January at Art Museums in Paris

January is a rather gray and rainy time in France.  Not a time for wandering around outside, and visiting parks, gardens or other outdoor places.  So I have been visiting museums, mostly art museums, though I plan to catch up with a few that are more history focused.  I have recently seen the Vallonton exhibition at the Grand Palais, the pottery at the Guimet museum of Asian Art, and the wonderful Brassai photography exhibition at the Hotel De Ville.  This post is a bit more about each of these and shows a few photos I took at the exhibits.

The Vallonton exhibit covered the painting and printing work of Felix Vallonton's entire career.  It was perfectly done and a treat.  Vallonton produced an astonishing number of paintings, and both influenced and was influenced by the Nabis movement of post-Impressionist art.  His work uses flattening of the composition, which is believed to have resulted from his expertise in woodcuts, which he explored and brought to new directions in the art world.  I particularly liked his still lives (called Morte Natur in French), and some of his nudes, one of each is below.  I also liked one of his interior scenes which I photographed from a postcard since the painting was labelled as "no photographs permitted".

Tulips & statuette of Maillol, 1913

Four Torsos 1916

Interior with a woman in red from the back

Being a potter, I was on a high at the Guimet museum's pottery collection. An entire floor of Japanese and mostly Chinese pottery, some of it very old!  Below are 3 pieces (I had a hard time choosing), but the complete set of photos I took can be viewed at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/candysidner/sets/72157639982095095/

Bowl, from Nabashima, Japan, 17th Century

Of course my photos don't begin to cover the vast collection of pieces, all of which were in beautiful condition.

Bowl, Song-Jin Dynasty Period, 11-12th century, China

Open bowl, Jin Yuan Dynasty Period,  13-14th century, China

Brassai, a Hungarian photographer, sculptor and filmmaker moved to Paris between the two world wars, where he spent the rest of his life.  His earlier photography I like best.  It has a kind of innocence and sense of Paris I related to.  See the two photos below, which I got from the web since I could not take photos of his work.  Brassai did sculptures, with simple lines and structure, also displayed at the exhibit in Paris, and many more photos, some of much darker themes than his early work.  He certainly was a master, from what I saw.

Jardin Du Luxembourg, 1930s

Arc De Triomphe, 1930s

Tomorrow, I plan to go to the Cluny Museum, a combination historical museum and art museum, famous for its tapestries from the Middle Ages and for the ruins of Roman baths from when Rome ruled Paris in the time before the common era.

The Town of Chartres and its Cathedral

We decided to go see something outside of Paris, and the town of Chartres was just 1 hour and 20 minutes away.  So we set off in the car, hoped that it would stay partly sunny and arrived in Chartres a bit before lunch.  You can see the cathedral from anywhere around town because it is so massive and sits up on a hill:

 We decided to have lunch before going to the cathedral.  Chuck opted for a local specialty--a kind of stuffed sausage.  Me, I had something normal--fettucine with salmon.  Good thing--Chuck took one bit and decided it rated along with snails (which makes two things he absolutely cannot eat). So we shared my meal!

Chartes cathedral is one of the great cathedrals of Europe.  The current cathedral (there was one before it) dates from the 12th and 13th centuries (that's amazingly old).  Here's a view of the cathedral from the front and a side view so you can see the flying buttresses of the cathedral.




While the outside is impressive, the inside is even more so.  The cathedral has over 100 stained glassed windows, most of which date from the 1200s.  There are three rose windows, two of which I got decent pictures of:

The back rose window, appears not to be colored, which is just because the lighting prevented my camera from getting the amazing colors of the window.  But importantly, the wall around the window is very light--the back wall has been restored, while the walls around it (which are very dark in the photo) have not been restored yet.



As one can see below, the front (called the apse) of the cathedral has been recently renovated so all the marble and plaster are clear to see.

The individual windows of the cathedral are also spectacular.  In the picture of the front of the cathedral (left) three individual windows are visible.  Below is another (there are nearly a hundred of these).  Note also that some of the original panes of glass have been lost from this particular window and replaced with rather simple forms.

The window of St. Apollonias

It is possible to go up in one of the towers of the cathedral and Chuck did just that (all 360 steps of it).  Here's a photo he took looking out over the town of Chartres.

Looking out over Chartres

We also visited the International Center for stained glass, which had a whole exhibit on the windows of the cathedral.  It also had a wonderful exhibit of the work of modern German glass artists.  I took lots of photos and a few are below.  The first set, by Xenia Hauser for a church in Germany, doesn't use very much lead between the glass pieces.  Most of pieces are just fitted next to each other.

Closeup of the Hauser window

This window (left) and its closeup right) have no leading at all--just strips of glass and glass colors on the clear background (by the artist David Schnell called "Wand").  You can find more photos by other glass artists  at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/candysidner/sets/72157639440424616/

It was a great day to see glass, and we bought a piece ourselves in a glass store:

So I learned a bit more about glass ands about cathedrals!