Late Fall in Paris

Fall can be a stunningly lovely time in Paris.With fall comes fall flowers, such as these in the Jardin Du Luxembourg:

Then, the trees begin to loose more of their leaves.  The colors are charming, and give you a sense of the dying of the season.

Pierre Roche's L'Effort Statue in Autumn

It's now late November, and the leaves are disappearing with all the endless rain.  

Yet fall leaves can decorate the otherwise dreary back wall of a city building.

In Paris in the fall, it rains.  But this year more than most.  The Seine is rather high and looking muddy too:

Many rainy days have made the Jardin du Luxembourg muddy too.  During some of my walks I have had to be careful not to go sliding in the mud!

It is quite possible to enjoy even cloudy days.  Here's Chuck sitting in Parc Montsouris in the very south of Paris.  This time of fall is on the chilly side!

And there was an almost garbage str--ke (it's bad luck to say the word, I think)!  Fortunately it didn't really happen (whew), but garbage piled up for a day:

November 21st is Beaujolais Nouveau Day in France.  Here's the scene at  the BN Party at Alliance Francais where I take French classes.  Not a wild party, but tasty food and the new wine.

Now there is the sense of the winter Holidays coming, with lights on the streets near our apartment (Rue de Rennes towards the tower of Montparnasse),

and Xmas trees in shop windows, like this one in a nearby bakery, as well as the decorations in the window of a restaurant on our block.

We are going to miss the main week of Xmas in Paris as we are going to the Cape Verde Islands off the  coast of Senegal to find the sun and some warmer weather.

Museum Visits in Paris

Paris has more art museums than I ever dreamed of.  Some I have been to on previous visits, but this year, I'm seeing art in many more.  I'm now a card carrying Friend of the Louvre, and a member of the Musee D'Orsay and the Musee du Orangerie, which means I can go to these museums whenever I want with very little standing in line!

The Louvre right now (November) has a special exhibit entitled Le Printemps de la Renaissance--the spring of the Renaissance, which I visited recently.  No photographing allowed (unlike the regular Louvre), so I only have a bookmark for one of the paintings that I really liked.  The exhibit mostly presented sculpture.  The Renaissance was a time of change in art due to the knowledge artists gained about Greek and Roman art, writing and architecture.  Much of the themes reflect stories and thinking of the ancients.  Some of the sculpture directly copies and expands upon ancient art.

I have taken other pictures at the Louvre.  The fresco of Botticelli's the Three Graces and a Young Girl is one of my all time favorites.

At http://www.flickr.com/photos/candysidner/sets/72157631774457394/

you can find some of the Islamic pottery I have photographed.

The Musee D'Orsay also does not allow you to take pictures (I think they are protecting their copyright to all the forms in paintings and sculpture) so I haven't collected any images from there.  But it's a wonderful place and the Impressionist collection is one I go to see over and over.  A recent exhibit called Masculin/Masculin did not speak to me.  I have enjoyed other special exhibits including one about Impressionism and Fashion from 2012 (which I had not expected to like and found fabulous). Here are Monet's "Women in the Garden" and Berard's "A Ball."

One museum I discovered with my friend Laura was the Musee of Paul Marmottan, who was a collector of Impressionist art and also a supporter of Impressionist artists.  The museum is his home, which is elaborately decorated, but for me the paintings were the thing.  An rich and varied collection of Impressionist works are housed there, including the two depicted here in postcards.  Berthe Morisot was one of the two women who counted in Impressionism (the other was Mary Cassett), and her paintings can be found in small quantities in the world.  However, at the Marmottan, there were many, and all wonderful.  Below is a copy of her "Eugene Manet and sa fille dans le Jardin de Bougival (Eugene Manet and his daughter in the Bougival Parc)." Also below is the "Impression Soleil Levant" (Impression of a Setting Sun) by Monet, from which the term Impressionism was coined by a very unfriendly critic of this painting.  Also below is Gauguin's Bouquet of Flowers, which I liked as well.

Laura and I also visited the home and museum of August Rodin, perhaps the most widely known of France's sculptors.  Below is his famous Balzac sculpture from the garden of the museum (though another casting of it is in the esplanade on Blvd St Michelle).  A casting of the "The Kiss" is set outside of the Musee de L'Orangerie.

I went with my friends Barry and Sandy to the Musee de L'Orangerie.  It houses the twelve WaterLily panels of Monet which he painted late in his life.  I can't do justice to them in photos because they are all large, some roughly 20 feet long and about 6 ft high.  You can take a virtual tour, that is pretty good, at: 

http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/homes/home_id24799_u1l2.htm

The special exhibit we saw there was Diego Rivera's work, which is much known in the US for the murals he painted during the 1930s, particularly in Detroit.  I have always loved his paintings, especially the one here (taken from the web).

