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adventures / history / Paris / photo / weekend — Comments Off on Notre Dame, the Pantheon, the Sainte-Chappelle chapel
11
Jun 22

Notre Dame, the Pantheon, the Sainte-Chappelle chapel

This was written for a Saturday, two weeks ago, as we continue to document and re-live our amazing travels. So, if you’d be so kind as to cast your mind back two weeks …

I broke two style standards of the site in this post. It’s terrifying and liberating, all at the same time. Also, this is a photo-heavy post. There are 23 images below, so let’s dive in.

We visited Notre-Dame de Paris, the medieval Catholic cathedral is considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture. You might have seen it on fire in April of 2019. We had a tour of the cathedral, exterior of course. So it turned into a mini tour of the Île de la Cité, which is the island in the Siene that is heart of Paris. We saw the flying buttresses, but not the rose windows or the sculptures the giant bells (not especially old, but bell ringing goes back to at least the end of the 12th century there) or three pipe organs (similarly, there’s a long history of organs at the cathedral, but what was in the cathedral before the fire wasn’t an ancient instrument — apparently the organs did well in the fire).

Reconstruction is well underway, and the French hopes the reconstruction can be completed in time for the opening of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Presently, April 15th is the big projected day. It seems a tall order, but viva France!

We left the 4th arrondissement for the much, much less crowded 5th arrondissement. Specifically, the Latin Quarter, to visit the Pantheon. We saw the one in Rome, we figured, we should see the one here. This started as a church that King Louis XV had dedicated to Saint Genevieve after he recovered from a bad illness. The revolution was underway when it was completed, and the governing body at that time decided it should be a mausoleum modeled on the ancient building in Rome. Twice this Pantheon was re-converted to a church. Today, the neoclassical beauty is at turns liturgical, a burial place and a civic showpiece. Among the notable people interred there: philosophers, politicians, soldiers, scientists, the writer Victor Hugo, Nobel Prize winners the Curries and Rene Cassin, the entertainer and spy Josephine Baker and many more.

All those changes to the purpose of the building meant the pediment changed a few times, and unfortunately I didn’t have a giant ladder for a good photo. But if you know who you’re looking at here, you’ll find key figures of country and liberty. The statesmen and scholars are represented on the left, soldiers on the right.

But let’s go inside, shall we?

There are four great pieces in the pillars below the dome. This first one is Laurent Marqueste’s sculptural homage to “the creators and publicists of the restoration.”

The paintings on the four pendentives, one of which you see above, are by François Gerard, one of the most prominent, and wealthiest, painters of his generation. Primarily he’s remembered for his portraits, but his archway paintings depict glory, the nation, justice and, above, death. These are all recurring themes in this place.

Anyway, the sculptor Marquest was an absolute master in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This is probably one of his lesser known works, but he left many grand pieces to be admired.

The obelisk shows the figure of Victory holding a torch above the coat of arms of France, surmounted by the royal crown. Below is Pierre de Serre, the soldier and lawyer, Casimir Perier, the banker, mine owner and statesman, Armand Carrel who was an early 18th century journalist, General Maximilien Foy who was one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s artillery generals, Jacques-Antoine Manuel a solider turned lawyer, and Viscount Francous-Rene de Chateaubriand, who saw himself as the greatest lover, the greatest writer, and the greatest philosopher of his age. Pretty humble, really. He could have said any age.

This is Albert Bartholome’s monument to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Bartholome was a painter of serious renown, before deciding to put away his brushes and becoming a globally recognized sculptor. He did that after he made the stunning marker for his wife’s grave. The three women seated here are allegories for philosophy, nature and truth. To the left is a representation of music, and on the right, glory.

The medallion in the low foreground is meant to be Jean-Jacques Rousseau who was a philosopher that influenced the Enlightenment and some elements of the French Revolution. You basically don’t have modern thought without Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract. (He’s also interred at the Pantheon.)

Here’s the thing about sculptors. You spend the time and skill and resources required to make this piece. It’s perfect. And then you make it again. That’s discipline. There’s a copy of this on display at Musée d’Orsay, as well.

Opposite that installation is Paul Gasq’s “To the Glory of Generals of the Revolution.”

On the obelisk is a figure representing the French Republic. Bonaparte is on horseback alongside four of his generals. Gasq was the son of a railroad man, and won two of the biggest prizes in his field. He was also a prominent museum curator. And if you’ve ever been to Paris, the odds are pretty good you’ve seen some of his work without realizing it.

