paris vs. the movies
well, for one, this famous shot from funny face would be impossible. mostly because winged victory is surrounded by 300+ tourists, all with their own cell phone cameras, at any given time. as seen on the right. ;)
how is paris different than the movies?
americans have an idealized vision of paris in their heads. one movie-makers loooove to put down on film. (and tv. and books. i blogged about a couple dozen of them which you can read here here here here and here. oh, and here. installment vii forthcoming…!)
paris is the city of love. it’s the city of light. it has the best food in the world (so says ratatouille), and if audrey hepburn is to be trusted (obviously): “paris is always a good idea.”
the metropolitan arts council helped fund my trip with an artist support grant. not to fund my movie-watching/media-research habit (got most of those from the library, so thanks greenville county library system!), but so i could tag along with my husband as he completed a three week “spring portrait at the louvre” drawing course in montmartre.
i went to paris to research my next children’s book. gather material and illustration reference. be inspired.
yes, all of that happened. but i may have gotten a little too inspired.
i promise the inspiration wasn’t just from the crêpes. or the wind on the river. which i don’t remember seeing in the movies, either, now that i mention it…
i came home with at least four book ideas. (three middle grade novels + one picture book idea—some sample illustrations already made and mailed as postcards to my patreon crayon box members!)
i created multiple “theodore in paris” postcard designs for my patreons. they each got one of six in the mail last month as their happy mail bonus to thank them for the author-illustrator support!
i took hundreds and hundreds of photos. (limiting myself to posting once daily to my instagram stories for those vicariously traveling along, there are “only” six saved highlight reels of my trip! photos and posts here @halthegal_storyart!)
i could have wandered paris forever like a true flâneur. watching the world go by from a sidewalk cafe (although it was a bit cold and too much smoke in my eyes from the ubiquitousness of smoking parisians). wandering its endless spoke wheel of intersections and boulevards and soaking in every distinct neighborhood (arrondissement) vibes.
heck, if you were to study every piece of art in the louvre for just 30 seconds, it would take you a year! let alone if you (like me) feel compelled to draw every interesting object, sculpture, or painted figure… and of course there is no lack for stunning collections of art and architecture in paris. and seemingly a museum dedicated to every one of the countless artists who ever lived or created there…
there’s the churches and cathedrals. there’s the famous libraries and the bookstores. the theatres! the cinèma! and oh, the fashion! not to mention the parks and people-watching, too!
i went to galerie dior at christian dior’s historic atelier at 30 avenue montaigne. as the on-display collection changes every 6 months due to preservation concerns, i’m ready to make this a regular bi-annual visit!
paris certainly is a good idea: especially if you have all the time in the world. and maybe a few dozen lifetimes to spare.
& did i mention the food yet? three bakeries per block. (they give out trophies for the best croissants in the city every year; it’s a real sport.) even the inexpensive pâtisseries rival anything i’ve ever had at an artisan bakeshop here in america. (and yes, i think i’ve tried them all.)
just a few doors down from our airbnb was bacillus. they fed us very well.
so how does paris differ than the movies?
well, more of it was under construction than i expected. (keeping up 1000+ year-old architecture can’t be an easy chore; especially when the eyes of the world shall be on you for the 2024 summer olympics!) so famous facades like the palais garnier (the paris opèra house) were completely covered with scaffolding.
there were more museums than expected, too. a quick google search tells me there’s more than 130 museums there.
to stay semi-sane, i would have to repeat this mantra morning and night: “you can’t see everything. save it for the next trip.”
so instead of seeing everything, i did my best to see things well.
beneath i.m. pei’s famous glass pyramid at the louvre. watching people come down the escalaors from the main entrance (no one gets to use those curving stairs) felt like watching the penguins on a staircase toys they used to have in front of toy stores in the mall— an infinite, unending loop of visitors!