The exhibit also included works by his on-again, off-again wife Frida Kahlo, who was a talented painter in her own right.  The painting here is one I find compelling, but I confess that many of her works I find strange.

Friends visiting from the US said they found the exhibit at the Fondation Cartier of Ron Muek's work (an English sculpturer) interesting.  When I went, I was totally astonished by this work.  The photos below (taken from the web) give a sample of his creativity and master, but you have to see it live to really experience it.  My favorite is the Youth sculpture. What you may not be able to see is that this young man is looking at a wound in his side, just visible under his shirt.  It is in a way chilling, yet sad and so amazing. It harkens back to sculpture of Jesus examining his wounds in Middle Ages' sculpture.  The other pieces depicted here also captured my attention.

Youth by Ron Muek                                                 Young Couple by Ron Muek

Couple under Umbrella by Ron Muek

 Making Couple Under Umbrella

Saint Chapelle is not a museum although it offers visits as one (it is not used as a religious space though it is a Catholic chapel).  It is famous for its stained glass windows of mid-13th century origin
(the photo below is from the web and better than any I've taken), and wonderful woodwork and architecture, but even the flooring is lovely.

Early in our stay in Paris, Chuck and I went to the Art Nouveau exhibition at the Pinacotheque Museum.  It was an extensive collection of pottery, some jewelry, furniture, sculpture and posters.  I was not supposed to take pictures, which I did not know at first.    So I happened to get some photos of pottery:

Just this week I visited the Luxembourg Museum, which only holds special exhibits.  The current exhibit, La Renaissance and Le Reve (the Renaissance and Dreams) looked at how dreams and dreamers are depicted during the Renaissance when ancient Greek and Roman art and writing changed how artists thought about their work.  The postcards below represent B. Dossi's Morning: Aurora and the Horses of Apollo, P. Bordone's Sleeping Venus and Cupid, which holds much in common with some Impressionist nudes, and L. Lotto's The Dream of a Young Girl (which is a mysterious piece with a  cherub dropping flower petals on the girl in white while satyrs cavort nearby).

Last on this list is the Pompidou Center, part of which is closed for renovations.  Nonetheless the most modern part of the museum was open.  Here I am in a room created to represent something (dreams, maybe?).

And here is a photo I took from one of the windows--a view towards Montmartre.

Visiting the Sèvres – Cité de la Céramique: the National Museum of Ceramics at Sèvres

You may have heard of porcelain dishes made by the Sevres Porcelain Manufacturers;  such dishware has been considered of high quality in design and material for hundreds of years to the present day.  That site is also the location of the National Museum of Ceramics, which I visited recently.  It is located on the Seine just outside the city limits of Paris and the manufactory dates from 1738, though it was originally in another part of the outskirts of Paris until 1756.  The museum dates from the early 1800s and was started by one of the directors of the porcelain plant.

Sèvres – Cité de la céramique

Looking at the museum from across the Seine

As you can see, this is a very large museum very near the Seine (the boats are actually houseboats, which you can find up and down the Seine).  It has an astonishing collection of pottery, not only porcelain, but other kinds of pottery from all over the world and spanning much of the history of pottery.   Chuck and I ended up being one of the few people in the museum on a Saturday, and we had our own tour guide, a displaced American who has lived in France for 25 years.  Lucky for me because our tour was in English.  I asked LOTS of questions!

Most of my photos are posted at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/candysidner/sets/72157637778094346/with/10912689805/

However, a few pieces are here, so that you can get a sense of what this museum is like.

A piece of Mexican pottery from the 1600s is below.  I thought the decoration was superb.  This large piece is also in perfect condition.

One piece from about 1600 from the large collection of Italian faience style pottery in the museum is intricately painted.  It shows the Biblical story of Joseph finding his cup hidden in Benjamin's sack.

In the 1800s it was fashionable to have old masterworks copied using porcelain paints and painted on porcelain surfaces.  Below are two photos of excellent examples (I did not take these--I ran out of camera space so these are from the web).

The first floor of the museum holds pottery from before the 1800s, and the second floor was devoted to more recent work (1800s and on) with much of it from Sevres.  The main hall of the second floor holds large pieces made at Sevres long ago when designers first figured out how to do such things.  The center vase below is easily 10 feet high, not including the pedestal.

