Après

What is my favorite work of French music, art or literature and why?
After nearly a month of museums, parks, architecture, gardens, and sculpture, this question is near-impossible to answer. However, the particular works of art that will stay with me are Van Gogh's Nuit Étoilée and Haussman's symmetric and beautiful city plan.

Nuit Étoilée, Vincent Van Gogh (1888)
Source: (link)

Looking back through the pictures on this blog, the one that still best grabs my interest is Nuit Étoilée, by Vincent Van Gogh. I still admire his broad use of color, and the way his brushstrokes added texture to the night sky by the way the contours of the paint shaped the image. He captured the essence of the night he observed, while simultaneously showing it as only he could perceive it. This work, named "Starry Night" in English, also features an aspect of the night sky rarely seen in large cities like Minneapolis or Paris. Thinking back to the image of Nuit Étoilée, I know that Van Gogh was looking at a deep black sky with the same texture and richness one might find far from a city today. Thinking about this sky as he painted it brings it closer and reminds me what I love about astronomy - the sense of wonder that anyone can find anywhere on Earth just by looking at the sky.

As I mentioned in the previous two blog posts, I admire symmetry and geometrical perfection in any form, and the city of Paris as seen from any high point exudes these fundamental features. The similar heights and colors of buildings give the city a unified aspect and clearly demarcate the network of avenues and alleyways that tie the city together. From above, the city is a unified mass, with familiar landmarks extending above the skyline in all directions to give orientation. From the street, every building offers new features to inspect and admire - in a city this large, it is surprisingly difficult to find two buildings that look the same. And one of the things that speaks to my intellect when I see this city is the knowledge that all this was established back when Milwaukee and Minneapolis were little more than populous trading posts! The sense that 150 years is recent, the feel of a connected web within the city, and the endlessly changing facade that kept my head on a swivel for four weeks were what really made this trip unique for me.

What was Paris like? How did it differ from what I had imagined?

In Paris, one of the subtle features I appreciated most was the constant need to focus on incoming voices, and to be prepared to respond in one of two languages. The potential need to respond in French or English, or even to overhear a conversation held in a foreign language, led to a much richer texture to the sound around me. Having spent my life surrounded by English, I took the sounds and context of our language for granted, as part of the way the world works. But living in a society where speaking and listening are an active task made me pay attention to my world and kept my mind active anytime I was outside my dorm room. Going back to America is like leaving the room of blue fog I described in my previous post - after a while you forget the strange experience because normality is just so expected and uniform that nothing else could make sense... I'm hoping to hold onto this experience of diverse languages through French-speaking friends and student groups, but that experience is hard to replicate.

On May 21, I did not expect to become familiar with Paris to the point that major landmarks like the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame didn't automatically draw my gaze. Instead, by the night of the river cruise (Thursday the 13th), the spectacular sights along the Seine had become expected and comfortable, rather than novel and fascinating. My perspective on the city had changed. From my excursions and experiences, the city of Paris felt like a place I could navigate as easily as speaking French - I might need some help from time to time, but in general I could run on instinct and emerge where I expected to. That being said, spending three weeks in Paris also underlined how little I truly saw of the city; after all, how much could I have absorbed with only one day per arrondissement even if I had spent double the time I did exploring and experimenting in the city? At least next time I visit I will have a better sense of what the city has to offer, and how best to unravel its paths.

What has Paris taught/shown/inspired in me? What did I expect it to inspire, but found lacking?

On Monday morning, while riding the train from Pontorson to Rennes and having a conversation with two French travellers, I decided/determined/realized that I was fluent at French. This was a startling moment for me because despite my proficiency with the language, I have always hesitated to call myself fluent because there was so much I didn't know yet about the language. But on the third day when nearly every voice I heard was French, and I understood and responded to them with clarity (and a fair bit of gesturing) I began to accept that maybe "fluent" was an adjective that could apply to me. I realized that fluency isn't a matter of having a 10000 word functional vocabulary or an instinctive command of the genders of nouns and adjectives; it's about hearing people speak and gaining meaning from it without having to stop and think about their words. I will certainly need to stay in practice to keep up this fluency, but for now I am happy to have passed this key marker.