Which brings us to Alphonse Camille Terroir, who was born in 1875 France and died in 1955, becoming, of course, a sculptor, but also a professor along the way. If there was ever a stranger time to be an artisan in France, aside from the Revolution, I can’t think of it.

This piece is devoted to Denis Diderot, an 18th century writer, philosopher and encyclopedist. If it had words, he wrote it. The two standing figures are above a rather important inscription which I clumsily left out of the shot. It says the encyclopedia prepares the revolution, which is a powerful bit of carving when you unpack it. The other figures represent truth and the force. Yes, Luke Skywalker carved this with his lightsaber.

Diderot’s was the first encyclopedia of its kind, discussing topics in a secular tone. The book, banned by the Catholic Church, featured articles that were skeptical about Biblical miracles. The revolutionaries were highly influenced by the Encyclopedie.

This dominates one end of the Pantheon.

That’s Marianne, the symbol of France, surrounded by deputies, their arms raised toward the constitution, taking the oath, and soldiers on the right, symbolizing the army of the French Republic. The inscription is Vivre libre ou mourir, “Live free or die.”

Above it …

The title of that mosaic is “Christ Showing the Angel of France the Destiny of Her People.” by Antoine-Auguste-Ernest Hébert

I’m not telling you anything new here, but whenever you find yourself in a building with a dome, you need to make it a habit to look up.

Yes, I cropped the sides, and it is that rarest of things, a circular photograph, but, also, it is larger than most of the pictures I put here. I told you. (We’re breaking all sorts of style standards around here today!)

Downstairs, before you make it to the crypt, you’ll see this shadow. And it’s a certainty that some portion of the people that this will be the first impression they ever make of François-Marie Arouet, and that’s a shame.

That shadow belongs to a sculpture of Voltaire, who told you, in Candide, “L’il faut cultiver notre jardin.”

But, then, everything in Candide stands like a wise quote on it’s own. Voltaire made fun of that in the story, as well.

If you haven’t read Voltaire, you should. If you haven’t in a while, it’s probably time again. I know it is for me.

This is an almost-tucked away memorial on the main floor. Flanked by two dominant columns and backed by impressive paintings, it would be easy to overlook Louis-Henri Bouchard’s work. The inscription reads “Aux heros inconnus aux martyrs ignores morts pour la France,” or “To the unknown heroes, to the ignored martyrs who died for France.

It is a World War I memorial. After World War II, the French viewed him as a German collaborator, but you can still see his work. His Paris studio is now a museum.

Look up. Up there is “The Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve,” by Antoine-Jean Gros. It apparently took several decades to get just right. Gros was a portraitist and a historical painter. Bonaparte was his patron.

This is a painting depicting St. Genevieve — for whom this place was originally commissioned, remember — calming Parisians as Atilla the Hun approached.

It was 451. Attila, calling himself the Scourge of God, was wiping out every settlement and village he crossed. The story goes that he drew within miles of Paris, the news of his vengeance coming on the frightened lips of people who were desperate to escape the deadly menace rushing toward them from central Asia and Eastern Europe. The people of Paris wanted to run, too. Genevieve was joined by many of the women of Paris for days of pious prayer. The men wanted to scatter to the winds, but she said, in the name of God, that the cities where they headed would be destroyed and Paris would be spared. Attila continued marching on, until he learned that the Romans and the Visigoths and some of the Franks were headed to confront him, so he turned toward Orleans, where he was routed. Paris was, in fact, saved from his wrath.

I don’t know what was going on with my phone and eye this day, but here’s a much better image of that painting, which was produced by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, who became known in his lifetime as “the painter for France.”

Back outside the Pantheon, and a slightly better look at that pediment which, again, has been changed seemingly each time the purpose of the building itself has changed.

And, after a quick subway ride, back over to Notre Dame. We walked around part of the property again to read about the restoration and reconstruction work.

This is a crowded area, so we read the interesting parts and then headed to Sainte-Chappelle. And if you’re still here 17 photos and 1,700 words into this, stick with me through the last little bit.

The Sainte-Chapelle is a royal chapel. King Louis IX had the Gothic style church built in the mid-13th century. Consecrated in 1248, it is an incredible important architectural achievement of its period, highlighting spatial unity, larger and more windows, including a large rose window and a lot of light. It was part of an altogether new moment in architecture, and it housed Louis’ collection of Passion relics, which he paid handsomely for. Included in that collection are what were believed to be part of the cross, and the crown of thorns. (The crown had been housed at nearby Notre-Dame cathedral, and survived the fire.)

