Why You Have To Ride A Bicycle To Truly Understand Picasso, Rodin Or Any Impressionist Painter

You all have seen this Picasso sculpture.

Question:  What kind of handlebars are they?  Velo Orange Belleville?  (OK, so VO didn't exist in Picasso's time.)  Whatever they were, they definitely weren't flat bars.  In fact, I can't think of any way even Picasso (or, for that matter, Rodin or Michelangelo) could have made an objet d'art from flat bars.  For that reason alone, they should be illegal. 

(Don't get me started on those mountain bike bar ends that were all the rage circa 1992-1996!  Yes, I had a pair of Onzas--in purple, no less!)

I posted that image because I figured that I should, since I visited the Picasso Museum--my favorite, after the Rodin--today.  However, I didn't actually see the "bull".  The part of the museum in which it is displayed was closed off because a special show is being organized.  Oh well.

At least there's all sorts of other interesting stuff to see there.

Now that's something to think about the next time you're kissing your beloved!

It goes without saying that Picasso, like many great male artists, had complicated relationships with women:

To be fair, he also had a strong social conscience.  You've probably seen Guernica.  A decade and a half later, he painted "Massacre in Korea":

And he understood, I think, how thin the line is between sensitivity and derangement can be.  At least I gather something like that from his painting Absinthe Drinker:

That one isn't in the Picasso Museum. I saw it yesterday in the Musee d'Orsay.  There's so much there and so much has already been said about many things that are there that I'll just choose a few vague (wave) paintings:



Paul Gaugin (another favorite of mine): Marine avec Vache

 

Georges Lacombe:  La Vague Violette


 

August Strindberg (You didn't know he was a painter, did you?) :  Marine avec recif

 

Alexander Harrison (Philadelphia 1853-Paris 1930):  Marine 

I find it very interesting that the Impressionists and Rodin came along around the time the bicycle was taking a form we recognize today, which vastly increased its popularity over that of "high-wheelers" and other predecessors.  For the first time, many people had access to a mode of travel that is faster than walking.  Because we pass by people, landmarks and other parts of the landscape more quickly on a bicycle than on foot, we see them clearly but momentarily, so they form impressions in our consciousness.  That, I believe, is why we can so readily call upon sense memories of what we saw, heard, felt, smelled or tasted during a bike ride.

On the other hand, when Picasso was helping to invent Cubism, the automobile was in its juvescence.  So was cinema.  When we see things from the window of a fast-moving car or other motorized vehicle, we see "cuts" in much the same way we see a series of images on a strip of motion picture film.  Each image in the series differs slightly from the one before it, but the cumulative effect is that what's at the end of the strip is very different from what we saw at the beginning.


I'm sorry if this all sounds like half-baked cognitive psychology mixed with even-less-baked art and film theory.  I'm just doing the best I can to describe what occurred to me as I was riding between museums, and after visits to museums.  If nothing else, it made clearer--to me, anyway--why the trip to the museum, especially if it's on a bicycle, can be just as important and even interesting as the museum itself.

Just for fun, I'll end this post with something from that great interpreter of fin-de-siècle Paris nightlife, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec:

 

Although I Couldn't See All Of The Statues, The Ride Wasn't A Bust

Today I cycled to a place where I shed tears whenever I visit.  Yes, on purpose.





 

 

For those of you who have never met me in person, I'm going to share a little secret:  I cry, sometimes in embarrassing, if not inappropriate, situations.  More than once, tears have rolled down my cheeks when I've shared a particularly beautiful piece of writing--like Caliban's "The Isle Is Full of Noises" soliloquy in The Tempest--or when some sense-memory overtakes me.  I can also cry with and for another person, as well as for myself. 

 

So where, you may ask, is this place in Paris that opens up my lacrimal duct?





 

He's at the "gate", so to speak.



That bust, and the statue before it, are studies that became part of Porte d'Enfer by Auguste Rodin.  I went to the museum that houses most of his work.