My stay in Paris gave me an opportunity to view myself in isolation, without my usual distractions or friends or activities to cloud the path that I take independently. This showed some aspects of my character that I appreciated, and some that I did not enjoy. I was proud of how confident I felt in jetting off alone to explore Paris for a day, by myself. I wandered through neighborhoods, found food, asked for directions, and explored independently and felt safe throughout the entire experience. I was also proud that my studies brought me to the point where I could function reliably as an interpreter for the group at restaurants and in museums. Furthermore, I was proud of the mindset that often encouraged me to try new things - the notion of "It's a cultural experience - give it a shot!" I don't have this mindset enough in my everyday life, often preferring to stick with old habits rather than trying for something new and unique. With luck, the notion of "cultural experience" will extend now that I am home - the Twin Cities have a culture, too, and I can experience it just as well.

From a perspective relating more to my personal vision, this trip gave me many new perspectives on how best to leverage my science and engineering skills for the good of all. From the optical tricks in the Dynamo exhibition to the "magic" of the Eiffel Tower, I realized throughout this trip that one of my main questions on seeing this sort of artwork is not about symbolism, but about structure - how was this device created, and how does it do what it does? If I can answer these questions, others will look on in awe, and I will feel that I have created something truly unique.

Travelling with so many talented people, through galleries of the greatest artwork in the world made me recognize how many of my own skills have gathered dust in the past two to four years - I enjoyed tae kwon do and viola, but they have both been on a shelf for so long. Now would be a great time to shake off the cobwebs and see what I can achieve if I return my focus to these skills.

...

I do not know if or when I will get the chance to explore a new city for a full month, and certainly know that unless physicists start getting larger salaries it will not happen more than a handful of times in my life. Spending this trip with people whose interests and passions cover such a wide variety of perspectives was the perfect way to see the city. I've learned about history, art, language, culture, and myself in my time in Paris, and I will never forget the time I spent exploring this fascinating, ancient place.

Apres - Coming Soon!

I am still working through all my experiences from this trip to build a meaningful response to the question posed. While I have written paragraphs on how Paris has influenced me, I have not yet set them in an order that makes sense.

Given that 23.5 hours ago, I woke up 1/4 of the world away from here, I am going to bed and will finish this blog tomorrow morning. Bonne nuit a tous.

Centre Georges Pompidou

The paintings, sculptures, and other artworks displayed at the Pompidou Center span the first two-thirds of the 20th century, including not only well-known painters like Picasso and sculptors like Brancusi, but also painters I hadn't heard of like František Kupka. What follows is a sampling of my favorite paintings in the exhibit, and an account of my experience exploring the Centre.

In my eyes, the most interesting piece in the exhibition was a statue by the sculptor Brancusi. Without reading the title, answer this question: Which animal is shown in the image below?

Le Phoque, Brancusi, 1914

I'm not sure how well this property translates through a 2D image, but when I asked three classmates this question in the exhibit, their answers were "seal," "otter," and "seal." And yet, if the eye is not told to look for an animal in the design, or if the rock was not poised just so, this could be a scaled-up version of a shiny rock found by any riverbed in the world. The simple design of this sculpture is pretty without the observer knowing what they are seeing - adding the knowledge that it is a statue gives it depth and meaning.

Here's a fun thought: What if I had asked you to associate the sculpture with a person? With one of the four elements? With a nation? Like Monet's Impression, Soleil Levant, the title changes the way a viewer perceives the same piece of matter, and whether or not it is called "art."

One other piece I found near the start of the gallery is a very realist (by the painter's standards) portrait, shown below:

Arlequin, Picasso 1923

This obviously incomplete painting talked to me in metaphor about the absurdity of creating a portrait. When painting someone's likeness, a talented painter will try to capture some aspect that defines that person's life - something like the expressions of the faces graven on Mount Rushmore. But by definition, when a person is sitting for a portrait, their life is incomplete, so how should the painter know what must be painted? By painting only the head and shoulder of this harlequin figure and leaving the remainder a sketch in a rough background, Picasso shows that he can go no further. The portrait reflects the life of the subject - you can tell where he's been, and where he might be going, but the details haven't yet all been filled in, and the conclusion is a mystery. As someone just starting out with his own life, this is a helpful message - I still don't know yet what vision my life will pursue, but if a painting by Picasso confirms that everyone has a right to feel unfinished, that is a strong sign that I'm on a right path.

