Ramelle's Newsletter

Musings from France, October 2023

After the Flight: The Picasso Museum, Paris

The flight is full, our seats tipped back those few precious inches all night long. Our pre-arranged driver kindly waits two hours while we crawl through customs, find our bags amidst thousands of others at the international arrivals, Orly Airport, Paris.

Michael and I stagger into the Hotel du Jardin in the Marais District of the 3rd Arrondissement. Luckily, there is an available room hours before check-in (not available on-line!) We drop onto the bed for the unavoidable nap, welcoming the stillness after seven hours of jet propulsion, awaking by mid afternoon, still in the light of the day, rested enough to roll out the hotel lobby to see Paris.. The hope is to find the Picasso Museum in our short time here. As it was closed for several years of extensive renovations, our curiosity is keen. We take a taxi to save time.

We are not disappointed; a treat to experience this place: have a look for yourself virtually here: [https://www.museepicassoparis.fr/en/expositions-en-cours]

Formerly the Hotel Sale (salty hotel!) the building has a saga of owners and tenants over three centuries. It was occupied by a school (Balzac attended) and an embassy (Venice, Italy) and a book depository for the confiscated tomes pilfered from the convents during the French Revolution. Today it is a museum a

nd an entertainment destination and a labor of love!

We buy entry tickets with 90 minutes til closing time. Good afternoon, bon midi. La vie c’est bonne! C’est Paris! Voila, Picasso!

There is an abundance of his original work carefully curated on view only on the subterranean ground floor. A female artist, Sophia Calle (1959 - ) commands all three of the upper spacious estages. After a quick glance at her poster, we turn away to go straight to the one floor to see the master’s pieces.

We are not disappointed. Objects and paintings from each era of Picasso’s work cluster in a network of galleries. We find colored pencil sketches never exhibited before, delicate wood assemblages that are rarely on view. Life-size cut out shapes in paper or plywood show the lines where the artists didn’t bother to follow the outlines (think of a child not coloring carefully!) other sculptures are made from farm tools assembled into stick figures.

And then there are paintings, just enough to provide examples of Picasso’s themes across decades of his life’’s work. We find the portraits fascinating. The one of mistress, Dora Mara, hangs by one of another painting of a later mistress, Marie-Therese. These two are particularly striking displayed within view of each other as they had such different and distinctive personalities. They share a similar posture; a hand to the cheek, while the rest of the features contrast in style, color and design characteristics, again, reflecting their differences.

There are a few memorable sculptures, those ubiquitous bronze heads with strong angled noses, sharp ridged hairlines, unbalanced eyes.

There is a room full of the “blue period” paintings.

Energized by all of these works, we surprise ourselves and continue on to the upper floors of the enormous building.

It turns out that the contemporary artist on view throughout the whole place has studied Picasso. He is her only focus. She is infatuated with him. Everything she does reflects, even absorbs his aesthetic. The museum has “given in”. She is on every floor!

During the museum renovation, all the Picasso artwork was wrapped in brown paper. Sophia Calle, concerned for the paintings’ well being, photographed every single work in the paper wrap exactly as it was displayed on location. Today, we find those photos hanging back in the spots, true to the size of the original. Very powerful, yet strange, exhaustingly repetitive and oddly mysterious.

Calle’s own sculptures are not like Picasso’s. We see them in the connecting hallway. She works in ceramics with abundant appliqués. A life size female form, like a mannequin, is posed with hand on face (like Picasso’s women), with elaborate detailed dress and a wolf dog with fur that is as close to real as imaginable.

We are not exhausted yet. On the top floors, enormous quantities of Calle’s possessions are curated as compete rooms, over decorated with her objects; pottery, paintings, ceramics, china, taxidermy and paraphernalia in groupings of small collections that together create a “room of their own”.

The museum is closing. It has been two extraordinary hours of ingesting brilliant artists. We don’t need to sleep here!

Our walk back to the hotel through the damp Paris streets is as colorful as we might have dreamed. Luckily, we are weatherproof! A nice meal two blocks from hotel in a corner bistro fills us with roast chicken, salad and home made bread and a small glass of wine - deliciousness as no other. We will circle right back here for breakfast!

Stay tuned: the next post will be our next and only other day in this beautiful city before we depart on the high speed train to Dijon and our week long excursion on a barge.