Even in a darkened, large clerestory, you can see the attention to details in the decor and the windows and light that helped define the Rayonnant architectural style they were helping to spearhead. Indeed, because of other political realities, Louis IX had a big claim to making Paris the spirital center of Christendom, which is part of the reason for this place, and for his acquisition of the Passion artifacts.

This all takes place on the palace grounds, and over the next 800 years various restoration and repurposing was done. Additional buildings were built right next to Sainte-Chappelle, used, razed and rebuilt again, which impacts the light flowing through these windows. It, too, was impacted by the French revolution.

A decades-long restoration was undertaken in the 19th century. Not all of what you see here is original — some went on the marketplace, some were lost to time, others are on display in museums — the scholars and archeologists and restorers got serious about former glory.

And, indeed, they should. Because, as you gaze in awe and wonder at the royal chapel, a clerestory without peer …

It’s a relatively small room, 108 by 35 feet, highlighted by four traverses, an apse and seven bays of windows. The glass, 7,200 square feet of it, are supported in ingenious ways that you can read about, but never notice in your viewing. And there’s a six-foot shift in size of the glass from one end of the other, making the chapel feel larger. Here is were the King and Queen worshipped.

The thousands of glass pieces seem to shift as the day changes, blues and reds alter their intensity. Experts have noticed three different styles on display, but the artists are unknown, even as the story they were telling is the best known story. Three windows illustrate the New Testament, featuring scenes of The Passion, with the Infancy of Christ and the Life of John the Evangelist. The nave is filled with images representing the Old Testament. You can start at one window and see (restored) illustrations of the Book of Genesis and go, in order, to the final window, to see scenes showing the rediscovery of Christ’s relics, the miracles they performed, and their relocation to Paris in the hands of King Louis.

You can’t see it all in one photo. I’ve seen better photos than mine try, and fail, to express the impressive character of the room. Sainte-Chappelle’s is one of the most extensive 13th-century stained glass collections in the world. It’s something you need to see in person.

Which brings us, finally, to the rose window.

It is over 29-feet in diameter, its 89 separate panels representing scenes of the Apocalypse. It uses a new technique, being 15th-century craftmanship, which allowed the artists to paint on the glass with enamel paints, using fire to fuse the paint onto the glass. That allows for finer details in the finished product. It was restored and cleaned recently, just in time to mark, in 2015, the 800th anniversary of the birth of King Louis IX.

Which makes for a massive, and impressive, weekend post. One more for tomorrow, when we do conference things, and a few casual Parisian things to say goodbye to France.

adventures / cycling / Friday / history / Paris / photo / video — Comments Off on Point du Hoc, Omaha Beach, Normandy American Cemetery
10
Jun 22

Point du Hoc, Omaha Beach, Normandy American Cemetery

This was written for a Friday, two weeks ago. That’s the way of it around here for a bit as we go over our amazing travels. So, if you’d be so kind as to cast your mind back two weeks (and also 78 years ago) …

Like many panoramas, this one lives at the intersection between beautiful and enlightening and distorting. Like all panoramas on this site, if you click it, you can see the larger version. We were there two weeks ago.

We caught a morning train out of Paris to head west to Bayeux.

And in Bayeux we rented e-bikes to ride all over the beautiful countryside of Normandy. It is beautiful. We rode all over the countryside. And not all of it on roads. The Yankee suggested Normandy, and I said I wanted to go here, if we could, and after a lot of pedaling, this was our first stop for the day. (Note that upright stone just on the left margin.

If you stood at that stone and look left, you would see Utah Beach just beyond that point.

And if you stood at that sone and looked to your right, beyond the other point, you would see Omaha Beach.

And if you stood at that stone memorial, you’d be wear Ronald Reagan delivered one of the truly great speeches of his presidency.

Peggy Noonan had found his voice by then, and it didn’t hurt that the topic was such a dramatic moment, and the audience included some of the heroes he was talking about.

I remember reading about this anniversary, the 40th, in the second grade, before any of this made any sense to me. I remember a quote from one of the Rangers who was at that event. They’d taken them to the shore line and they looked up the cliff face in wonder. How in the world did we do that? That quote is now 38 years old, and as much as anything, I owe my awe to the moment to that awe of the men who did it.