First, a brief word regarding Kupka - his paintings involved geometric patterns of colored dots on canvas, which appealed to the side of me that has always loved mathematical order. I don't have anything particularly deep to say about them, just that I'm a fan of the precision and symmetry in his work.

Finally, I'll say two words about the path I took through the museum. Inside, the museum is divided into fifty small, adjoining galleries on each floor, and it's easy to get caught up looking at each one if you enter without a plan. After spending more than an hour working my way through the first half of the galleries on the first level I was exhausted. While taking a pause from the increasingly weird artwork, I happened to look out a window and catch a glimpse of the western half of Paris at sunset. This was a more interesting sight than the paintings, in my estimation, so I decided to leave and spend time watching the sun set on Paris. Once I went downstairs to leave, I felt bad missing out on half the pieces in the museum, so I set off at a quick walk through the central corridor. These more modern pieces were more my style - there was much more geometry in their design than I had seen in the abstract figures and surreal scenes above. I wish I'd spent more time in this section of the museum, but the city did beckon. As with so many places in Paris, it was impossible to see everything in one visit, and that just leaves something interesting for next time I visit.

Dynamo Exhibit at the Grand Palais

What made the exhibition at the Grand Palais special was the fact that many of the inventions displayed there were things that relied on geometry, electricity, optics, or perspective – all topics that relate to my studies and interests. As with many other museums, I spent much of my visit attempting to discern how the pieces were constructed, or how the artist had achieved a particular effect. More so here than with other museums, at the Grand Palais my skill set and education worked to my benefit in seeing the underlying geometry that supported many of the pieces. At the museum, I found inspiration for the passions that drive me to work with student groups, a piece that I puzzled over and found a solution for, and one that gave me a new appreciation for my perspective.

In the College of Science and Engineering at UMN, I am an officer of two student groups in particular that work to mix science with outside disciplines, among them art. For example, members have built a flashy winter light show timed to music and are building animatronic, singing busts of President Kaler in Tesla Works, and the emerging CSE Carnival seeks to showcase science to middle school students using all the flash and dazzle at our disposal. The exhibits at this museum in particular got me thinking of ideas for future projects in Tesla Works, a group oriented toward the purpose of bringing ideas to reality. One such idea would be to use the notion of prime numbers in the construction of some machine or program, with multiple patterns cycling with relatively prime frequencies oriented around a common clock. Using only the prime numbers up to 20, if the pattern changed once per second, the same pattern would not recur for over three months! Whether musical, mechanical, or visual, this is a pattern that might be very fun to build. To those of you reading this blog, remind me of this goal - I want to make this happen!

One exhibit that especially made me stop and think involved two fans and a length of film. The fans faced each other approximately two meters from a wall, and on that wall a loop of film three meters across wavered, floating in the air. In Dadaist art, the artist takes ordinary objects and they become art because he says so; in this display, the fans and film could be purchased in a store, but their placement created a trompe l’oeil and made the viewer wonder what he was seeing. I appreciated knowing that the artists who built this exhibit are responsible for the design of the work more than for its execution, because that means that their art is reproducible from design – this means I can test my guess as to how the film was suspended. I may need to work with the properties of film in practice, but my current guess from this exhibit is that the fans were spinning in the same direction, creating an upward current of air at the wall that supported the thin film. My speculation is just a hypothesis, but the point is that unlike with the Mona Lisa or Penseur, I have the means to build the piece and see if I can replicate the experience. That was my favorite feature of this exhibit – while in the Louvre, every piece is unique, in the Dynamo exhibit, there was a sense that the observer could partake in the creative experience given the right tools.

Video of the fans and film

One stark exception to this rule was the room filled with blue light and opaque, odorless fog, titled Daylight blue, sky blue, medium blue, yellow, by Ann Veronica Janssens. In this space, people and walls became visible just before they came within arm’s reach, and walking with a hand outstretched to avoid walls and people was a necessity. As I try to recall the strange sensation of being in that space and the habits I developed just to keep my orientation amid the blindness, I am led to remember the sensation I had upon leaving the room and adjusting to being able to see as far as ten or twenty feet! This afternoon, flying 24000 feet above Minnesota I remembered how much I take my vision for granted, and how different my life would be without it.

My hand inside the fog.

