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. 

Wednesday Fin.

 



the rest of the walk was fun, paled in comparison however. started right by my hostel from the first day, apparently the area was quite a bit more seedy then i had realized... the walk was focused on the Canal d'ouroc (although the path wound really far away and back to it a few times) and then ended at the Parc de La Villette. Saw a few exciting Renzo Piano buildings and some fantastic converted warehouses - the neighborhood again was a little more one of immigrants and many housing projects. Not the burning ones, just highrises in town taking over a formerly industrial neighborhood. charming Russian Orthodox church on it's own little hill, oddly placed behind other buildings, access through a gate - completely different world with plants and a little plaza and near-silence. Felt like a piece of the steppe. no access to the chapel, but by peeking in a crack we saw a fresco painter at work.

was a LOT of walking, was very tired by the time we got to the park - a greek sandwich revived me much however. the Parc didn't impress me as much as it maybe should have - the large red follies didn't seem playful enough, but so it goes. the lack of crowds probably had something to do with it - felt like an abandoned six flags with the attractions reduced in scale. impression gradually changed as we walked though it - maybe it's something to visit in the spring. the sunset was gorgeous...

(this is tony's picture, my camera was being finicky with the cold... i pointed out the sunset, although the particular cloud that would have made this picture even better was missing...)

posting this on thursday (i'm finally caught up!), this morning i bought hotel-train tickets to barcelona for tomorrow until sunday :) tonight i'm going to try to get out of studio at 5 or 6 to see the Musee d'Orsay: it's open late on thursdays and is supposed to be full of Impressionist/turn of the century paintings... excited :) 

Wednesday Communist II

 


Emboldened by playing trotsky in front of the revolution, we wandered the rest of the floor. In a sublimely deep/shallow conversation it was noted "It would be great to see those shapes on the roof..." "Well there's the stairs...." hehe so Tony and I snuck up to the roof of the Communist Headquarters. The stairs ended on the top (7th) floor... but there was a convenient sign pointing to the terrace... universal word there. tiny cool cement winding staircase brought us up to a fantastic view of Paris and sculptural-abstract concrete um...forms. quite giddy to be up there, no real cameras on us. Spent quite a bit of time looking around and climbing up and around the mountains, snuck down completely intact and with no one the wiser.... 

Wednesday - Communists!

 


class at 10, more interesting urban exploration lecture, sent out into the recently updated 19th arrondisement.

first (and most excitingly) we walked to the Communist Party Headquarters by Oscar Niemeyer (Brasilia architect). we were told to not expect to get inside, but when we got there it was completely open. scary-dramatic entrance, ground raises up almost to the underside of the office block but then the stairs take you down a story and in being compressed by a big canopy (that visually hangs only a few feet above ground level). Spaceship-smooth glass sliding doors into a put-put green carpeted underground area, indirect lighting along the walls and some natural from the plaza above, sculptural board-formed concrete... tres cool. No evident party demarcations, we very easily could have been in a generic office.

Photomontage wall, and non-english speaking people at the desk. tony's french managed to get across that we just wanted to look around, and they were ok with that. they opened up the dome-meeting room for us - more spaceship doors, into an even more spaceship-like space. It was truely a dome, and explained the odd white plaster hill outside - it was the top of this room. the walls had a continuous covering of hanging aluminum strips to diffuse light and for acoustic purposes that lent a shimery-futuristic feel to the space along with the rounded portal-doors and ?one-way mirrors? on the other side. I had to feel a part of the communist action, so pic is of me in the party line... hard to tell the scale, there was probably 150 fixed seats at tables in low-slope ampitheater style around the front.

I might have to open a photo-sharing site to put more pictures up - getting too close to the 1000 words a few pictures could have replaced... 

More Tuesday Morning

 


hmm also saw the madeline - a ginormous Greek Temple reproduction. Kind of silly in France, they hadn't done much to change the design at all, it was just big (huge!) and greek...shrug. Also found my way back to St. Augustin, got to see in in the sunshine, more wonderful stained glass, and this one had a lot of frescos. I almost like the frescos better the carvings all over - much more restrained and just as effective. and they were old but half-refinished, even better. Sat in the church for awhile (conveniently over a heater vent); it has been bitter cold since sunday.

did find the skate shop on the way home - but it was closed, and no rollerblades. I'm dying to have blades here, my jaw drops in envy every time i see someone with them. have found a few stores that have them online now, and will get them when i have more funds i think.... wee rollerblades :) and on suday i saw a rally and it was hmm envy-making :) it will be fun...

and the rest of the day was studio and posting 

Tuesday the 24th... kind of ramble-y

 


Most of today's excitement came in the morning - the rest was spent in studio working and producing the majority of this blog so far....

so, in the morning i set out with a mission to find a skate shop i had seen saturday evening walking around. was HARD to find a specific little store from memories of a time when i was already a little lost.... so went more monument-hopping, it was in the opera area, but i had kind of missed the other highlights in the area. So when I couldn't find the shop quickly, I headed down a street (maybe for two blocks, things here are rediculously packed together) to see the Vendome column.

I've been reading Seven Ages of Paris by Alistair Horne - a very excellent book, and it's exciting to read about things you've walked past in the very recent past, or know you can get to with all sorts of historical knowledge. On Friday night reading by the Pompidou, I was reading that a king had been assasinated... just to the east of the present Pompidou... pretty much where I was sitting. fun stuff like that. Anyway, the Vendome palace just kept popping up, so I was glad to see it.

