Beauty in the Beast

The crushing loneliness of a Medusa in the Capitoline Museums, Rome.

Copyright 2010 Sara Harding

Back On The Wagon

Detail of a work of art in Square Roland Dorgeles, Paris

Good grief! (And thanks, Mr. Brown, for the use of your catchphrase.) I confess I was better at this blogging thing back when I received a per-post wage. Clearly I am not ready to quit my day job and become a full-time writer. I had a decent excuse for not posting up until September 17, when AT&T finally got around to connecting my internet (over a week later than they promised), but beginning September 18 the fault became totally my own.

But enough with the self-flagellation and on with the show!

I want to pick back up by suggesting that everyone read Robert Pippin's excellent post in yesterday's New York Times Opinionator, "In Defense of Naive Reading." Why am I directing readers of a travel blog to an opinion piece about literary criticism? Because of this statement: "Literature and the arts.... invite or invoke, at a kind of “first level,” an aesthetic experience that is by its nature resistant to restatement in more formalized, theoretical or generalizing language."

Right on, Mr. Pippin.

That statement pretty much sums up both what is amazing about travel and why it is so hard to write about. Travel is an aesthetic experiences. Like literature and art, travel is transformative. A good "naive reader" of the travel experience takes in details at a level that precedes worded thought. We walk through our new surroundings the way we read a great novel or see a great work of art. We are impressed by things we don't realize we noticed. We feel connections and relationships that we can't articulate. A new place is so rich, so complex, that it may take a long time and a lot of processing before we can put together an explanation of why it changed us, but change us we know it did.

The tree with the anonymous installation

How many of us have been frustrated by questions like "what was France like?" Reducing my trip to Paris to a formula of what makes France French isn't just impossible, it's ridiculous. Travel is resistant to "generalizing language." We try to pin down what was so amazing so our families and friends can share in our experience, but in the end we are often reduced to a bewildered "you had to be there."

So in order to translate the art of travel into a blog post, the blog post must become art. And maybe that's why I've been avoiding my writerly duty for a full two weeks. I can write a certain number of posts about budget airlines and good hostels, but there will come a point when I have to reduce a new place to its barest shapes and colors, and I worry that I'm no Matisse.

Copyright 2010 Sara Harding

A Final Stop: Montmartre

The Abbesses stop, designed by Hector Guimard

Yesterday was my last full day in Paris. It was cool and sunny (for the most part), and I decided to finally see a part of Paris that I had heard about but never visited: Montmartre. Montmartre is famous for its nightclubs - like the Moulin Rouge and Le Chat Noir - and as a neighborhood where numerous late 19th and 20th century artists lived and worked. Reading their names is like a role-call of the important painters of the last hundred-some years: Salvador Dali, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas... and the list goes on.

I got to Montmartre from Montparnasse by taking Metro line 13 to Montparnasse-Bienvenue and then switching to the 12 and taking it all the way to the famous Abbesses stop with its original art nouveau sign (only three of these are left in Paris). I climbed the long spiral staircase - the stop is 36 meters underground - and stepped out into the beautiful arrondissement of Montmartre.

Artists' kiosks outside a cafe in Montmartre

The streets of Montmartre are charming, overflowing with cafes, creperies, corner markets, and enticing boutiques. It was a pleasure just to wander, but the real fun began when I climbed up the stairs toward the basilica of Sacre Coeur and found myself in a square filled with artists. Charles Aznavour may lament that Montmartre may not be the artists' colony it once was, but the place is still full of aspiring artists practicing their crafts among the crowds of tourists. Some of them are quite aggressive as well - I stopped to watch as one artist cut a little girl's silhouette out of paper in a matter of seconds and before I knew it he was cutting mine as well. It was such an unusual souvenir that I ended up buying it from him - at the somewhat expensive price of 15 euros. I don't know how many customers these artists get during the day, but it's clear that "starving" is no longer an appropriate epithet for the Montmartre artists.

Rue Chappe

After seeing the impressive basilica of Sacre Coeur, I wandered the picturesqu streets looking for the one souvenir my dad wanted from Paris - a photograph of the Montmartre steps that appear in the famous photograph by Brassai. I knew only the photograph and had no idea what the name of the street was or where to find it. I had thought that such a long flight of steps would be somewhat obvious, but what I hadn't realized was that all of Montmartre is a big hill and long flights of steps are everywhere. I finally found a postcard of the same spot and bought it. It had the name of the street on the back - Rue Chappe - and I stopped in a boulangerie and then a mini market showing the postcard around and asking where I could find these particular steps. The second attempt led to success and I spent ten minutes taking shots of the stairs from all angles.