Musée du Louvre - Update

In my first post about the Louvre, I forgot to mention the two paintings that my classmates preferred in the exhibition. The day we visited the great museum, Alicia and Patrick shared their paintings with me, and I have posted the images below, along with what I remember of their reactions:

La Déluge (The Deluge)
Source: http://www.museumsyndicate.com/images/2/15595.jpg

Alicia's favorite painting was this one, for which I cannot currently find a painter or date. I particularly recall that she was particularly struck by the artist's bold use of orange in the woman's robes. From my perspective, the mixture of light and dark in this painting seems to highlight the struggle of the central figures against the elements, and makes clear that they are losing. However, I would like to better understand the story behind this painting (something as obvious as Noah's Flood and the Ark?) to gain better context for what the creator was trying to portray. (Note, this question is only relevant because the painting is in the realist style, and appears mythic.) I'm also curious about why this degree of nudity is necessary - couldn't the artist show that his subjects are suffering, and simultaneously clothe them? It seems that mythology seems to equate to nudity in art, but I've never understood why. Could the artist be appealing to times closer to fabled Eden when morality was less complicated? It's something to explore.

The Ghosts of Paulo and Francesca Appear to Dante and Virgil
Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/1835_Ary_Scheffer_-_The_Ghosts_of_Paolo_and_Francesca_Appear_to_Dante_and_Virgil.jpg

Francesca and Paolo are the subjects of Patrick's favorite painting. He was particularly impressed by the clear distinction between the damned lovers and their surroundings, as well as the facial expression of every character. What follows is my expansion on the points he brought about.

The bright white off the couple's skin starkly contrasts the dark mire of the background and forces the eye to linger on their figures. Similarly, Dante and Virgil's dull costumes blend well with the background, making them seem like a part of the scenery rather than part of the story. This echoes the context of Dante's Inferno, where Dante plays the role of narrator rather than protagonist. Further, Patrick called attention to their expressions - much like in Rodin's The Kiss, Francesca's expression is much more passionate than Paolo's, showing the difference in the way they perceive their relationship. Francesca clings tightly to Paolo, who shows emotion toward her, but also shows a focus on his own suffering. As with their shading, Dante and Virgil's expressions make clear that they are no more than observers in this scene.

Shakespeare in Paris

A brief reflection on seeing a Shakespeare play in French:

High points: From the dialog and having seen the Wishbone episode, I was able to follow the plot in general. I knew the majority of the characters' names, and even thought a bit about what the play had to say about power relationships (king and vassal, master and servant, etc.). Further, after two solid hours of people speaking at me in French I wasn't burned out trying to understand - I was still leaning forward trying to pluck meaning from the air.

Not-so high point: Jokes. Shakespeare puts a lot of humor into his plays, and this play has three drunken fools staggering along together through at least three scenes. This is always nice, because it can be a welcome distraction from the continuous dialog and serious dramatic plot that form the heart of the play, but while watching the play in French, I often heard the crowd laugh and had to wait a few seconds to figure out why. Apparently, though I can parse French in real-time, the part of my brain that deals with humor isn't quick enough with these sorts of phrases to catch the wit quickly enough for me to laugh. It was nice that I chuckled when Miranda told the male protagonist that she would hold his log, but simple gags like that aren't what I'm really hoping my French will catch. And humor isn't the sort of thing you learn at University classes, but I hope that this trip has added some flavor and naturality to my mode of speech.

Final notes about the trip: Ivry definitely has a different feel than Paris proper - newer buildings, for one, as well as a different feel from the population. I'm trying to decide whether, if I didn't know I was in Paris, I would recognize Ivry as a French city but it's hard to decide. Certainly, it showed me a different flavor of the city for one afternoon.

Normandy Day-Trip

The next few days will be rather packed, so I wanted to make a blog post while I still have a clear memory of last weekend (which started on Friday).

On Friday, four friends and I took a bus trip to Normandy to view sites and artifacts created during the 1944 D-Day invasion. After a long, early-morning bus ride, our bus arrived at a museum that walked the viewer through a history of pre-war Europe, and then showed relics from the brief French defense and eventual German Occupation and French Resistance. This is a period in history that I have never learned much about, so many artifacts in the museum showed me new facets of the war. For example, I had always had a simple story about the Occupation that showed Nazis being bluntly oppressive (as per the Huns in old U.S. propaganda), but this is false. They tried to rally French support for their campaign in the USSR with posters like the one below:

"They give their blood; give your labor
to save Europe from Bolshevism."

