December 2009 Archives

Another visit.

"tudy of, The Raft of the Medusa (Le Radeau de la Méduse), héodore Géricault

I randomly had The Pogues, "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash" loaded up on the iPod, so most of the second part of this very, very long study was done listening to it. I guess I get a weird delight out of that.

I've stopped taking too many pictures. Sometimes, you take pictures and forget to look. You see this all over the place at the Louvre. People taking walk-throughs with camcorders, without actually experiencing the place. I find this spectacle really interesting, since the Louvre is incredibly large and also, in certain places - incredibly boring. I'm trying to figure out the time and place all this footage is going to be reviewed and I'm failing at anything less than total apocalypse.

I guess this visit, I was more interested in seeing some of my favorite paintings from the collection and finding some of the more hidden drawing rooms. I was pleasantly surprised. There's something about the nakedness of drawings I really enjoy. Oil painting is another interesting spectacle, but doing it enough myself in the past, you actually get this idea that if you want to be a hack oil painter - you could. It's a very flexible medium and if you screw up - it's not the end of the world. There's actually some pretty shitty paintings in the Louvre, paintings without much inspiration and no real interest in creating a dynamic composition. A little sad I couldn't, for the life of me, find the Hall of Rubens, but that's life and I guess that's what it's like wandering aimlessly in that museum.

Study of, "ercule combattant Achéloüs métamorphosé en serpent (Hercules fighting Acheloos trensfomed into a snake)" Bronze, cast by Carbonneaux, 1824

This turn out like crap. The Raft of the Medusa killed me. I noticed a few figured I had never, ever seen before. I guess that's what happens when you stare at something for so long.

At the Rodin Muesum,

Study of, "la voix interieure vers 1899", Rodin

Study of, "Torse de jeune femme cambree grand modél 1909", Rodin

I had a professor in school that was very much into Rodin. He was a great inspiration and I really dug his art and his character. I failed the class pretty brutally. I just couldn't... get up in the morning.

After, Dying Slave

Michelangelo has always been an important artist for me. It was basically my introduction to both art and the female anatomy, so being able to draw right from a sculpture is pretty magical.

I was in the middle of inking the pencil sketch in - and the museum closed. I was told to leave. I meant to finish this at home - but I lost my Rapidograph pen. If I was to guess where that pen was, I'd have say a little crêperie in the 17 off of Avenue de Saint-Ouen that has 5 tables and miraculous Normandé. It's a horrible choice of pen to bring to this sort of atmosphere, but I left my other pen at home.

I guess it's fitting to have an unfinished drawing of an unfinished sculpture.

I've done a drawing after this sculpture before (but - from a picture):

Pastel, 2003

Some more, from the visit:

Rebellious Slave

dieu à tête de bélier probablement Amon Rê

Façade de androcéphale ailé

chapiteau d'une colonne de la salle d'audiences du Palais de Darius

Tête barbue coiffée d'une dépouille d'oiseau ; Sérapis

I was actually quite amazed at how considerate the other museum patrons were of me drawing things. Personal space in Paris is quite different from what I'm used to: Things are smaller and closer together and I'm a fair bit bigger than most people, on average. Simply: I don't fit well with the social architecture. But, people actually saw what I was doing, were interested, wouldn't get in my way and were in fact, curious in what I was drawing. It was nice.

A group of students were especially intrigued while I found one of the few sitting places in the Louvre, while sketching chapiteau d'une colonne de la salle d'audiences du Palais de Darius . Sitting down, I was very accessible, so the entire class crowded around to say hello, see my drawing and tell me they liked it. I like them, too.

While drawing the rebellious slave, I was actually asked to have my picture taken, with my drawing by a tourist. Strange things like that.

Museums as large as the Louvre and from such sources are strange in of themselves. One really wonders why they keep some of their collections - parts that are obvious NOT so much taken with askance, but perhaps more as spoils of war (none of which I can now cite* - but where exactly did they get, Façade de androcéphale ailé?) . But, here I am - with thousands others, enjoying and utilizing it.

* The Louvre is involved in controversies that surround cultural property seized during World War II by the Nazis and under Napoleon I. After Nazi occupation, more than 60,000 articles were returned to France. Nearly 2,000 objects that did not have clear ownership and were claimed by Israelis and Jews were retained by French museums, including the Louvre. In 1997, Prime Minister Alain Juppé initiated the Mattéoli Commission, headed by Jean Mattéoli, to investigate the matter and "according to the government[,] the Louvre continues to hold 678 pieces of [claimed] artwork."[68] Napoleon's campaigns acquired Italian and Northern European pieces and antiquities were taken during excavations, particularly in Egypt and the Near East. The Louvre administration has argued in favor of retaining these items despite requests by source nations for their return. The museum participates in arbitration sessions held via UNESCO's Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to Its Countries of Origin.[69]

rapidograph on paper

Brush/ink and rapidograph pen on paper

C'est un bon coup

L.H.O.O.Q. is a work of art by Marcel Duchamp first conceived in 1919. [ ... ]

The name of the piece, L.H.O.O.Q., is a pun, since the letters when pronounced in French form the sentence, Elle a chaud au cul. "Elle a chaud au cul" literally translates into "She is hot in the ass".[1] In a late interview (Schwarz 203), Duchamp gave a loose translation of "L.H.O.O.Q." as "there is fire down below" (in fact the term avoir chaud au cul is slang used in the sense of "to be horny"). *

I bought the postcard above at the Museum Kunsthaus Zürich for an astronomical price. I forget who the artist was who painted it. I think it's supposed to be just a bunch of squares painted in some sort of generative way, but all I saw was a penis. A big, multicolored, erect penis. A must have.

Walking back to the train station, I stumbled right by, Cabaret Voltaire! The birthplace of anarchistic Dada! Looks like it was turned into some sort of coffee shop, with a themed back room with Dada-inspired flare everywhere. I did the most Dada thing I could think of and had coffee at a Starbucks instead, just across the street.

When I got back to the place I was staying, I took at the old Sharpie and made a few little modifications of my own to my postcard and sent it to someone in New York City. Not sure if they ever received it. I guess that's fitting. The French isn't as clever as Duchamp's - it just basically means, "It's a good Fuck"

Here's an entire few days in Switzerland described in, coups

passe un coup dans la salle de bains

ah, tu as le coup pour mettre la pagaille!

C'est bien un coup à lui.

Murten, Switzerland:

un beau coup d'œil

après coup

Yo La Tengo, Friburg Switzerland

faire d'une pierre deux coups

Il en met un sacré coup.

jeter un coup d'œil à

du même coup

un coup de pied

Back home

avoir un bon coup de crayon