My last stop was Cafe Chappe at the bottom of the stairs. After walking up and down a hill for several hours, I was in need of some refreshment, so I ordered a glass of wine and indulged in that most Parisian pastime - watching the world go by through the window of a cafe.

Copyright 2010 Sara Harding

Doing My Cultural Duty at the Louvre

She's back there somewhere...

It amazes me how some things become cultural icons. I can only imagine there's a certain amount of path dependence in this. Someone - an important critic, a fashionable taste-maker, a high-profile political figure - likes something and bam! the rest of us like it too, for centuries to come.

What I'm going on about, of course, is the absolute pain in the ass it is to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.  I'm not big into painting, as I've said before, but I felt that it would just be weird to spend a day in the Louvre and not see the Mona Lisa. I could imagine people back home. It would be the first thing they asked and I would have to admit "no, I didn't see the Mona Lisa" and suddenly my whole level of cultural sophistication would come under suspicion.

So I decided to do my cultural duty and see the thing.

I have to admit, I never did see it well, because what I encountered when I walked into the famous painting's gallery was a mob of unruly, camera-wielding tourists all eager to do their cultural duty, too - and have digital proof they had done it. I thought for a brief second about trying to elbow my way through, but I rapidly decided it wasn't worth it. I stood on tip toe, looked enigmatic Mona in the eyes, and then took a picture of the frustrating crowd, almost all of whom were using flashes despite the signs forbidding flash photography.

The Louvre contains hundreds of masterpieces, my favorites being in the sculpture sections - the Nike of Samothrace, the Venus de Milo, Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss. At none of these artistic marvels did I find myself wishing for a SWAT team.

I don't mean to imply that the Mona Lisa doesn't deserve its hype, but at the same time, why the Mona Lisa? Why do some things fascinate us and feed our imaginations while others are just... cool? I doubt I'll ever understand. But at least when I get the inevitable "did you see the Mona Lisa" I'll be able to answer "yes."

Copyright 2010 Sara Harding

Such a Romantic City...

A detail of Antonio Canova's "Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss" (commissioned 1787), in the Louvre.

Copyright 2010 Sara Harding

Visiting the Musee d'Orsay

For most of western history, painting just isn't my thing. I mean, I love what they did at Lascaux, but after that I lose interest for about the next 16, 800 years.

Which makes the Musee d'Orsay the perfect museum of painting, at least for me. The Musee d'Orsay is devoted to impressionism, which is right about where I start to be interested again. With important works by Monet, Renoir, Pissaro, and Degas, exploring the museum is a chance to experience all the highlights of the movement that thumbed its nose at realism and academic painting and took its canvases into the great outdoors.

The Musee d'Orsay also displays works from the origins and aftermath of impressionism, including a small but wonderful collection of Van Goghs. A post-impressionist painter, Van Gogh shared and developed many of the Impressionists' interests, like light, experience, mood, perception, and outdoor painting. The Church at Auvers, one of my all-time favorites and one of the last paintings the artist ever did, is one of the must-sees among the collection. Works by Gauguin are also among the museum's post-impressionist masterpieces.

The Musee d'Orsay is located on Quai Anatole France (oddly enough, not on the nearby Quai d'Orsay) on the bank of the Seine near the Pont Royal. Tickets are 8 euros (not including special exhibits) or free with the Paris Museum Pass.

Copyright 2010 Sara Harding

The Writing on the Wall

I love graffiti. Great graffiti is beautiful and thought-provoking: it's art, it's comedy, it's social commentary, it's political protest, it's philosophy. Sure, some graffiti is inane, but some graffiti stays with you and makes you think. And of course, I'm hardly the first person to notice - by this point, artists like Banksy have raised graffiti to an accepted form of artistic expression, with glossy books in the MoMA gift shop and everything.

But just because I'm not setting the trend doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. I'm always on the lookout for interesting graffiti when I'm in a new city. I recently discovered this great wall - flanked on both sides by completely untouched white, in the quiet Rue de Verneuil in Paris. I spent fifteen minutes photographing my favorites. Here are some of them:

Copyright 2010 Sara Harding