Propaganda like this make me have the obvious and chilling realization that America was fighting a nation every bit as industrial and strategic as we were during this war. Our victory was not guaranteed, and our enemy cannily played on the fears of the continent to build a force in their own defense. I've also been impressed by what I learned about the French Resistance, which used coded messages to undermine German war efforts in France and retain French national morale. That's a topic I'll be looking into much more in future.

The startling impression of competence from the Germans was redoubled when we moved to the cliffs of Normandy, in particular at Pointe du Hoc. American Rangers scaled this peninsula 100 feet above the ocean the night before D-Day, hoping to seize the six large artillery pieces  there, which could have attacked Allied forces on two adjacent beaches. At this site, every hundred yards contained one broken bunker and three holes that were the result of sustained shelling. Pictures below:

Destroyed German Bunker

Crater from a bomb that fell during the Invasion
(At least 12 feet deep, 30 feet across)

From my reading background, I have an ingrained notion that people I side with are invariably more competent than their opposite numbers, and World War II is a clear example where that is not the case. The pattern of bunkers and cannon on the north coast of France looks pretty dang intelligent to me, and I am impressed at the courage and planning that allowed us to break a hole through it and enter France. I'm also taken aback at the scale of damage at this battlefield, for even at Gettysburg the scars of war have healed. Having seen the traces of bombs that were dropped seventy years ago, I am frightened to think of what might happen if two modern armies decided to duke it out. Thankfully, this possibility is waning with time, but sites like this battlefield must be preserved to help people remember how much damage was done in a war that would pale by modern standards.

The impression of magnitude I received at Pointe du Hoc was doubled at the American Cemetery. There, the graves of 9000 soldiers lay in a wide green field by the sea. I'm a science major, so 9000 is usually just another number to me. But look at this picture, and I'll tell you what I saw instead of a field covered in marble crosses and stars:

Each of these graves is a soldier who would still be alive if not for the battles of this war. Walking among them, I made sure to hold the image of a field of men standing at arms in my mind as I passed the graves, and it was not an easy time. It didn't help matters when I pictured instead the old men that they would have grown to be standing instead by their graves. A park ranger at the site asked us to say the names of the soldiers as we advanced through the site, to be sure they are remembered. I took pictures of a dozen stones or so, and will post them later so that their names can be repeated by anyone visiting this site.

This grave site was the segment of the day-trip that made the greatest impression on me, especially this last story: At the monument to the fallen, a French park ranger described how his family's village had been defended by a lone American soldier during the invasion of Normandy, protecting his grandparents. After sharing this story, he asked a group of strangers at the monument to turn away from him and face the flags while the speakers played "The Star-Spangled Banner" behind us. The group quickly started to sing along, and the moment of singing the national anthem on foreign soil to honor fallen soldiers is among the most memorable moments of this trip so far. If you ever travel to Normandy, the experience is well worth the distance.

Musée du Louvre

This museum holds one of the largest collections of historic and artistic material in the world, and our visit there last week Monday marked the beginning of one of our busiest weeks in Paris. At the museum, we were asked to view certain emblematic pieces, like the Mona Lisa or Winged Victory, but also to find a piece that had particular meaning and share it with others in the group. I found four pieces that particularly stood out to me, and they are shown below:

Philosophe aux Lunettes (Philosopher with Glasses)
Giordano, 1660

Nothring grand or philosophical here - I'm just amused to see an ancient Roman philosopher wearing sunglasses, which he definitely seems to be wearing.

Statue of Athena, 2nd Century AD/CE

Athena has always been one of the more interesting members of the Greek pantheon for me, and when I saw this statue, it seemed evident that it is old enough to inspire the image of Athena that has become lodged in the common consciousness. As a deity of wisdom and war, Athena played a significant role in many of the Greek myths that I read in my youth and in high school literature, so seeing a statue of her carved by those who believed in her makes me feel connected to those ancient legends.

Further, in the roleplaying game that my friends and I are currently completing, my character serves Minerva, a deity who shares Athena's Roman name. After thinking like this character for a few hours a week all semester, I couldn't pass by the statue without taking a photo.

9000-Year-Old Statue

The name really says it all - this statue was the find of the day for me. It was discovered in Jordan in 1985, and has been on loan to the Louvre since its restoration. Though this is the oldest piece currently in the museum, there are no signs or placards calling it out, as there are for the other more famous works. If I hadn't happened to read the plaque near the statue's foot I could have walked right past without knowing what I had missed.

