Last Day in CDMX: Let's Go to the Soumaya!

This definitely qualifies as an "iconic" shape for a building

This is my last day in Mexico City. I know it is my last day here because the "within 24 hours of departure" COVID test required for me to get back home came back negativo. (Actually, the test results said "negative," but I like to drop the occasional palabra en espanol to create the impression that I know more of the language than I do. Is it working?)

The day's chosen destination: the Soumaya.

The Soumaya is an art museum in the very upscale Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City. It was built by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim (you may know him as the major shareholder of the New York Times) to house his personal and very extensive art collection. The Soumaya was an excellent choice for the day because (a) not many museums in Mexico City are open right now due to COVID; (b) of the few museums that are open, most of those are closed on Sundays (or Mondays); and (c) admission is free.

I should add (d), it is an impressive collection. Eclectic, but focused on a few specific areas. I was told by the hotel concierge that the smart strategy is to take the elevator to the top and walk down through the various floor. So I did.

The top floor, the only floor with natural light, is sculpture, primarily Rodin and Rodin-like pieces. I recognized this guy from the Rodin Museum in Paris (the one in France) (I've been to the Paris in Kentucky, too, but there are no art museums there, just horse farms):

He's one of the burghers of Calais from the other of Rodin's two masterpieces, the Burghers of Calais. Rodin sculpted lots and lots of studies before compiling the final work, which is in his museum in Paris (the one in France). So there are plenty of Burghers to go around. Sr. Slim grabbed him one.

Rodin did a lot of work before settling on the final product. For example, he often would sculpt the "nude" body of his subject first:

This is the beginnings of his sculpture of Balzac. Only after he was satisfied that he got the body right would be "clothe" the sculpture. Here is the finished Balzac:

This is Rodin's Minotaur:

This is his "Falling Man."

He's kind of over-dramatizing the fall, don't you think?

And here is the one we all are waiting for: El Pensador:

This is one of two Rodin's Thinkers in this museum. And Sr. Slim is barely scratching the surface on Thinkers. There are more original Rodin Thinkers out there than iPhones.

This is from the top of Rodin's other masterpiece, the Gates of Hell:

The Thinker is actually one small part of the very large Gates of Hell. And this is Rodin's "Blessings":

A full Gates of Hell will later be seen on the ground floor. We'll get there. Remember, with Rodin, there are always multiple versions of the same thing.

But the sixth floor has more than just Rodin (as if more were needed). There is this young man:

The Imperial Prince by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.

And there is this large collection of heads, from Honore Daumier:

As I may have said, a lot of the collection is grouped thematically. So right in front of a bunch of heads sculpted by Honore Daumier is the head of Honore Daumier, sculpted by Emile-Antoine Bourdelle:

And this is Honore Daumier's bust of Louis XIV:

Is he the Louis who was the Sun King? They had so many dang Louises in France it's hard to keep track.

Here is another example of grouping by theme. Los Luchadores. The Wrestlers.

This is credited merely to an anonymous Italian. Same name. Same pose. Only in white:

This one is credited to Pietro Bazzanti, a non-anonymous Italian. And here are the two, side by side:

There is a lot of this thematic grouping throughout the museum.

This one isn't part of a theme. It's The Wave, by Camille Claudel:

And here is a more famous work by Honore Daumier, the Emigrants:

Again, multiple versions of this. I saw one version in Paris (the one in France).

This one fooled me into thinking it was another Rodin:

It's not. It's by Alfredo Pina. It's part of his "Study for the Monument to Dante Alighieri." If it seems like I've spent a lot of time going through the sculpture on the top floor, yes. I have. I like sculpture better than the other visual arts. And sculpture photographs much much much better than painting.

Which I am about to prove.

We are now on the fifth floor. Seeing that today is the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I had to include this work by Mexican artist Jorge Gonzalez Camarena. And representing the pre-hispanic history of Mexico City is this work:

"Ideal Reconstruction of a Pre-Hispanic Ceremony," by a Czech/French artist Jean-Frederic Maximilien von Waldeck. There's a whole lot of different cultures in that one name.

Moving along, we come upon another juxtaposed theme. My favorite artists, together:

Botero! Fernando Botero is the Colombian artist known for his figures so rotund they make Rubens' girls look anorexic.

And right behind the Boteros? Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot!

This is Corot's "Peasants in the Surroundings of the Village of d'Avray." Only Corot gave it a French name. And the museum gave it a Spanish name. So I compromised and used the English name.

The museum probably had about 10 Corots. Corot was quite prolific. OK, one more Corot, but this is the last one I swear:

"Goatherd Sitting in a Clearing over a Rock."

Right beside the Corots was this one.

This is by Auguste Renoir. I love it! It's called "Landscape. After Corot." This is Renoir doing his version of a Corot. And it's all kinds of awesome.

There were a couple of Van Goghs, but they were from before Van Gogh developed his distinctive style of layering the paint on thick.

