We’ve visited Paris fairly often, but always for a week or weeks. Two years ago, though, we made a mad dash from New York to see an extraordinary exhibit of the Shchukin Collection at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, and managed to squeeze that and a few of our favorite places into four days including flights.
Looking back at my pictures from that whirlwind, I’m struck by a few places and a lot of unusual angles and perspectives, and hope you’ll enjoy them!
The Musee d’Orsay clocks have always fascinated me, although I’d never eaten at the cafe surrounding one of them, nor noticed an easy (if visually compressed) view of the Louvre through them.
The Frank Gehry-designed museum of the Louis Vuitton Foundation, hosting the exhibit, was new to us and quite a visual distance from other Paris museums as well as from the 19th-century and early 20th paintings in the collection. George G and Michael Fong II recognized it as our One Clue Mystery.
Quite different from the decorative detail of the Musee d’Orsay, originally built as a railway station, and one of our favorite stops on every visit. Outside the museum, a curious rhinoceros appears to be investigating the construction behind the fence.
Another large and intriguing artwork, at the Louis Vuitton: Called ‘Where the Slaves Live,’ it’s by Adrian Villar Rojas and is a living sculpture that changes over time with changes in its organic components. I’m not sure I understand the title, but I was fascinated with the concept.
Also new to us on the trip was the Jardin d’Acclimatation, which sits back to back with the Vuitton museum. Part open parkland and part amusement park, even on a February day it was popular…especially with the peacocks who snapped up any fallen morsels.
Not only peacocks are catered for in the park. This is a dovecote, built as part of a network of military pigeon posts, designed to host carrier pigeons who would back up other communication networks that had failed during the 1870 war with Prussia. This was the first, and they remained in use up to World War I.
And here’s possibly the most over-done room in the world, or at least Paris. It’s a ballroom at the Palais Garnier, home of the Paris Opera.
And an eye-fooler: standing on a platform of the RER train system (below), one sees a photographic image of what might be just above on the next level, but isn’t. What is up there can be seen through the window that opens onto the ticket office.
I have lots of pictures of Henri de Miller’s sculpture L’Écoute at Les Halles, taken over the years as it has been repeatedly moved due to constructiorn. But this is my favorite, because the passive and pessimistic character of the work falls apart at the hands of a child and mother.
And last, our Escher-like courtyard in the 18e; a part of what keeps me coming back again and again.