The guns were located so that they could cover both Utah and Omaha. They could do terrible damage to the troops coming ashore, or to the vessels waiting off the coast. So they sent in the Army Rangers.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his staff planning Operation OVERLORD assigned the Rangers of the 2d and 5th Ranger Battalions, under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel James E. Rudder and organized into the Provisional Ranger Group, the mission of destroying the enemy positions on the cliff top. Unbeknownst to Allied planners, the Germans failed to believe that U.S. military command would consider the cliff top accessible by sea. The Americans, however, considered it an accessible assault point and reasoned that with a well-trained force, soldiers could land on the narrow beaches below at low tide and ascend the cliffs with the assistance of ropes and ladders. When Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley told Rudder of the assignment, the Ranger officer could not believe what he had heard, but he understood the importance of the mission at hand. In his memoir, A Soldier’s Story, Bradley wrote, “No soldier in my command has ever been wished a more difficult task than that which befell the thirty-four-year-old Commander of this Provisional Ranger Force.”

The original ornate plans were ruined by rough seas, which put the entire Pointe du Hoc timetable well behind schedule. They were forced to improvise.

The delay gave the Germans enough time to recuperate, reposition their defenses, and lay heavy gunfire on the incoming Rangers from companies D, E, and F. The Rangers, no longer able to follow Rudder’s original plan, were now instructed to land all companies to the east of Pointe du Hoc on a strip of beach about 500 yards long and thirty yards wide. They came under heavy fire from the Germans while coming ashore. As the soldiers at the front exited the landing craft, the Rangers toward the rear laid down covering fire as their comrades ran to shore and took shelter in a small cave at the base of the cliff or in craters along the narrow beach.

[…]

The Rangers experienced much difficulty climbing up the cliffs that day. Many of the ropes that caught hold of the cliffs that morning were completely covered by enemy fire, making the number available for climbing severely limited. The wet ropes were slippery and soldiers were weighed down by damp uniforms and mud clinging to their clothes, boots and equipment. German bullets and “potato masher” grenades rained down from above. Nevertheless, the Rangers climbed to the top of Pointe du Hoc while under enemy fire. Several German soldiers were killed and others driven off from the cliff edges when Rangers opened fire on them with Browning Automatic Rifles (BARs).

The guns they were sent to capture, their primary objective, weren’t there. The Germans had moved them back from what they’d thought was an impregnable position. A two-man Ranger patrol later found five of the six pieces of heavy artillery and they were subsequently.

After scaling the 110-foot cliff face against brutal German fire, gaining the top and then fighting the enemy for two dys fewer than 75 of the original 225 who came ashore at Pointe du Hoc on D-Day were fit for duty. It’s a testament to bravery and grit, and courage and honor. We were fortunate to have been able to visit it for a brief time.

From there we rode our rental bikes to the Normandy American Cemetery. We weaved through traffic, passing gobs of cars (it was oh so satisfying) stuck in traffic in time to see the evening’s flag lowering.

The World War II cemetery in Colleville-sur-Met, Normandy, France covers 172.5 acres and contains 9,388 burials. In the gardens are the engraved names of 1,557 servicemen declared missing in action in Normandy.

In that building you’ll see massive maps describing the planning and the D-Day assault itself, and also the push all the way to the Elbe River.

None of this was a certainty when D-Day began. And it took about two months of hard, deadly fighting, before the Allies could claim Normandy as under their control. Great losses were absorbed and delivered to get off that beachhead.

On the cemetery’s chapel there is a carving in the marble of part of John 10:28, “I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish.”

The cemetery looks over a bluff onto Omaha Beach. There are 304 unknown soldiers at rest in the grounds of the cemetery.

It also contains the graves of 45 pairs of brothers (30 are side-by-side), a father and son, an uncle and nephew, two pairs of cousins, four chaplains, four civilians, three generals and three Medal of Honor recipients.

We were about 30 miles into our lovely afternoon bike ride, and we were starting to eye the clock. The bike shop we rented from closed at 7, and our train was coming at about 8:30. So we had to race back. (Nice bikes, would rent again. Would check to make sure my back brake worked before I set out next time, though. I had to feather off the front brake for the entire day!) We made it just in time, which was the shocking theme for the whole day. Just caught the morning train. Arrived with our bikes ready, got lost twice and still made it to the cemetery just in time to see the flags lowered. Lingered around that hallowed place a while, giving us just enough time to get back to the bike shop, which left us enough time to get a bite to eat at a place next to the train station. Which put us safely on the train.

