Tag: Louvre

  • Photographing is believing – Part 1

    Photographing is believing – Part 1

    The Louvre - Venus de Milo

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    There’s two famous ladies in these photos. I’ll give you a hint – they ain’t alive anymore. The eagle-eyed will spot that both the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo are in the backgrounds of these photos – that is if you can see them through the cameras, phones and selfie sticks held aloft.

    This is what the Mona Lisa room looked like from where she surveys the crowd:

    _MG_5859webI see just two people in that photograph actually looking at the painting in front of them. About US$780,000,000 worth of painting. By one of the greatest artists that has ever lived.

    There’s a joke I’ve heard told a fair few times amongst art historians that you don’t visit the Mona Lisa to see the painting in person, you go to experience the crowds. And now you go to experience the phenomenon that is the selfie.

    I mean I guess it’s not that odd, after all so many people will just be repeating the Beyonce/Kanye selfie that appeared last year some time.

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    And P. Diddy.

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    Nothing prepared me for the huge amounts of people in the crowds in front of the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo that had their backs to the work of art. And not just because they were turning round to let someone else have a look, but because they were trying to take a fucking selfie.

    I think it was Roland Barthes who wrote an essay when he was alive (1915-1980) that discussed how photography had become like big game hunting. Amateur photographers developed this drive to photograph everything that they saw in order to take it home and show people. This was evident in the Tate’s Salt and Silver exhibition which in some places read like an album of ‘interesting shit I’ve seen’. If you’ve ever sat though ‘Jim and Bob’s trip to Cambodia’ at your local camera club, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

    The idea of the photograph as trophy seems to have got stronger rather than died out as a concept. Barthes would be turning in his grave. The idea that it’s the cultural norm to photograph a famous artwork and then Facebook it to prove you are there rather than actually look at the damn thing is verging on… well… I don’t have a word for it. I want to say disturbing – that’s the closest I can get.

    It’s the fact that people have to prove they are there with a photograph that is the problem for me. I carry a camera around galleries and I photograph artworks. I do this for a few reasons.

    • Reference shots. I often take a snap of the art work and another of it’s label (just in case I take the wrong label, or something, so that I have both for the future). Being an art history student means that I’m always working on my huge inner database of artworks and this helps me look things up later and read about them.
    • Interesting observations. Sometimes there’s something interesting about a sculpture or painting that I don’t want to forget. A small detail in the corner of the painting, a dress, or often something on the side or back of a sculpture that isn’t usually photographed and easily available on the internet or from the galleries website.
    • Material for essays. If I’m working on something specific, then gallery website pictures don’t always work out for me. Sometimes there’s an experience you want to get from seeing it in person and you need to try and convey in a photograph. Sometimes you want to photograph something other than the artwork itself – like when I wandered round MoMA in New York taking pictures of the installations and galleries themselves because I’m writing a project on how you would install a video game exhibition.
    • The Louvre - View from inside.
      The Louvre – View from inside.

      Nice compositions. Fundamentally I’m still a photographer. Sometimes an artwork just makes a nice composition, and riffing off of another artist’s work can be enjoyable. Like this shot of The Louve taken through one of it’s own windows. Sometimes artworks can be seen or experienced in new ways because of the location that they are now in or the light on that particular day or the other works that they have been paired with.

    You know why I don’t take photographs? To prove I was there. Or for detailed looking at later. If you want to look at something closer later most galleries provide really good digital copies of their works. Sometimes you download them from the site itself, sometimes you have to register and they send them to you (like the British Museum). This is one area where the galleries and museums have generally embraced digital technology very well and do provide great resources for people who need to look at something a bit closer and in more detail. Google are also really championing this cause with the Google Art Project. And Wikipedia can often be a good source of imagery too, because works get pulled from their gallery pages and into a central repository. Like this digital copy of the Mona Lisa for example. If you click on it you’ll get a glorious 2834 x 4289 version to look at in depth. You can’t photograph this work as well as this from the crowds surrounding the painting while the gallery is open. You can’t. They won’t let you because you’d need a tripod etc and that’s now allowed in the gallery. There’s no point.

    So what is the point? Literally the only reason to photograph such a famous painting as the Mona Lisa is to say ‘I was there’. But I think that says a fair bit about your friends, if they don’t believe you were there without seeing a photograph of you with the painting.

    I’m assured that the Mona Lisa has always been busy since it’s display in The Louvre, that it’s always had similar volumes of crowds. But ten or twenty years ago they were looking at the work, not trophy hunting to prove that they were there.

     

     

  • Paris: Day 3

    Paris: Day 3

    Today, all day, was spent in the Louvre. The morning was spent in a lecture looking at the sculpture of tombs and then the afternoon I dragged myself around some of the antiquities parts of the museum. I say dragged, I wasn’t feeling well. And because I went in as a group I didn’t have a ticket, which meant I couldn’t leave the museum to get food and then come back in again. Most irritating.

    The Louvre - Tomb of Philippe Chabot
    The Louvre – Tomb of Philippe Chabot
    The Louvre - Tomb of Philippe Chabot
    The Louvre – Tomb of Philippe Chabot
    The Louvre - Cour Marly
    The Louvre – Cour Marly
    The Louvre - Cour Marly
    The Louvre – Cour Marly
    The Louvre - Cour Marly
    The Louvre – Cour Marly

    Seeing the Assyrian Guardians in natural light was incredible. They are much more beautiful this way than how they are in the British Museum.

