The Louvre: When I Paint My Masterpiece

When I Paint My Masterpiece

By: Bob Dylan

Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere
You can almost think that you're seein' double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs

Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece

We weren’t on “the streets of Rome…” more like Paris. No rubble but we could almost hear the clatter of Napoleon riding his steed and the charging feet of the angry citizens storming the Bastille in this monument-filled city. We decided to visit one of Paris’s iconic cultural landmarks—the Louvre museum. You cannot return home and admit you missed the Louvre museum! Reed, Dana and I walked to the Louvre and arrived around 10:30 AM. The crowds were not yet insane, but already I was seein’ double. I struggled to get a personal handle on the experience. 

  

Mandatory these days… not only do you visit the Louvre, you gotta have proof you were there in the form of a selfie. Eager visitors, cellphone in hand, maneuver like Lionel Messi around the goal to capture themselves and the work of art. 

Look, there I am next to a Van Gogh painting. Oh, and that’s the Mona Lisa! We’re BFF…

Besides the crowds, we had another problem…we had to pick and choose to make sense of this vast collection of art. Dana and I opted for the audio tour. My headset played at a very low volume. Her headset functioned but the audio tour presented confusing instructions for how to navigate from one vast room to the next. But, alas! We got the clue we needed. We learned the Louvre contains three masterpieces, valued more than any other artworks in the entire collection. Our plan was to find each one of them:

1)   Nike statue— Winged victory (the original Nike swoosh)

2)   Mona Lisa (Le Jocanda)—Leonardo da Vinci’s painting 

3)   Venus de Milo—the armless beauty, discovered on a Greek island

 Let’s learn a bit about the 3 masterpieces, shall we….

Nike statue-- Winged Victory of Samothrace (2^nd century BC) stands in the prow of a boat. Brilliant marble sculpture is so delicate that the lines of Nike’s breast can be observed beneath her garment. 

And don’t forget Nike tennis shoes, and their swoosh symbol, was inspired by this very statue. Phil Knight, Nike CEO, got the name for his company by asking a group of employees to come up with ideas for a company name. One genius suggested “Nike” and the rest, as they say, is tennis shoe history. Knight then hired a commercial artist to make a logo. That talented individual got paid just $35.00 for the design—now known as the Nike swoosh and seen everywhere in the world. The swoosh symbol does capture something of the spirit of the goddess’s wings. By the way, the artist did get some company stock, eventually worth $1 million. But, of course, Phil Knight and Michael Jordan did a little better than that. 

Mona Lisa (La Gioconda, Italian, Le Joconda, French)—The Da Vinci painting, made famous by the enigmatic smile of its subject, Lisa del Giocondo, was commissioned by Francesco del Giocondo. And I always thought the nickname “Joconda” referred to the smiling or joking quality of the subject’s expression. I just looked it up on my Translation App. Gioconda does mean “joyous” in Italian. So is the nickname Joconda a reference to the family that commissioned the painting— or a reference to the subtle smile of its subject? Maybe she’s laughing at all the people taking selfies. Leonardo painted the work between 1503-1506 and it has been in the Louvre since 1797. 

Venus de Milo—The statue was discovered by a Greek famer on the island Milos. The Greek statue, found without its arms, was sculpted between 120 and 100 BC and was discovered by a Greek farmer in 1820. The audio program from that darned headset explained that the Venus de Milo has two pivots in her torso, adding an interesting dimension of movement to the naked upper body. The Venus’s lower half is draped with a garment but the backside reveals a sexy display of backside—Sex sells, always has!

Have to admit the Louvre overwhelmed in both good and bad ways. But we made it to the big three and called it our own winged victory, and escaped outdoors to the pleasant Louvre Palace grounds where the glass pyramid by I.M. Pei combines both a modern and ancient vibe.

Our travels for the rest o the day proved pretty successful. Reed got a clue, via travel guru Rick Steves, about the #69 city bus. The 69 bus provides a great tour of Paris monuments, including the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, Napoleon’s Tomb, and the Eiffel Tower. We decided to try out the bus and take it to Reed restaurant, our dinner destination for the evening. The bus ride began as an upbeat mass transit experience. Molly, the French speaker in our group, got into a conversation with a Parisian woman. The French lady overheard our concern about when to get off the bus and gave us some guidance. And, in the same moment, I had a life-changing moment when a young man on the bus offered his seat to me. Okay, I’m just a few days short of 68 years at the time. Still it hurts! And Reed is my same age but none of the youngsters offered a seat to him. Life goes on.

The Reed restaurant on Amelie Street, with the same name as Reed, our friend and fellow traveler, proved a delightful experience. The proprietor, a Canadian woman from Quebec, cooks especially for you and a few other customers in the restaurant. The food is delicious and she interacts with her clients, offering suggestions on wine and taking the food order. Then she cooks the meal just a few feet away in an open, spotless kitchen. Talk about home cooking. It’s like having your French aunt, a gourmet cook, prepare you dinner from the best, freshest ingredients. A few menu items I fondly recall—gazpacho, a lamb entrée, a white chocolate dessert and espresso-style coffee for dessert. We even got a few pictures out front with the chef.

From Reed restaurant we were able to walk to the Eiffel Tower. A beautiful time of evening, the sun goes down at close to 10 PM. I had only seen the Tower from the distant. As we got closer and spied the Tour Eiffel rising between the building of the city streets my heart began to stir. This poetry in metal was built for the 1889 World’s Fair. The grace of the building reaches you on a visceral level, something hard to understand. The color seemed bronze, almost brown. And even better, the local people clustered on a grassy area near the Tower and enjoyed wine, water and picnic style food as the sun finally set. The Eiffel Tower continued relevance for the Parisians made the architectural feat of Mr. Eiffel even more impressive. Our day was now complete.

How to get home? Well the #69 bus makes a circle near the Eiffel Tower and heads back towards Marais, the district where we are staying. And there were plenty of empty seats!

Travel Diary: 6/9/17

Travel Diary-- 6/9/17