It was an important day in important places. I’m glad we did it, and that it all worked out as it did, which was to say, perfectly.

She planned another great trip, and we’re just getting started.

We still have two days in Paris, where our adventures will continue.

adventures / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on Can you guess where we were?
8
Jun 22

Can you guess where we were?

This was written for a Wednesday, but it is about the Wednesday from two weeks ago. That’s going to be the way of it around here for the next few weeks as we cover two weeks of amazing travels to, hopefully, makes up for the two-week break I took on the site. So cast your mind back two weeks …

We caught our flight out of Indianapolis with no problem, though the security line was as long as I believe I’ve ever seen at that fine airport. Everyone has stopped wearing masks. (Except me.)

I’m overgeneralizing there. A few people were wearing masks, but not wearing them correctly. I don’t understand this at all. You’ve had time to figure out the nuances of the respiratory system’s two exit and entry points. No one is making you do it anymore, so it isn’t a protest. You’re just bad at this. (And cover your nose.)

The first flight was on a small plane to New York and that was easy. We spent some time in a crowded Delta lounge, where we had dinner. It’s a serve yourself cafeteria-style arrangement. I had mild jerk chicken and rice. It hit the spot. We stayed in the lounge perhaps too long. At the door we asked a Delta employee some question or another about our flight and the terminal it was in and he looked startled. “You need to leave, now!”

And so we did. We strolled over to the JFK terminal train and somehow went through security again. Got on the next plane with no problem.

You’re supposed to sleep when you’re traveling east great distances (that’s a clue), but sleeping on a plane isn’t always easy. I decided to put on a movie because the screen is right there in the back of the next seat. I watched Contact, thinking Jodie Foster would be good company to nod off. I wound up watching the whole movie. Two-and-a-half hours I could have been asleep.

But I did get about three hours. Maybe four? We landed, breezed through border control, or customs, which seemed surprisingly easy. So cursory was the exchange I’m not sure if we were even legally there. We have one stamp each, though, and the Uber driver came to pick us up. No one at the airport tried to keep us from leaving, it must be official.

So we arrived at the hotel in the middle of the day. Perhaps a bit too early for check-in. There was a long line of people at the many minimalist check-in desks learning they, too, were too ambitious. When we made it to the desk the cheery person said, I’m sure for the 73rd time in a row, that our room wasn’t ready, and would we mind waiting an hour or so?

We waited in the lobby for an hour or so, watching other guests’ create these shared experiences. We got a room upgrade out of the deal, though. Small room, perfectly functional. Reasonable bed. Outstanding view.

Can you guess where we were? (Here’s another clue!)

If you know what you’re looking at there’s an important site (Another clue!) far off into the distance. And if you leaned onto your tiptoes and craned your neck into an uncomfortable position and looked as far as you could to your right you’d see an iconic giveaway. (Not pictured here.)

We ventured out to take care of the travel logistics for the next several days. Oh boy. First we had to figure out where we were, in relation to everything else, and how to get to where the logistics could be resolved. The online “experience” hasn’t been very helpful. And the language barriers (A clue!) in person were a bit challenging, as well. There was some aimless wandering, some “Could you speak more slowly, please?” and some waiting in lines. We have a day trip planned for Friday, which was only resolved satisfactorily after we were lied to a few times in a most haughty way. (Another clue!) But everything for was finally resolved. We also had to work out transportation for the second half of our trip to work out, which meant more wandering, for another office. Also resolved, but we will ultimately add a day here and reschedule a thing there. One of those frustrating-in-the-moment-but-won’t-matter-next-week experiences. Resolved to our satisfaction is the key.

After we had all of that taken care of, we had dinner with Thomas, a friend from Germany, and his colleague and his student, at a little sidewalk cafe. The food was filling and flavorless, and, most importantly, helped pass a little extra time until darkness so we can go to sleep. So we can defeat jet lag. This never happens.

But the question remains, where were we? If you are stumped, come back tomorrow, when the question is answered, and the fun begins.

adventures / art / history / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Visiting with Vincent
8
Jun 22

Visiting with Vincent

This was written for a Tuesday. Not today, but two weeks ago. And that’s going to be the way of it around here for the next few weeks. But it’ll be worth it. All of this covers two weeks of travels and, hopefully, makes up for the two-week break I took on the site. So cast your mind back two weeks …

We stopped to pick up a quick sandwich after a morning of finalizing packing, and running an errand and before the day’s treat, and this was the art next door.

