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history / Paris / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
9
Jun 22

A place about love, and light

This was written for a Thursday, but it is about the Thursday from two weeks ago. That’s the way of it around here for a bit as we go over our amazing travels. So cast your mind back two weeks …

Here’s one more hint about where we were. If you’re still trying to work it out, stay on this picture while your mind wanders over the globe. Soon below this photo it will be pretty apparent where we were.

So you’re ready, then?

Yeah?

Got your answer?

We’re here.

Paris, that is. France, not the one in Tennessee or Texas. (Though Paris, Tennessee is lovely this time of year…)

This is objectively better, however. And, no, I was in no danger on Pl. Charles de Gaulle taking the emptiest photograph possible.

The Avenue de la Grand Armee is in the background, and the Avenue des Champs-Elysees is behind me, and that’s probably as empty as I’ll ever see the road surrounding the Arc. More than our last visit, in 2015, when we spent a day in Paris. I wrote about that in three parts, and you can see those photos here. ( Part One, Part Two and Part Three.)

We’d taken students on an international trip to London and points beyond that year, and one of the points was Paris for the better part of a day. In doing that we walked 10 miles that day. We only covered 6.6 miles by foot on the day we’re talking about here, and that’s because we did more of the subway and the hop-on/hop-off tour bus, which is a grand way to get a basic understanding of any big city. And since it was a shorter walk this time, this day will just get one post instead of three. But there’s still a lot more here, so allez, allez, allez.

Let’s look at the primary sculptures on the Arc. It’s just a beautiful monument all the way around, and I feel like you could stare at it for days and constantly learn new things from it.

This is Le Triomphe de 1810, by the neoclassical sculptor Jean-Pierre Cortot. This sculpture features Napoleon Bonaparte, crowned by the goddess of Victory and celebrates the Treaty of Schönbrunn.

The Arc de Triomphe was intended to honor the victory of Bonaparte’s army at Austerlitz, before becoming a monument to all of his achievements and, today, I can show you a nice shot of two more of the main hauts-reliefs from the four pillars. One was obscured by some construction and rehab work. (All of Paris is perpetually being worked on, you see.)

Above these hauts-reliefs are six bas-reliefs recalling the battle of Austerlitz, the funeral of Marceau, the taking of Alexandria, the battle of Jemmapes, the passage of the pont d’Arcole and the battle of Aboukir.

This next one is Le Départ de 1792 (or La Marseillaise) by François Rude, and this is his most notable work, but if you hunt around Paris, you’ll find many of his other efforts. This famous work, though, celebrates the cause of the French First Republic during the uprising. Above the volunteers is the winged personification of Liberty. This imagery is a big rallying cry for the proud French. It has been a recruitment tool and a part of their military fund raising during World War I.

And this is La Paix de 1815, commemorating the Treaty of Paris of 1815, or the Second Treaty of Paris. See, once he escaped exile and returned to power, Bonaparte did his thing for a while again, until he had to abdicate again, and that ultimately brought about this treaty. And … well, look at some maps, and it is clear that Bonaparte is at the heart of things we see before us even now.

France lost the territorial gains of the Revolutionary armies in 1790–92, and was essentially reduced to little more than its 1790 boundaries, ordered to pay 700 million francs, and pay for an occupation army of 150,000 for five years. This got knocked down to three years. Also, it solidified Switzerland’s neutrality and excellent cough drop industry. So, while not exactly one of Bonaparte’s triumphs, he’s at the center of that, and so many other things. Antoine Étex created the peace sculpture. Opposite is another Étex piece, La Résistance de 1814, but we can’t see it here.

Also on the Arc you’ll find the names of the old French victories and generals. Beneath it is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I.

Napoleon died in the South Atlantic, on British soil, having never seen this amazing monument. But when the French finally got his remains back almost 20 years later, and part of the state funeral he received on that cold December Tuesday in 1841 involved a horse-drawn hearse moving the body from the Arc de Triomphe to Les Invalides.

See? You learn all sorts of things on those hop-on/hop-off buses. The English narration was recorded by a young guy using the name Jean Claude. His English was very good. He taught us a lot.

From Jean Claude I learned that this is The Petit Palais, an art museum. It was built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, and today it is home to the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts.

A few paragraphs ago I mentioned Les Invalides. Here it is, ordered up by Louis XIV in 1670 as a hospital and home for old and disabled soldiers. It was completed in 1676.

I mentioned Bonaparte being laid to rest there, dozens of other prominent historical figures are there, as well. And The Invalides has seen a lot of other French history, including, in 1879, when Parisian rioters went inside and took control of cannons and muskets stored in the cellars. They turned them on the Bastille during the revolution.

It continued on as a retirement home and hospital for military veterans (invalides) until the early 20th century.

Today the sprawling complex is home to the Musée de l’Armée, the military museum of the Army of France, the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, a museum of military models, and the Musée d’Histoire Contemporaine, a 20th century research museum. The former hospital chapel is now national cathedral of the French military. The Royal Chapel is now known as the Dôme des Invalides. This is the tallest church building in Paris at 351 feet.

All that gold on the dome and on the sculptures leading up to it? That’s just under 30 pounds, Jean Claude told us. It was applied in 1989 or so and was worth something like $3.5 million dollars when the narration was recorded, which took place some time before Notre Dame burned.

I know that, because nothing of the April 2019 fire was on the recording, even though the bus goes right by it.