Although... it wasn't that special, just a huge column in a plaza. Apparently the column was made from about 1300 Prussian cannons Napolean captured and melted down... you'd think i'd post a picture, but that was just a column. So this is from that plaza, they were doing restoration work on one of the facades. French construction is not as annoying as American though (although the jackhammers outside our window at 8 in the morning better stop soon, and it's concievable they will, they look almost done...), they do a great job putting attractive scaffolding up and covering it with tarps so it looks more like an art statement or even a new, modern facade. Or, in special instances, like this morning, and at the national galleries, they'll cover an area with fresh yellow pine boards - incredibly attractive :). So the picture is of that piece of French wonderfulness instead. although the column picture also had a gorgeous sky, it was a beautiful morning.... 

14th District Walk

 



Ah the futility - we only are going on four tour walks as a class, and the one today basically retraced our footsteps from last sunday. oh well, so it goes, it was interesting to see again, with a little more commentary on what we were seeing. also saw yet another corbusier building lol, a little place called the Maison Planiex on a very large road. it was kind of cool to see a buuilding that looked like it was from the 30s or 40s without being overly restored - it wasn't all that white anymore... saw the Cite de Refuge again, and the BNF at dusk and evening. Scary event - the sunken forest absolutely filled with ?sparrows? after dusk - a seriously gross number of birds flocked in there. and i like birds, alot. these were enough to sag the branches, and they kept flying across our sites for 4 or 5 minutes to keep settling (there were groundskeepers trying to shoo them away) very creepy "the birds"-like moment. 

Corbusier Sunday Part 2

 


Also saw the Maison de Brasil by Corb and Louis Costa on this campus. Headed out through an amazingly pleasant park, lots of sunday strollers, down some quaint streets to find the Ozenfant studio (by Corb). Could only see the outside, still very pleasant. Could tell it was an earlier work. Backtracked to walk up a main boulevard, all the way from the farther 16th to almost the center of the city - briefly stopped into the Paris Pantheon (Parthenon?) and saw the Bibleotheque St. Geniveve from the outside. We were hurrying to catch this play our teacher had recommended, when we decided we wouldn't make it we headed instead to the National Gallery, intending to see the last day of the Gustav Klimt exhibition... that planned scrapped due to 3-hour lines, we headed to the Pompidou Center to see the Charlotte Perriand (worked with Corbusier doing much of his fabled furniture) exhibit.

The walk there was great - went through the Tuillerie (my new favorite french word to say) garden. stopped in the huge plaza Concorde with the egyptian obelisk - more impressive then I expected, the gold pyramid on the top was very effective. The lights all came on at once as we were admiring, fantastic moment. then through the louvre courtyard to the river, abandoned the normal sidewalk to walk right by the water on the lower level. Kind of got trapped on the outside of the road by the river, had to sprint across to get back up to the normal street level, but that walk was fantastic - dusk, lights, water, hmm way to fast traffic... :) the picture isn't the best but it was one of the best parts of the day. 

Corbusier Sunday - Swiss Pavillion

 


Another sunny day to go building-hunting. Our first stop at the Maison Roche was thwarted when we found the Fondation Le Corbusier was closed on Sundays, of course. Will probably be a weekday morning thing later, maybe next week. We walked around that quiet district for awhile, shipped off to the Cite University to see the two buildings there. ..... 

Villa Savoye, La Defense, Evening

 


Ok one more post for this day - this isn't the picture i'll use, but it's a placeholder for now, i would like to write about more days :) 

Villa Savoye -2

 


My camera died while I was walking around, very disappointing, so I'll just post sketches instead. It's a very kinetic building, I wanted to keep walking up and down the ramp indefinately, fantastic shifting space. the wierd scupltures on the top are very hollow and light on the other side, meant to reflect into sunbathing and roof garden spaces, so they have a definate purpose and aren't as random as they look in the pictures. again, I'm not feeling literary enough to describe it further right now - definately something to experience in person.

lots of pictures online too if you feel like looking 

Saturday, Jan 21 - Villa Savoye!!!

two plans for saturday - the sunny day plan, and the cloudy-day plan. it was sunny.... so.... out to the suburbs to see the 'countryside' villa savoye by le corbusier. it's another architecture student thing, but this house was amazing... i think everyone should go to it and be astounded by the perfection modern architecture can bring to a living environment. I actually do feel rather polemical about it - this house was a joy to walk through. hmm more later 

Friday Jan 20 - chill

finished off tours in the morning, free louvre friday night with tony - many more sculptures, greek artifacts, french painters - i think i will go every friday night i'm here, it's very worth it. and saves eight euros fee.... after that we did the 'reading in a paris cafe on a rainy night' very parisian.... haha guess what i had to drink.... mmmm.... more cloves in the vin chaud this time, and stuck in the orange so uncultured me couldn't eat it.... very nice chill day.

the cafe we were in had a fully sheltered overhang with clear plastic windows, but had gas warmers like this picture - common here, very picturesque, and makes it very nice to eat outside. 

18th District - more

Barbes, Le Gotte d'Or, and Chateau Rouge were the last three neighborhoods. We actually split the walk into two parts and did the last two Thursday morning. Barbes was yet another fabric district - blocks and blocks of winding street with bolts of fabric, inside and out. The other two were more immigrant districts, with Le Gotte d'Or being Algerians, and Chateau Rouge other Africans. They weren't tourist districts, more just places for people to live, a little run down, but lots of markets and street shops. A few cool modern and new buildings in Chateau Rouge - saw probably the only empty lot in Paris there :). Tried some baclava and a wierd orange funnel-cakish thing at a bakery - the baklava was exceptional, don't be tempted by the apparent orange sugary goodness though.... it tasted of sweet'n'sour chicken breading, solidified.