May 20 Paris

We took the bus to see the Musee d'Orsay, but the line was too long, so we hopped back on the bus and went to the Grand Palais. There were three, relatively minor shows there, but much to admire. The Odilon Redon show was the best, and it was lavishly furnished with pictures from his entire career. He started out doing dark drawings based on the writings of Poe and Baudelaire, exactly the types of malign influences that launched many a French person back in the day. His most famous image is that of a smiling spider. He seems to get right into the heart of the dream, whether pleasant or nightmarish.

Next up was a show about landscape paintings, how it evolved from basically the background of paintings into a respected genre. One of my pleasures in the show was discovering a painter I'd heard nothing about, Paul Brill, a Dutch painter who gained papal favor and did a lot of work in Rome. Another unknown (to me) painter that I enjoyed was Goffredo Wals, a German painter, again active in Italy. He was represented by two silky paintings on bronze that were modern and dreamlike.

The final exhibition was one of Aime Cesaire, Wilfredo Lam, and Picasso. Picasso was represented by a lush black painting, but he was really just a teaser to get people interested in the Martiniquan poet and Cuban painter. The exhibit was lavishly done, with wonderful wall coverings and a grand ceiling structure that cast protective arms around the paintings and poems.

Since it was no charge, we trotted across the street to the Petit Palais, where we had the kind of mediocre lunch you have in restaurants the world over, even in Paris. We just saw a small exhibition there on Charlotte Perriand. She did so much iconic furniture work, mostly for Le Corbusier. Every item was either, "I didn't know she designed that!" or "Oh, that one's wonderful, too!" Throw in her stimulating photographs, self-taken nudes, all young assurance and beauty and abstract nature shots, and she deserves to be remembered. Thank goodness there's a show about her in the Petit Palais. The French are so good about memory.

Ten we returned to the Musee d'Orsay where there was STILL a line. OK, we waited in it. Then, we waited in line to get into the Manet show. It wasn't revelatory. He's got a tremendous amount of great paintings, but I've seen most of them apparently. It's always a pleasure to see old favorites, like Dejeuner sur l'Herbe and Ira and I contrasted it with Titian's Fete au Champetre, which we saw last week at the Louvre. It's nice to be able to go back and forth between artistic linkages.