Presentation and Spain!

This was the map I presented today for our communist party walk - it's quite disconnected from the actual district, but that's something i wanted to achieve, along with a less cluttered look then my other maps and the idea of a 1 to 1 scale map and a few others from lectures and readings. anyway, i thought the image stylish enough to post: the picture is originally from my trip with shane out to the rocky mountain national park. i'm leaving for barcelona on a hotel-train at 8:30 tonight, doing laundry and hopefully the church of Saint-Denis first... should be very fun. Looking forward to a lot of Gaudi, the Barcelona Pavillion, Picasso Museum, and absorbing the Spanish atmosphere on the Ramblas and beach. And warmth! predicted to be about 55 (and drizzly, but hopefully that part is lying...) not tropical, but it's been hovering around freezing here and you start to feel it after hours outside. Wee! Back on Monday morning.

Musee d'Orsay

 


oo great evening tonight at the Musee d'Orsay - a converted train station that houses primarily and almost exclusively mid 18th century artists to Impressionists. Amazing quality collection, there was almost more things I had seen in pictures there then pieces I hadn't. I was blown away most especially by the Degas pastels, but there were the Monet chapel studies, and 2 van gohe self-portraits and his room and a few others that i felt were almost better, and cezanne and pissaro and and and.... it was spectacular to be able to see the originals, still looking (in some cases) glossy with wet oil - much more vibrant then pictures. I was suprised by how much I liked some of the work by the Naturalists and Symbolists, art movements I hadn't given much thought to...

also they had a splendid collection of art nuevou environments, fun to get to walk through whole spaces rather then just look at museum pieces - I greatly admire the artistry of the pieces, but feel more firmly now that i wouldn't want them in my house - something about the dark-nature vining takeover implications bothers me. I still adore the Makintosh roses, though, and maybe as a wall piece in the style could be fun.

I loved the way they had converted the station, instead of cramped little drywalled rooms they allowed the scale to stay large, and the walls were faced/created with natural rough-cut ?limestone or marble?. also in other places worked polished concrete - the subtle variations in the walls really made the pieces feel less... artificially placed i think. The main promonade was a little postmodern pastiche - corny imitation column heads and angles, but the elaborate steel rivitted structure poking out pretty much made up for it.