Exploring: Tuileries, Place de la Concorde, and Petit Palais
1/11/09
Grateful for the chance to go exploring alone one morning, I reached the Jardin des Tuileries while the sun was still low on the horizon, just beginning to sparkle through the impenetrable haze that seems forever to blanket Paris. The garden was carpeted with snow and ice, but dozens of joggers fought their ways around the frozen fountains and marble statues. One of my favorite pairs of statues was of a tiger savagely slashing a crocodile and a tigress gently feeding her young. Further along stood gods, mythological and historical figures, and anthropomorphized seasons. At the foot of each staircase descending onto the gardens, and throughout the wooded wings, stood works of modern art. My least favorite piece was a sculpture of a fallen tree lying among other trees. I stared at it for a good five minutes, wondering if it was there on purpose, or whether it had simply fallen over in a recent storm and had not yet been cleaned out. I did, however, favor a sculpture of a hugely fat woman. Hugely fat women seem like a very popular subject in art. I suppose imperfections are more fun to be creative with. There are only so many times you can sculpt the softness and refinement of the face of Venus de Milo.
On one terminus of the jardins des Tuileries, separating it from the Louvre, stands a small arch that imitates the grander Arc de Triomphe, while on the other stands la Grande Roue, the giant ferris wheel at the front of Place de la Concorde, which lights up like a ring of blue-white fire at night. Concorde is lined by museums, and two monumental fountains, green with oxidation, skirt an obelisk, a present to France from Egypt, and also incidentally the largest sundial in the world. The view across the bridge is beautiful, the Seine sparkling below.
A pleasant stroll toward l’Arc de Triomphe brought me to the Petit Palais. I can’t quite get enough of art museums, though I freely admit that the Louvre, Orsay, and Orangerie were all superior to the Petit Palais. The collection is fairly small, and though everything is beautiful, nothing was new or notable enough to stick. The façade of the building is lovely, and within an enclosed space resides a lovely garden of green and white, sealed off when I went due to the cold. One hall of the Palais was full of vases, of all different colors, styles, and materials, while the next held sculptures and paintings. Below, past a winding staircase, was a hallway of fascinating medieval pieces, some colors fading, gold flaking from the halos. At the end of the hall was a vast room of ancient artifacts, such as vases from ancient Greece. Other halls held the works of French artists, such as Ingres and Delacroix. At the foot of a staircase leading to a temporary exhibit by a contemporary Japanese painter sat the most intriguing work of all, a sculpture I saw again at the Musée d’Orsay of a starving man, his face contorted with horror, his children pleading with him not to eat them
K.B.