 The only problem was, the main collection was closed.  So was most  of the rest of the museum.  To be fair, the Hotel Biron, at 77 rue Varenne, has been in need of repairs.  And, as with any museum, ventilation systems and other infrastructure need to be repaired and replaced in order to keep the artist's works from deterioration and other damage.

 

 C'est une injustice! I exclaimed to the guide when she explained the situation.  "J'ai venue d'amerique", I told her, to see Le Baiser, Le Penseur and--my favorite objet d' art--Je suis belle. 

 

 

Thinking about....?

From the day I first encountered photos of those works in an art history class I took as an undergraduate, Rodin has spoken to me, moved me, in ways that only three or four other artists, in any medium, ever have.  For me, seeing the ways he could draw out despair, courage, empathy, isolation, inspiration and so much more--sometimes all in the same work--in such static materials as stone and metal has been a sort of guidebook to the soul.  He doesn't merely  render, express or depict emotions; he makes his materials a conduit for la force vitale.  To me, the only other Western sculptor who did anything like that is Michelangelo.

Sometimes, in museums, I see.  Or I might think, or feel, or simply enjoy.  When I am in the presence of Rodin's works, in his milieu, I live.  You might say it's like  at least for me.

Anyway, the museum is apparently building a new wing as they renovate the old space, and are going to exhibit the works in new ways.  I hope that the newly-restored museum doesn't sacrifice too much of the intimacy of the old one and become another big building full of glass boxes that hermetically seal the artist's works away from the people, from the world, as too many other museums do.

 As the renovations proceed, there is an exhibit of some of the castings Rodin made as studies for his masterworks as photographs taken of them, and him as he made them.  Most of the figures you see in his completed works are clothed, but he made nude studies for all of them to get, not only the proportions, but the ways in which they moved and interacted with their environments, before he created the "final product", so to speak.

 And the gardens are still open.  Even if you aren't a fan of his work, or art generally, it's a great place to unwind--after or before a bike ride in Paris.

 After I left the Rodin and had a picnic lunch by the Seine, I rode some more, spent some time in the Musee d'Orsay and rode some more.  I'll talk about those later.

Another Long Lunch And Late Ride--And A Confession

Today I enjoyed another long lunch with another French friend I hadn't seen in a long time.  And I took another late bike ride.

I had seen Michele more recently than I'd seen Jay, but we agreed that it had been trope longue. Interestingly, my conversation with her--like my conversation with Jay--was not a sentimental repetition of temps perdus.  Rather, we picked up where we'd left off eight years ago, when she came to New York.

That is probably a good thing because, since we last met, the friend who brought us together--Janine--died.  Michele is nine years older than I am, as Janine was, so it's hard not to think of aging and mortality and other related topics.  That may be the reason why we didn't dwell on the past. 

She asked me the question she didn't ask when I told her, via e-mail, that I was coming to Paris.  I said, only half-jokingly, "Donald Trump sera le president."  She chuckled in the way one does when one could just as well sigh:  She knows that neither his election nor the prospect that it would drive someone like me out of my own country is out of the question.

Perhaps I shouldn't worry so much about The Donald going to Washington.  After all, he might make the White House look something like this:

I took that photo of the Versailles palace from about a kilometer up the road.  You can see all of that gold glitter from that far away. 

 

 

Yes, I rode there after Michele and I parted.  In this part of France, there's about half an hour more of light at the end of a summer day than there is In New York or other places at or near the 40th parallel.  All Paris museums are closed on Monday, as is the inside of the home of Le Roi Soleil. But the gardens around the palace were not and, having ridden there during two of my bike tours, I knew the trip would be pleasant.

 

 

 

I also had another motivation for taking the ride.  To tell you about it, I have to make a confession:  I am really a big magpie in a human body.  Why else am I drawn to glittery, shiny things and looking at my reflection in them?

 

 

 

Anyway, the gardens are interesting.  They're so formal that even this bird is all  dressed up. 

 

 

 

Maybe he's going to a party in Paris.

 

 

 

 

Can you beat that for a navigational aid?