We’ll get a bit closer to Notre Dame this weekend, but first, enjoy the Académie Royale de Musique. The Paris Opera.

Prior to Covid, The Paris Opera was presenting about 380 performances of opera, ballet and other concerts, to a total audience of about 800,000 people a year. Given the foot traffic we saw, those numbers have surely bounced right back. Paris is once again a bustling city. Il n’y a pas de pandémie ici!

Which brings us back to that big stick pointing to the sky.

Did you know that it was an expo piece? Perhaps you’ve learned that it was supposed to have a limited lifespan? The locals weren’t especially fond of it in the early days, did you know that? Costly, ugly, potentially dangerous. (But what did they know?) The explosion of popularity around radio saved the Eiffel Tower. Score one for mass media.

I’m more and more Parisian by the day, I guess. Aside from when we were deliberately around the Eiffel Tower I didn’t even notice the Eiffel Tower.

Sorta like a good photobomb.

We went inside and up onto the Eiffel Tower. This is a steel mill.

Right now, the Eiffel Tower is undergoing a huge renovation. (All of Paris is perpetually being worked on, you see.) This, the signage says, is their most significant renovation in 40 years. The biggest part of the process includes repainting the tower. This is the 20th paint job in the tower’s history.

They scrape away the old paint, and literally slap on the new, same as any other project. (It isn’t as neat as paint jobs you’ve done around your house though. They’re painting by hand, but not for those staring from up close. They’re painting for speed. It’ll take six months.) We saw signs of all of this on our walk. We went up to the second level. These are the first steps.

That’s 704 steps, which didn’t seem like a lot before, or a lot after, but it was a fair amount during the actual walk.

It affords you lovely views, though. The photos I just showed you of the Eiffel Tower were from right over hhere.

We did not get to go to the top. It was closed. There were too many people.

It would have been fun to go up there.

The following photo is from the second floor. You can see the paint of 1961 coming through.

How do I know the year of that color? There’s a nice little graphic on the ground that shares the history of Eiffel Tower paints.

Turns out that, before they started painting it this time they asked the people of Paris what color they’d like to see on the Eiffel Tower. The answer was overwhelmingly “Pink.”

The people that do the actual deciding said “How about yellow brown, instead?”

And that’s what you’ll see, if you visit Paris, at least for the next seven years. And, then, the painters will be back to do it all again.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back, but from a different part of France. It’ll be amazing, so do stop by.

adventures / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
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
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.

IU / Monday / photo — Comments Off
6
Jun 22

We’re back!

We are back from our many long travels and my two-week break from writing here. We’ll get to those wonderful adventures starting tomorrow. It’ll be a nice day-by-day symmetry as the site gets back to the daily stuff.

But first, I have to catch up on everything at work. It will take days to work through my email, for example. (And I was periodically checking in on it while I was gone!)

I use the ERRS process.

Evaluate
Reply
Redirect
Simply Delete

Good system, poor acronym.

Some of the email should simply get a picture of this sign, which sits on my desk.

There’s usually not much on my desk, but that’s always front-and-center.

The cats stayed at the house while we were gone. They had a sitter and I think she did an excellent job because the cats didn’t hate us when we returned late Saturday night.

Yesterday, though, Phoebe didn’t let us out of her sight.

And her cuddles left little room for moving around. I was only just able to catch this bit of light in her eye.

Poseidon, for his part, stayed close by as well. Here he is waiting on us to finish breakfast so he could enjoy his Sunday morning routine.

His Sunday morning routine involves a big session of pets with a napkin. He loves napkins.

Because he’s a cat.

And here he is last night rushing the camera, as if he just remembered we still owed him extra pets from our two-week absence.

Today, he woke us up at 5 a.m. He’s cute, but he’s not that cute.

Anyway, tomorrow, we talk van Gogh and airplanes. Come back for that and a lot of cool visuals!

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
23
May 22

Savor this Monday

Slow busy day. Or is it a busy slow day? And how, precisely, are they different? They are certainly different. I propose more slow days to give us ample time for study. But, before all of that …

We had a nice afternoon ride yesterday. Legs were burning, and at times we were moving very quickly, indeed. Here is the view on the back half of the ride.

I was taking a breath after a little experiment. We were cruising along on a false flat at 30 miles per hour and I decided to see what would happen if I sprinted out an attack. It only took a few hard pedal strokes, and it hurt for quite some time.

Well beyond that photo, I assure you.

Just after, I had enough time to catch my wind before the biggest climb of the day. We’d gone over some steady uphill rollers at 20-plus, and then down a big descent and by the lake and then out the other side, up the big hill. Which is where we find the newest installment in the irregular Barns by Bike series.

I’m sure that one has been featured before. It’s on a hill, so I’m certainly going slow enough to take a picture or three.

It is now time for the series even more popular than the bike riding and the barns to this site, checking in on the cats.

Poseidon is very interested in The Yankee’s breakfast. Or at least the banana.

I interrupted his nap here. He paid me back in kind the next night. And the next night. And probably one more after that.

Phoebe, undercover.

If the sun is out she will forsake the comforts of a fuzzy blanket to catch a few rays. Here she is dozing on the back of The Yankee’s desk.

As I say, she relaxes hard, with an intensity to her naps the likes of which you’ve never seen. We should all be so lucky.

And that’s the theme for the next little bit. It’s time for a summer sabbatical. I’ll catch back up with you here in a few days. Until then, stay hydrated, well-rested and enjoy!