) with our little point-and-shoot camera, without making much effort to adjust it for nighttime photos. There’s something about the graininess of the buildings, with the clouds and the mountains, that appeals to me, even though I think the blue lights are drawing too much attention to themselves. The photo isn’t going to win any photography prizes, but for some reason I like it.

Untranslatable

There are two words in French that aren’t simple to translate into English: the verbs vouvoyer and tutoyer.

In French, when you want to say “you,” there are two possible words, “tu” and “vous.” You use tu with friends and family, and you use vous with strangers, in more formal situations, and when you are addressing groups of people (even if that includes persons whom you would normally address as tu). It seems confusing at first, but after awhile it gets easier. It gives a little extra dimension of friendliness when you address someone as tu, and it gives a little more formality and dignity when you address them as vous.

But when you need to communicate with someone about which pronoun to use, it would be clunky to constantly need to say “should I address you as vous, or as tu?” That’s where the handy little verbs vouvoyer and tutoyer come in. You can just ask “can I tutoyer you, or should I vouvoyer you?” (“Puis-je te tutoyer, ou dois-je vous vouvoyer?”) Or instead of asking permission, you could simply invite the other person to address you as tu: “please feel free to tutoyer me.”

I think these verbs are awfully cute.

Welcome 2012

Happy New Year to all 2 readers of our blog! (Just kidding– I am pretty sure there are at least 15 of you out there.)

We spent Christmas in Paris and cooked up a storm, because what better way to spend the holidays when you can’t be with family? My only regret was that most of our new friends were out of town so we had no one with whom to share all our food-handiwork. For Christmas Eve supper we made Greg’s family’s traditional Polish meal, with pierogies, sauerkraut, and fish. There’s a store in Paris that sells nothing but Polish food, so we went there on Christmas Eve hoping they might still have some pierogies. Unsurprisingly, they had already sold out; but we got some kielbasa instead. It’s not part of the traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner, but we enjoyed it anyway. And Greg saved the day by making pierogies from scratch.

On Christmas day, after opening presents, we decided to get out of the house for awhile, so we headed to Père Lachaise cemetery. This huge, ancient cemetery is one of Paris’s big tourist attractions, since so many famous people are buried there. I was mainly interested in seeing the graves of Francis Poulenc, Frederic Chopin, Edith Piaf, and other musicians. Abélard and Héloïse are also buried in Père Lachaise; they have a very fancy grave with a huge marble canopy over it and big statues on their tombs. Here’s a quick, oversimple summary of their story: Abélard was hired to be Héloïse’s tutor, but soon they fell in love (and presumably started getting it on). Héloïse’s family didn’t appreciate this, so they hired some thugs to forcibly castrate Abélard, and Héloïse ended up going to a nunnery. Of course, Abélard went on to continue his big academic career afterward, while Héloïse spent the rest of her days stuck in the convent. Their tomb sweetly says that they were “reunited in death.” Sure, that sounds romantic and all, but it seems sad to me that they couldn’t actually be together during their lives. Wait a second… this story sounds like the perfect subject for an opera. I wonder if it’s been done already. After returning from the cemetery, we braised a couple of lamb shanks in honey with herbs, drank some kirs and felt appropriately celebratory.

During the week between Christmas and New Year’s, we did some sightseeing around Paris. We bought an annual membership at the Louvre, which is quite affordable. If we go more than four times, the membership will pay for itself. With a membership, we can do many short visits instead of  feeling like we ought to do an exhausting day-long marathon that we won’t remember later because we tried to mash so much information into our brains at once. The problem with going to the Louvre during the holidays is that everyone else in the world apparently also had the same idea, so it was like walking through Penn Station New York during rush hour. But I decided to completely ignore all the people around me and try to enjoy as much as I could.

Over the New Year’s weekend, we went to stay with our friend Leslie’s family near Annecy in the Haute-Savoie region. Her parents live next to the Lac d’Annecy, with views of the foothills of the Alps. New Year’s Eve was a lot of fun. The house was bursting with guests and we played a jeu de societé (board game) in the early evening. It was sort of like Taboo, in that you had to get your partner to guess words without directly saying them. Of course, the game was in French. Greg’s and my teams got longer time limits for our turns since we’re still learning the language. Greg’s team won first place, and mine “won” last place. I think it’s because Greg’s game partner studies linguistics so she was good at intuiting what he was trying to say even when he was struggling with vocabulary.  We got a lot of French practice that weekend; Leslie’s family is used to having non-French speakers around, so people were good at talking slowly enough for us to understand.

We didn’t start eating dinner until around 10pm (I was dying of hunger by this time, since Greg and I usually eat around 7. But since the game was so much fun, I didn’t really notice my hunger until we were getting ready to sit down to eat). We finished dinner just a little while before midnight, and when the hour came we had a big toast. After that, most of the people with XY chromosomes trickled out to the back porch to smoke cigars and sip cognac. I went out there a couple of times to see what they were doing, but it seemed pretty boring– just a bunch of dudes standing around– so I went back inside where it was warm. We all stayed up until after 3am (even the kids that were there), just talking and hanging around. We played a game in which you melt a little lead figure and then dump it into water; the resulting shape is supposed to tell your fortune for the next year. But everyone’s object turned out more or less the same shape: cylindrical.

A couple of days after the New Year, Greg and Leslie and I went snowshoeing on a little mountain above the lake, from the top of which we could see Mont Blanc and another local peak, La Tournette. For most of the morning, Mont Blanc had a cloud covering its peak, but while we were eating lunch at the top of our climb, the cloud dissipated for a short time and we got some good views of Mont Blanc’s high peak. It is so much higher than anything around it it that it is quite striking, even at a great distance.

The whole weekend in Annecy was a really fun experience. Leslie’s family made us feel very welcome and it was nice to be with them for the New Year’s weekend instead of home alone in Paris. And we got a small taste of how French people celebrate holidays.

I can’t close this post without mentioning our recent cheese explorations. When we got back from Annecy we got some Reblochon, since it’s made in the region where Leslie’s family lives. This week we got some crottins d’Ambert because they were on sale. Crottins are little goat cheeses with individual rinds. The ones we got are fairly mild and have a drier texture than average goat cheese. We also got a small Mont d’Or, which is also called a Vacherin du Haut-Doubs, which might be my favorite cheese we’ve had in France. It came in a wooden box, because it’s so soft it wouldn’t keep its shape otherwise. It has a soft white rind and a runny inside with an interesting but not overpowering flavor. It’s very rich and creamy. Unlike Greg, I don’t judge a cheese based solely on how stinky it is. I did like the Munster we got recently, but I have other criteria for my cheese too. I think a mild cheese can also be delicious. The Vacherin is somewhere in the middle on the mild-stinky scale. It’s also made with raw milk, which gives it an extra layer of excitement.