Everything can’t be art, because if everything is art then nothing is, really, art. Art, in a simple form for a simple way of thinking about it, like mine, should be transportive. That could take you to another place, to the artist’s way of thinking, or just at a slight remove from your own place. Everything can’t be art, but art can be … distractive.

But not everything that distracts is art. Just because you used something evocative of modern art techniques on the side of an oil change place doesn’t make it art. That you put eyes on it probably does. That it was commissioned seals the deal.

Anyway, that was at lunch, a hasty chicken sandwich on the go in Indianapolis, as we were actually on our way to see some post-impressionism from Vincent van Gogh:

Step into a digital world of art at THE LUME Indianapolis and explore the combination of great art and cutting-edge technology at its finest with floor to ceiling projections of some of the most famous paintings in the world. A must-see cultural experience created by Australian-based Grande Experiences; the first year’s show features the paintings of Vincent van Gogh as well as featurettes inspired by the work of Van Gogh.

Nearly 150 state-of-the-art digital projectors transform two-dimensional paintings into a three-dimensional world that guests can explore while walking through 30,000 square feet of immersive galleries. THE LUME Indianapolis has 60 minutes of digital content that runs continuously and simultaneously in all the digital galleries.

This is not a movie with a start and end, or something you would sit to watch from one viewpoint, but rather a constant loop of beauty that is designed to be a walking experience, seeing the art up close and all around you. Guests should wander throughout the space, taking in the experience from every angle.

We’d put this off, because of Covid, but we had time on this particular Tuesday before we had to get to the airport and the exhibition was closing at the end of the month, so this timing worked out just right. And seeing this was absolutely worth the experience.

The music there is Le Carnaval des Animaux (or The Carnival of the Animals) by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. It’s a 14-movement composition, and he wrote it as a joke, forbidding public performances during his lifetime out of fear that it would harm his reputation as a serious composer. Here, it got used for its whimsy.

So while you contemplate the adaptation of van Gogh’s famous oil-on-canvas The Starry Night, I must tell you I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the exhibit. I’d seen one little bit of text and maybe one image and thought we were just going to walk through Starry Night for a while, which would have been perfectly fine. He painted that in June 1889, inspired by the pre-dawn view from his window at the the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. (The village in the painting’s foreground is imaginary.)

I have an original, one-of-a-kind, reproduction of Starry Night in my home office. I just have to turn my head a bit to the right to see it. At once evocative of the van Gogh masterpiece, and altogether different. It really is lovely.

He’d admitted himself into the asylum the month before, after his December 1888 breakdown and the whole ear thing that people want to remember. That part of his life comes up a fair amount from the exhibit, but that’s not the whole man, nor the whole of what we saw.

Wheatfield with Crows is often thought to be van Gogh’s last painting, but the museum named after him in the Netherlands says that’s a myth. Nevertheless, you get a sense of more of van Gogh’s unsteadiness in the final year of his life — and the music here helps convey that. He said the fields below the stormy skies expressed “sadness, extreme loneliness,” but the countryside was meant to be “healthy and fortifying.”

It is dark in the exhibit. There’s a gunshot, or some such loud sound, and the frozen oil on canvas crows fly away and disappear, because they are digital. And Chloe Hanslip, meanwhile, is sawing away at Benjamin Godard’s Violin Concerto No. 2. It gives it a certain edge. But when those crows jumped, that was startling.

This isn’t just a light show projected on the walls. There’s stuff happening on the floors, too. At times you’re walking in, and on, van Gogh’s paintings and sketches.

Many of van Gogh’s early works showed Dutch landscapes and his native culture. Windmills show up a fair amount in all of that, and also in much of his work from Paris. He could see windmills from his apartment there.

Most of his windmills are displayed in museums around the world today. (An important one was lost in a fire in the 1960s.) Who doesn’t like windmills?

And who doesn’t love Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major?

We had that in our wedding. My lovely bride has it as one of her ringtones.