That one is "After the Storm (or Shepherd with Flock of Sheep)" Nice. But not the most Van Gogh of Van Goghs, no?

As we continue to walk down through the museum, there are more of these thematic juxtapositions. Here are a collection of Our Lady of Guadalupes (or should it be "Our Ladies of Guadalupe"?):

And this is a collection of Christ's dead body being taken down from the cross.

One in particular stands out. It is this one. Top, left side, one in:

It is by Rubens. And it shows why Rubens is a master. Compared to the other paintings of the same theme, this one looks almost three-dimensional when you see it on the museum walls. The figures, especially the man in red, really jump out from the canvas.

Here is another very interesting thematic grouping I've never ever seen before:

The leitmotif? They are all depictions of the Tower of Babel. I don't think I've seen even one painting of the Tower of Babel before. And today? Three. My cup of Towers of Babel runneth over.

I'm getting closer to the ground as I now can look over the edge and see the ground floor.

That's Rodin's Gates of Hell on the left. We'll see it closer. Be patient.

We're now on the second floor: Asian arts. There is a lot of ivory here. And this chess set:

This is Emperor Qianlong, carved long and thin from a single tusk: 

You could make a case for Qianlong, who ruled from 1735 to 1796, as China's greatest emperor of the second millennium. But we're in an art museum, not a Chinese history museum. So I won't make the case. Not today.

It was this particular work that really brought home the fact that ivory is elephant tusk.

Down one more floor and we're in the land of decorative arts.

Elton John and Liberace both would kill for a piano like that (well, Liberace would if he were still alive).

And this is a Thomas Alva Edison original phonograph:

Finally, we are back on the ground floor.

And everyone wants a close look at Rodin's Gates of Hell:

Everyone is ignoring the giant version of The Thinker. Told you there was more than one in this museum.

And we conclude with "La Conquista de Mexico," by Mexican artist Pedro Villegas.

 

Overall, I would say that the Soumaya was well worth the admission price. Oh wait, it was free. Then it was well worth the 240 peso (about $12) cab ride. And more! It would be worth visiting even on a day when other museums were open (but if you are ever in Mexico City, save it for a day when nothing else is open).

Time for another 5km walk back to my hotel, only this time from the opposite direction. I came upon two very interesting sites. First, Dr. Martin Luther King:

What's so interesting about a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King? In the United States, Dr. King is usually shunted off to the poor and bad parts of town. Not so in Mexico! He is right here in Polanco, probably the most upscale part of town, near the Range Rover dealer, and the Gucci and Louis Vuitton stores. Good for him!

And, as I got onto Paseo de La Reforma, I saw this statue:

Josip Broz. We know him as Tito, the great Yugoslav leader. On Paseo de La Reforma in Mexico City. I believe this is the only time I've seen a rendering of Tito outside of the former Yugoslavia.

And this concludes my four-day, five-night visit to Mexico City. It was a nice, brief getaway. Vacationing in the time of COVID has pluses and minuses. On the plus side, prices are cheaper and crowds are thinner (although a whole lot of Mexico City still was extremely crowded) (especially the roads). On the minus side, a lot is closed. Even places that are open can be closed in part or in very large part. But it's not the fault of the people you're visiting.

And, I don't know about you, but I don't have enough time left on this planet to put my life on hold and still see and do all that I want to see and do while there's still time. And this was the time for CDMX.

Phot-o' the Day: The Thinker, Rodin Museum, Paris, France

This is "a" Thinker. And it is in the sculpture garden of "a" Rodin Museum in Paris, France. Which I visited in June 2016.

Paris is lousy with Rodin's The Thinkers.  And many are originals.  Rodin did more than one.  Many more than one.  This might be the main one, the preeminent one, but it is hardly the only one.

And there are at least two Rodin Museums, apparently, in Paris.  That I know of.  There could be more!  And they could house even more Thinkers!  You can spend a week in Paris looking for all the Thinkers are you would barely scratch The Thinker surface.  Finding a Thinker in Paris is like finding a Stripper in Las Vegas.  They're everywhere.

This one is from France because I checked the statistics on this blog and the country that supplies the second highest number of visitors to this blog is France.  Merci.  This one is for you.  Bienvenue.

Vacation Lyonnaise

Saint Jean Cathedral, Vieux Lyon

Saturday.  There were no games today in Saint-Etienne.  No games in Saint-Etienne means nothing to do in Saint-Etienne.  Which means:  road trip.

This being Europe, however, road trip means "train trip."  "Chemin de fer" trip, in French, if you prefer.

So the departure is from Saint-Etienne's functional Chateaucreux station.

Where the gift shop has a replica of the official Euro 2016 mascot boy.

Off to be whisked away to the side trip destination:  France's second city, Lyon.

Arrival was at Lyon's huge Gare de Lyon Part Dieu station.

Lyon looks very French.