nathan was at the louvre daily (except tuesdays when they’re closed) to draw for class. i spent at least two full days there, and would walk over most afternoons and spend two or three hours so nathan and i could walk home together. we’d stay until closing (6pm daily and 9:45pm on fridays), and even though i visited the louvre more than a dozen times, i still didn’t manage to see all the RoOms. let alone all the artwork! (square footage-wise, the louvre is the largest art museum in the world. and the most visited. it wasn’t even peek tourist season and there was more than one time i needed to extricate myself from a line or a gallery because i was having an over-crowded panic attack! so put “plethora of italian student field trip groups” into things they don’t show in the movies, too!)
the musèe d’orsay (an art museum inside a gorgeous old train station nearly directly across the river from the louvre), i probably visited ten times. it took at least six visits there until i visited every gallery; and even then, i still never got to linger in the van gogh rooms for the crowds’ sake. but i’m a bigger fan of toulouse-lautrec’s work, anyway. :)
an extremely rare view of the lower level of the musèe d’orsay: as a pass holder, i got in a half hour before the line outside. (after the hour and a half delay for opening that day as they waited to see if the strikes or “manifestations” would cause a problem.)
i’d guess i didn’t see even a tenth of what interested me in paris. all places i could have gleaned even more excellent research material. but in addition to the louvre and the d’orsay, i managed to visit the l’orangerie, the petit palais, gallerie dior, the paris museum of modern art, the palais garnier, the comédie français… i did what i could, man. and still have the blisters to prove it.
“what are you looking for? mcdonald’s or the mona lisa? they’re both that way.”
bahaha… if you haven’t seen this jesse tyler ferguson clip, you should. it’s funny because it’s all too true. :)
i came home with perhaps 200 or so pages of journal entries. notes and story ideas in my story notebook. hundreds of photos to draw from later and use as reference for future illustrations. cultural observations and idiosyncrasies. aesthetic and sensory details recorded for future literary and visual works.
(p.s. i also deserve one of those 2024 olympic medals early for the suitcase feng sui tetris game i won to fit all the books and art supplies we acquired into our luggage for the trip home. i’m still taking my bows on that one.)
so while i definitely didn’t see everything that was of interest to me, i got a taste of some of it. and i saw enough beautiful things in those three and a half weeks to last a lifetime. or at least until i get to go back to paris.
which already sounds like a very good idea.
grateful for coffee coffee coffee. especially in too-much-to-ever-see paris!
yes, i got asked directions in french more than once. and yes, i could pass for french until they’d say something i didn’t understand. then i’d have to confess i only knew how to ask for the pistachio and caramel de sel macarons and could you please continue in english? NEXT TIME i’ll be more fluent, i hope. :)
and until i get to thank them in the back of my book someday,
let me take this moment to thank the metropolitan arts council
for the generous arts grant to help fund this over-inspiring research trip!
nathan and i are both proud to call greenville, south carolina home as we travel the world on art and research trips—always happy to return to our studios and supportive arts community right here.
while i ended up journaling and observational note-taking instead of putting chapters down while i was there, i think it was the best use of my surroundings.
more than once, i sat at the desk upstairs in the reading room of shakespeare & company—surrounded by bookshelves full of the same tomes james joyce, ernest hemingway, f. scott fitzgerald and such used to borrow from sylvia beach while they were living and creating in paris.
there are no photos allowed inside shakespeare & company. it’s toooooo instagrammable and perfect! but they let it be a sanctuary for readers and writers and it was one of my happiest places in paris. what can i say? books are friends!
i stood in front of countless world masterpieces, drawing in a new sketchbook i’d purchased at magasin sennelier—the same shop, floors and drawers and counters unchanged—where picasso, modigliani, gauguin, degas and more bought the art supplies to create the same pieces now hanging in the museums nearby.
we shopped at sennelier so often that the day i went to shop for gouache the store manager noticed. “alone today?” ha!
visiting paris: what a privilege. i sure hope to share a fraction of such magic as i put words into the pages of this next book. thanks, MAC!
although nathan caught a double-rainbow outside this same night, “all” i caught was the sunset from one of the galleries of the louvre. the wet pavement. the streetlamps. the silhouetted couples. the architecture. certainly a parisian cinematic moment. i’ll take it.
“But I felt happy in Paris, so briefly, breezing up and down those streets I’d never know with my empty hands.”