There is also an interactive component to the exhibit. You can zoom in to study brushstrokes using a frustrating technology that tracks your hand motions, and you can take pictures and apply a postimpressionist filter. (This concept would have been a wonderfully novel trick before Instagram, of course. It just feels normal, now, though.) We’re all painters! And subjects …

Interspersed with the recreations of van Gogh’s art there were plenty of other digital elements, including some context about his time in various other parts of Europe, and things he’d written. I don’t know if I’ve ever identified with a quote as readily as this one. It is the English translation of a passage from a letter van Gogh wrote, in 1885, to Anthon van Rappard who was a friend and mentor. They were critiquing each other’s work, discussing their progress, and their contemporaries, and the regular stuff of living a life. And then, eventually …

That’s my process for … most everything … in that one sentence. Anyone who has spent more than 90 seconds on this site, or probably just around me, could recognize it.

The work in question, painting the peasants, is such laborious work that the extremely weak would never even embark on it. And I have at least embarked on it and have laid certain foundations, which isn’t exactly the easiest part of the job! And I’ve grasped some solid and useful things in drawing and in painting, more firmly than you think, my dear friend. But I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it.

The artists who worked on the creation of this traveling installation were obviously having a great time. You didn’t have to bring interpretive weather into a master’s work to see that, but it doesn’t necessarily hurt, either. And here’s more of Hanslip playing Godard.

For whatever reason, I’ve never thought much of still life. Kitchen table art just seems like, well, those plastic tablecloths on so many of the kitchen tables of your youth. But this, perhaps because it was on more than one plane, and oversized, is really captivating. I stood there staring at the white in the apples at my feet, but I was transfixed by the reproductions of the cracks in the oil.

That was late in the afternoon. The exhibit seemed to close a bit early. Everyone knew it but us, and so they all left. We had maybe 20 minutes alone with the whole thing. In a way that’s easy to feel and difficult to describe, it seemed like a big gift: a private moment looking at the brilliant work of people inspired by a master.

It wasn’t all digital. They also had an actual van Gogh on display, this is Landscape at Saint-Rémy, and I hope this does it a bit of justice.

As of this writing, it is in 13 U.S. cities and seven more in Europe and a few other places besides. If you can see this immersive exhibit, you should definitely make the effort.

After that wonderful experience, we had another one, at the airport. Two airports, in fact!

But more on that tomorrow.

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17
May 22

Let’s go back in time

Ten years ago I took this photograph, and published it on my Tumblr site. (Remember those?) This is the agapanthus, the African lily. From the Greek agape (love) + anthos (flower).

The plant is believed to have a hemolytic poison and can cause ulceration of the mouth. It does have other medicinal properties, however. There are about 10 species in the genus.

(Haven’t put anything on that Tumblr since November 2014. I wonder why? Probably just rightly remembered I should put everything here.)

Nine years ago I was at a baseball game, and the good guys won. We found our friend watching from a nearby parking deck.

(Happy times!)

Eight years ago we ran a triathlon in the morning, and watched a baseball game in the afternoon. (Good guys lost.) And I got Aubie to take a selfie on my camera.

(Happy times!)

Seven years ago we ran a 10K. I did it in brand new shoes.

This was a fundraiser in London, and on part of the route we ran around Wembley Stadium. The guy that won the race was an Egyptian Olympian. He lapped us. It was amazing to watch him run. He could not stick around to get his medal, they said, because he ran off to run another race. Long distance runners, man.

But look at this awesome bling!

(The next day we were in Paris. It was a whirlwind.)

Six years ago, plus one day …

I’ve never been able to eat watermelon without thinking about that. And I can’t eat watermelon without being a bit sad. Had some this morning, in fact.

Five years ago, boy, I was right about this one.

Four years ago, we were in Tuscany, specifically, Siena, and just one of the beautiful things we visited that day was the Duomo di Siena. In the 12th century the earliest version of this building starting hosting services, but there’d been a church on this spot for centuries by then. The oldest bell in the church was cast in 1149! These beautiful facades started appearing in the 1200s.

That was a grand trip. We’d do that one again, I’m sure.

Three years ago, the 17th was a Saturday, and we went on an easy bike ride.

Two years ago I apparently sat around and thought of little more than Covid. Remember the pandemic?

And last year at this time I was recovering from my first long drive in a year. We’d just come back from visiting my vaccinated family members. It had been my first drive out of the county in more than a year. It took a day or two to recover.

I did have a reason to re-use this gif, however.

The guy on the left is a sports director at a television station in Illinois now. The guy on the right is a 2L at a Washington D.C. law school. (We’re all going to work for one of them one day, I’m sure.)

So a bit of everything on this day in the last decade.

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