Part-Dieu station is well-connected with Lyon's manageable Metro system, so it was very easy to get from the inter-city station on the eastern outskirts on the city, to the Presqu'Ile section, the heart of the city that lies on a thin peninsula between the rivers Rhone and Saone.

This, I believe, is the area around the Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) Metro stop.

This might be the Hotel de Ville:

But, then again, it might not.  But this is definitely the entryway into Lyon's Musee de Beaux Arts, which is considered by many tourist guidebooks to be the most important art museum in France after the Louvre.  Definitely the most important outside Paris.

You enter the Musee de Beaux Art through the sculpture garden, which you pass through before you even pay.  Here's a familiar site:  Rodin's Adam, which we previously saw at the Rodin Museum.

The museum has an impressive collection:

It has a van Gogh:

This is Paysanne au chale vert, from when van Gogh was a little more poor and he had to be more judicious in his use of paint.  Later in his career, when he could afford to buy paint by the barrel-full, he could slather on thick as jelly on bread.

And, yes, the Musee de Beaux Art does have some Corot.  Above is Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot's La Rue des Sales a Montmartre.  (I've given up on trying to type the diacritical marks over all the French words.  Too time consuming.)  Below is a work in a similar vein by the artist Adolphe Appian, Temps gris, marais de la Burbanche:

And here's a Cezanne.

Les Peupliers.  And more Rodin:

L'Age d'airain.

And a Paul Gaugiin.  Nave nave mahana.

And, of course, a Thinker.  I'm beginning to think that you are required by French law to have your own Thinker in order to be open as an art museum.  Rodin's work was endlessly reproducible, which made him sort of the Factory-era Andy Warhol of his day, non?

I really liked this one, even though I am unfamiliar with the artist (which is, let's face it, not a shock).  This is Auguste Morisot, Paysage mauve.

Let's play a game with these next two paintings attributed to the artist Paolo Caliari:

You may have to enlarge them to see this, but the dog in the bottom left corner of each is the same dog!  I'm guessing the artist's dog.  See?

It's a handsome pup, so I don't fault the artist at all.

They also had an El Greco.

Le partage de la tunic du Christ.  And a giant Peter Paul Rubens:

Saint Dominique et Saint Francois de Assise preservant le monde de la colere du Christ.  You can tell it's a Rubens because of the fat chicks.  I keed.  I keed.  I'm a fatty myself so I can make body image jokes.

This is the museum's "flower room":

And this one, Portrait de Miss Sarah Cumberland. is from the artist George Romney.

It can't be THE George Romney, the former Governor of Michigan, Mitt's Dad, who ran against Nixon in 1968 and who was famously "brainwashed" on Vietnam?  Given that it was painted in 1780, I'm guessing "non," but still ...

This is another one that impressed me.  Huge canvas.  Une scene de deluge, by Joseph Desire Court.

Then it was off to the modern art wing.  Not all of the modern art sucked.  I liked these two from Robert Pernin:

The "modern art" wing of the Musee de Beaux Arts did have one Picasso.  Ronald Reagan used to tell the story of the definition of an optimist.  A child sees a room filled with horse[crap] and is all excited.  "There must be a pony in here somewhere," exclaimed the optimist child.  Well, the one Picasso was on loan to Mexico.  There was no pony.  Only this:

Not my thing.  So let's look at a French Bride-zilla and her gaggle of matrons of honor taking pictures in the sculpture garden:

After the Musee de Beaux Arts, it was off to Vieux Lyon, which has not one, but two, funiculars integrated into its Metro system.

We took the funicular to St. Just, to see the Roman ruins that are on the west side of town.  This is all that is left of the Roman aqueduct that fed this city.

Funicular down half-way to see the Roman ampitheater:

The ampitheater remains are more complete than the aqueduct:

Apparently they use them for the occasional concert.  Note the spires of Lyon's Cathedral of Notre Dame peeking over the top of the ruins.

Time to funicular back down to the bottom of the hill, to Vieux Lyon, to look for supper.  Lyon is the food capital of France:

At the base of the funicular station is the Cathedral of Saint Jean:

With a fountain that depicts the baptism of Christ (by Saint Jean-Baptiste) inside the fountain.

This is the tourist zone of Lyon.  So it had tourist shops, such as this candy shop that sold giant marshmallow strawberries and bananas.

The banana had the taste and texture of circus peanuts.  If circus peanuts were good.  These were great.

Down by the River Saone, this is the sculpture The Weight of Oneself.  This view includes Croats in chequys.

The view above is sans Croat.

Dinner was at the Auberge Rabalais.  Main course was a Lyonnaise sausage dish in a beaujolais sauce.  Dessert was Ile Flottante, a classic French dessert involving lots and lots of meringue.

After dinner, the lights of Lyon were growing dim.  Time to head back to Saint-Etienne.

Lyon was so much fun, with so much to do, and so much great food, one day trip would not be enough.