    The Louvre - Assyrian Sculpture
    The Louvre – Assyrian Sculpture
    The Louvre - View from inside.
    The Louvre – View from inside.

    For anything popular – this is the view. I’m going to take Adam to see the Mona Lisa later in the week and I expect it to be worse.

    This, by the way, was the Venus de Milo.

    The Louvre - Venus de Milo
    The Louvre – Venus de Milo
    The Louvre - Venus de Milo
    The Louvre – Venus de Milo

    The ceilings in the Louvre are one of the best bits. They are spectacular and ornate, and reflect various parts of its history and French nationalism.

    The Louvre - Ceiling
    The Louvre – Ceiling
    The Louvre - Ceiling
    The Louvre – Ceiling
    The Louvre - Ceiling
    The Louvre – Ceiling
    The Louvre - Ceiling
    The Louvre – Ceiling
    The Louvre - Roman(?)
    The Louvre – Roman(?)

    It’s quite remarkable to think that this was, at one point, basically someones house. This was one of the service corridors that would have led to the stables and other utility areas.

    The Louvre - Inside one of the Etruscan and Roman Galleries
    The Louvre – Inside one of the Etruscan and Roman Galleries

    And of course if your service corridors are that grand, then they must lead to grand places. This was the indoor riding school – above the stables. Look at the beautiful ceiling. And the capitals of the columns were all carved with gorgeous animals – I’ve included some of my favourites here.

    The Louvre - The original riding school from the palace.
    The Louvre – The original riding school from the palace.
    The Louvre - The original riding school from the palace.
    The Louvre – The original riding school from the palace.
    The Louvre - The original riding school from the palace.
    The Louvre – The original riding school from the palace.
    The Louvre - The original riding school from the palace.
    The Louvre – The original riding school from the palace.

    Another famous work. Don’t bank on being able to see it from the front, without a crowd.

    The Louvre - Cupid and Psyche
    The Louvre – Cupid and Psyche
    The Louvre - The first selfie?
    The Louvre – The first selfie?

    Spotted this guy on my way out. Cute eh?

    The North bank of the Seine
    The North bank of the Seine
  • Paris: Day 1

    Paris: Day 1

    I’m half way through writing Paris: The Prequel but I’m determined to actually do a half decent job of blogging about the trip this time. Plus it makes it easier when I come to write articles and things, because I actually have a record that’s better than my notebook.

    I’ve been quite nervous about traveling alone. I’ve never done it before you see, but it’s a fear that I did really need to overcome at some point. I’m more likely to start traveling alone for work over the next year or so, so being self sufficient in an alien country is a good thing.

    Of course I wasn’t traveling completely alone, I was with my classmates from university. But I don’t know any of them that well really and I’m staying in an apartment on my own, away from the group. So that added some extra challenges.

    I managed to get about 800 words of an essay written on the Eurostar, which was a promising start to the week. It’s not for this Paris module, it’s for my Culture, Gender and Sexuality module. I’m writing 2000 words discussing if feminist methodologies in art history are outdated, and arguing for a new queer methodology instead. It’s interesting – if you like that kind of thing.

    Gare du Nord was an eye-opener. It seems on the Paris Metro you can just hold doors open for people, and in fact this is utterly normal. Just wedging stuff in the doors so that they can’t physically close, sometimes delaying the train by minutes. Once going the trains are pretty much like the London Underground. But with smaller turnstiles (clearly, France does not like fat people) and with marginally more odeur de piss. And beggars. Gypsy beggars. Everywhere.

    Finding the apartment was largely uneventful. I’m the street behind Bastille which is a bit of a score to be honest. I mean, this is how close I am:

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    That’s the Paris Opera down in the bottom right hand corner. The apartment itself is functional. It’s a single room with a shower room basically. But it’s fine for me to stay in for a few days and then for Adam to join me later in the week. It was dead cheap, it worked out about £300 for a Saturday to Sunday stay (there’s a £300 a night hotel just around the corner…). The hotels in this area of the city were much more than £40 a night! The walls are a little thin, I can hear my neighbour when they run the water, but frankly I’m not complaining. I’d quite happily come here again – and if I can get a cheap Eurostar ticket later in the year I may well do so. The wifi is more than good enough for me to work from in the summer.

    Anyway. I met up with the guys from uni and we were treated to a bit of a guided tour around the Seine. We checked out some old medieval streets, a wonderful backstreet full of kebab shops (Rue de la Huchette) and a vegetarian falafel stall, some bridges, some doorways, Notre Dame and the Louvre. Then five of us went and had crepes to celebrate being in France.

    Now I’m in bed, exhausted. Having got up at 0530hrs and walked 18km.

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    Some pictures with brief notes – enjoy!

    Quai du Bourbon
    Quai du Bourbon
    Paris from Quai du Bourbon
    Paris from Quai du Bourbon
    Notre Dame - West Face
    Notre Dame – West Face
    Notre Dame - West Face
    Notre Dame – West Face
    Henri IV
    Henri IV
    Seine - with Eiffel Tower
    Seine – with Eiffel Tower
    Love Locks - Pont des Arts
    Love Locks – Pont des Arts
    Louvre - Pavillon de l’Horloge
    Louvre – Pavillon de l’Horloge
    Louvre - East Face
    Louvre – East Face