Rodin and Picasso in Paris

The Burghers of Calais

Another day in Paris.  Another couple of museums.

The first destination was the Musée Rodin, or the Rodin Museum.  It's located right near Les Invalides, which is a complex of buildings housing what is supposed to be an excellent museum of French military history, as well as (supposedly) the tomb of Napoleon.

Let me think about whether I want to visit the Tomb of Napoleon:

The interior of the museum has the temporary exhibits.  No Rodin.  Bunch of modern multimedia [expletive].  No photography allowed inside.  They don't want the word to get out that the rotating collection is inferior work by marginal talents.  Like the arrangement of rocks on top of a wire cage under a bright light that casts a shadow in the shape of a rabbit.  That one really competes with the Mona Lisa for tourist eyeballs,

The Rodin statues are all outside.

You know this guy.  The Thinker.  Only in Paris, this guy is called "Le Penseur".

You probably know who this guy is, although you may not recognize him:

This is the French writer Balzac.  Rodin completely captures Balzac's haughtiness.  Actually, I don't know if Balzac was haughty or not.  But the statue certainly makes him look so.

This is Eve.  Adam's wife.  This is the moment where she has precipitated the fall.  I'm guessing this is supposed to be the point where she becomes ashamed of her nakedness.  And, no, Rodin did not call this work "Eve of Destruction."

Easy joke, I know.  But I have to lighten the mood in preparation for this next work:

In the middle of this pool of water is the statue depicting Ugolino devouring his children.   Dante's Inferno puts Count Ugolino in a fairly deep circle of hell.  No surprise there.  Ugolino was an actual Italian count from the 1200's who actually did eat the corpses of his children.  Rodin incorporated this scene in his masterwork that was at the Pantheon in Paris's Latin Quarter:  the Gates of Hell.

It looks much nicer from this angle with the museum building in the background.

However, this angle, with the Invalides dome in the background, still looks bad.

And this is Adam, which I'm guessing is a companion piece to the Eve we saw earlier.

This next one is from the Burghers of Calais:

The Burghers of Calais depicts six citizens of Calais who, during the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) agreed to surrender themselves to King Edward III, presumably to be executed, in exchange for the English lifting the siege on the city.  The garden area has six separate figures (most nude) that Rodin did in preparation for his great work.  This is one if the more interesting figures up close and personal.

Parisian tourist meets statue.

Parisian tourists pose with figures from the Gates of Hell.

And here it is, the Gates of Hell from the Pantheon:

Look at the detail.  This is the scene of Count Ugolino devouring his children.

I'm guessing these folks are trying to crawl their way out of hell.  Bad news for them:  being frozen in bronze means they will not make it out.

These are the three figures that are at the top of the Gate of Hell, much easier to see at ground level.

Unlike, for example, the Louvre, the Rodin was not exhausting.  So time for another museum.  Let's head across town for the Paris Picasso:

At the entrance to the Picasso Museum is the sculpture from Picasso:  Man with Sheep.  It's a perfectly nice work, but it illustrates a problem with this museum.

As does the Two Women here.  This is a museum that is very heavy on the sculpture.

The sculpture from Picasso is interesting at times, such as the work above from his series of Absinthe Cups.  But a museum of Picasso sculpture is like buying a CD of Celine Dion playing the cello.  She might be a perfectly decent cellist, but Celine Dion was put on this planet to sing.

And Picasso was a painter who did the occasional sculpture.  But there is very little painting in this Picasso museum.

Head of a Woman is nice.

So nice I selfied with her.

And these two show a certain creativity.

Even those, too.  And these:

But when you see a Picasso sculpture placed next to one of his paintings:

It really emphasizes what is missing.  This:

Picasso painting.  This is a self-portrait from the Blue Period.

The museum is very new.  But having been to the Picasso museum in Barcelona, which is an excellent museum for Picasso's early years, but leaves out the heart and soul and cubism of his most productive years, and now having been to the sculpture-heavy Picasso museum in Paris, I am wondering where there is a museum with a definitive collection of Picasso painting.