You can see more examples of their extensive collection of 50,000 pieces at 

http://www.sevresciteceramique.fr/site.php?type=P&id=7

Sevres continues to make porcelain and to encourage the ceramic arts as well as sell its own traditional and modern pottery.  I hope to go back and take a painting class in the spring!

A Visit to Augsburg, Germany

A year in Paris doesn't mean staying in Paris all the time.  We took a trip at the beginning of November to Augsburg, Germany to visit a colleague's research lab at Augsburg University.  Augsburg is a small city in Bavaria about an hour by car from Munich, Germany.  We took the TGV high speed train from Paris to Augsburg and arrived on a Friday night.  We had the weekend to see the city, but after that we were busy with seminars, talking to our colleagues and talking with graduate students about their research.  We did have a number of delightful dinners--see below for more.

Augsburg is a very old city (from Roman times around 15 BCE) and a very lovely one.  The city hall (Rathaus in German) below is an example of the typical architecture of the city.

Inside of the rathaus is the Goldener Saal (Golden Room) which was part of the building when built in the 1600s.  It is quite remarkable, as is one of the Prince's rooms, one of the side rooms off this amazing room.

This part of the Rathaus is used for concerts!  Much of Augsburg was heavily damaged in WW2 (as it was the site of the Messerschmidt airplane factories, which the Allies bombed to considerable damage and also therefore much of the city).  The Rathaus and these rooms were restored with meticulous hand crafting after WW2.

In the basement of the Rathaus is the Ratskeller ("keller" means "basement" in German).  In many German cities that space is usually a bar or restaurant. In Augsburg it's a really terrific restaurant with authentic German food (and pizza!) and beer.

It's not a basement looking room at all!  We had two delicious dinners there (we went back cuz we liked it so much).

Augsburg has a series of very small canals (from Roman times), that are not large enough to carry boats, but which you can find as you wander about the city.  Below is one of the larger parts of the water system, and one of the very small ones with a lovely little fountain in front of a small bridge that leads to someone's door!

The city has a number of plazas that have tables for serving meals for the various restaurants.  Here's Chuck relaxing at lunch in our table in the St. Moritz Platz and another view of the same spot to one of the many church towers in Augsburg.

It was a beautiful, warm and sunny Saturday when we wandered around.  That was the only non-rainy and warm day of our week long trip!

Augsburg has many large churches.  The one below is next to the Rathaus.  It also happened to be above our little hotel, which was a quite lovely place with a delicious breakfast.

Most of the church towers have bells, as does the Perlner Tower. It begins at 7 am and rings bells (loudly) every 15 minutes til 10 pm in addition to two other churches nearby. Needless to say we did not sleep in and did not need an alarm clock to get up each day!

Among the other plazas of the city is the Fugger Platz ("platz" means "plaza" in German). 

 In the Fugger Platz on Saturday was this young lady, all of 14 years old (as I learned from a nice Augsburg lady), who has a great career coming in music.  She played for an hour, and her abilities were astonishing. So lovely to listen to.

On my morning walks before going to the university, I found other interesting architectural additions.  See the building corners below.

I also found a number of fascinating signs, one of which is here.  And also wonderful doors.

                                                                                    This last door is one of the doors of the Rathaus.  

We toured a unique place in Augsburg, the Fuggerei, a social community for poor Catholic citizens started by Jakob Fugger, a wealthy merchant, in the 1500s.  The social community (which is a series of reasonable-sized single floor apartments) was the home to many people including the grandfather of Mozart!  It is still in use today, and residents pay less than a euro a year to live there, but they must say prayers daily for the souls of the deceased members of the Fugger family.  The Fugger family prospered over the centuries, and even today it is in business (private banking).  The head of the family is a duke by heredity, although dukes no longer are political titles in Germany.

Below is the entry gate to this community and the fountain is not just a lovely fountain as it served as the water source in olden times for the community.

We also visited the oldest synagogue in Augsburg, which houses a museum of the Jewish community of Augsburg, has a full sanctuary that is used for High Holiday services and has ground floor rooms that are used for various community functions.  The Jewish community is Augsburg is active and has many Jews from Eastern Europe.  For security reasons, we could not take photos of the synagogue.  However, here's a photo from the web of the exterior of the building--the dome is the dome of the synagogue sanctuary.

A few more views of the city, this one of the signs of autumn, and the one below is of one of the old gates of the city, which date back many centuries.

And lastly a very colorful building in the city not far from the Rathaus.  Most of Augsburg has more 

modern and less remarkable buildings than the ones in my photos, but the ones shown make Augsburg a picturesque and wonderful place to visit.