I did like Picasso's variations on Woman with a Hat.  Given the identical pictures in differing colors, I'm wondering if this is what inspired Andy Warhol to do his silk screens of Marilyn Monroe, or Jackie Kennedy Onassis, or Mao, in varying colors.

Walking to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

Looking over the City of Barcelona from Montjuic

Today is the final day in Barcelona.  And like the final day of every long vacation, I am dog-tired.  But it's the last day to see the place, so taking an off-day is not an option.

But a low-key final day most certainly was an option.  So it was off to the Pablo Picasso museum.

The museum is housed in five separate but now connected mansion in the historic La Ribera district of Old Barcelona.  

The museum was founded by Picasso's long time friend and secretary Jaume Sabartes.  It opened before Picasso died.  Picasso was intimately involved in the planning of the museum.  But he never saw it.  He vowed never to step foot in Spain until Franco died.  Franco out-lived him.

The museum houses an extensive collection of Picasso's early years, including some amazing pieces done in his teen years, as well as an extensive collection from the World War I era "Blue Period."  The collection is largely chronological, but, strangely, from the late 1910's, the collection fast forwards to his work in the late 1950's.  We miss the time period when Picasso went completely off the rails with cubism and placing both eyeballs on the same side of the nose.  The day art died.  We miss all that and head into his major works post-Elvis, most specifically his studies on Velazquez's masterpiece, "La infanta doña Margarita de Austria."  We saw Dali's take on the same piece at his museum in Figueres.

Why am I saying and not showing?  Because the museum enforces a strict "no photography" policy.   It's like all the single artist museums are anti-recording.  Except Dali.  His museum is the art world equivalent of a Grateful Dead show.

So let's scoot away.

Speaking of Elvis, I never went to the Barba Rossa, as advertised in the Barcelona Metro, for one of their "Burgers of the Route 66," specifically the awesomely delicious looking "Fat Elvis Burger."  You have to save some things for your next trip to a city.

So after getting cut into the little cubes at the Picasso museum, it was off to the Plaça d'Espanya to check out the surrounding neighborhood and go to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.

This is Plaça d'Espanya, a.k.a. Plaza de España.  This was an area largely developed for the 1929 world's fair in Barcelona.

Also just north of Plaça d'Espanya is Parque de Joan Miró.

It's worth walking a block north of the Metro just to see this giant Joan Miró sculpture piece.

So I will stand in front of that giant Joan Miró sculpture in Parque de Joan Miró and take my final selfie of this trip.

But other than that, it's just a park.  With grass.  Some trees.  Dogs (even though a sign says "no dogs").  I was hoping there would be more Joan Miró stuff at the park, but it's more "parque" than it is "de Joan Miró."

Notice the red brick circular building in the background of the giant Joan Miró sculpture?  Here's a closer look.

I had a guess as to what that building would be, seeing as it was a round open air arena in Spain.

I asked what appeared to be a TV news crew what that building was.  The man in the suit was struggling with the English, so he switched to Spanish and said that was the "plaza de toros."  I was right.  It was the old bullfighting ring.  Bullfighting is not indigenous to Catalunya.  Apparently it was introduced into the region when Franco was trying to make Catalonia less Catalonian and more Spanish.  It has been re-purposed into a theater.
  

Plaça d'Espanya, as viewed from another angle.

And now walking into the old exposition area.

To get to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.

There are a lot of steps to climb from here to get up to the museum.  Fortunately, there are some escalators for some of the up journey.

The building is beautiful.  Here it is posing behind four columns that symbolize something,

Here is a view without symbolism.

So close, yet so many more stairs to climb.

Only to find out that the museum closes on Sunday at 3:00PM and it was 3:15PM by the time we climbed all those stairs.  But at least the views from the top were still viewable at that hour.

I am now sight-seed out.  Time to wash up for dinner.