Now that we're through with context, here's what I value about the statue: As is so eloquently described in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Douglass Adams), one of the most dangerous things for any sentient creature to have is a sense of perspective. Simply put, holding an objective image of one's relationship to the size of space and time is bad for the ego in the long term. However, in brief bursts this perspective can be enlightening. At some point in the distant past, a human genetically similar to humans alive today took time out from satisfying his/her basic physical needs to create a sculpture of a human. Others may know why this person did so, or why the statue lacks arms, but the fact of the statue's creation and its preservation are what really stun me. Though I expect human achievements like the Apollo 11 landing site to last at least another 9000 years, no civilization in history has endured that long, and precious few works of human ingenuity have reached us from that distant past. This artifact's creator could not conceive of how the statue might endure, but I am amazed at the sense of perspective it gives me on the legacy of human labors.

Speaking of perspective, I feel like doing math, so here is how long 9000 years is:

• 500 times my current lifespan
• 40 times the duration since the Constitution was signed
• 18 times the duration since Columbus landed in the Caribbean
• 4.5 times the duration since the Julio-Claudian emperors began the Roman Empire
• 2.25 times the duration since the first written history of China
• 0.00000065 times the age of the Universe

Griffon Bas-Relief from the Oracle at Delphi

Like Athena, the Oracle at Delphi (a temple of Apollo, god of truth), plays a significant part in many myths - notably that of Oedipus Rex. Before visiting the Louvre, I had no direct confirmation that the Oracle was a real place that one could visit, much less that the Louvre contained its fragments. Even more so than with Athena's statue, when I stood in a room with a collection of stones from this temple I felt like I had stepped into a legend from Greece. Fascinating stuff.

Monet's Home and Garden in Giverny

I'm almost caught up on blogs, but I wanted to share a few thoughts from yesterday's excursion to Giverny in order to feel caught-up. I needed to get out and walk around a bit to collect my thoughts on this subject, but somewhere between the Maison Internationale and the panini place down the street, I figured out what Giverny really means.

Monet lived at Giverny for the last forty years of his life, and when he moved in he was already a successful painter. He used his time in the village to craft the gardens at Giverny, which formed the subject matter of his famous water-lily paintings, among others. The gardens themselves are spacious and present a changing aspect as the viewer and the sun move through them. If I have ever been in such a lush space with such diversity of colors and odors, I cannot remember it. I passed through the "dry" gardens and water-lily gardens for a total of around three hours just to soak it all in, and am still processing the truth that I learned from that day: 

When you know your passion, and use your whole spirit and whole knowledge to drive yourself toward it, then you have the potential to create a legacy that endures and improves the world in a way that no one else could achieve.

This is a lesson I have learned again and again over the past year, from experience with Tesla Works, articles in Leadership class, and my own musings on prominent figures in history and my own life. Even the experiences I am gaining on this trip have reinforced it, from the Musée de la Magie, to Einstein's sketch-proof of relativity, to my research on Nadia Boulanger.

Last Wednesday, I set out alone after our group visit to the Musée Rodin to find a museum I had discovered earlier. This museum hid behind a conspicuous red storefront, and housed artifacts from the early days of illusion and legerdemain. At the Musée de la Magie, I found mechanisms and experiments from the early days of modern magic, each of which was an example of a person who supported their dream of astounding audiences by putting their knowledge of physics, chemistry, carpentry, or psychology to use in crafting "magic tricks" to fool the eye and amaze the viewer. Their contraptions are a testament to the unique mixture of their creativity and their perspective to create something novel.

Likewise, Einstein created an explanation of relativity that fit in the space on the back of a napkin. He took the skills he had learned from a classical physics education and used his personal desire to remove the discrepancies in modern theory to break through the laws and theories that had previously misinterpreted reality. Because of his drive and passion, humanity gained a clearer understanding of the universe and a century of novel innovation.

Finally, in researching the eminent musical teacher Nadia Boulanger, one of the most central tenets of her teaching style is that she never tries to tell a student how to write music. Instead, she only accepts students who burn with the desire to produce music despite all discouragement, and works with them to draw forth the "ultimate qualities" that make them an individual. As the person whom many claim had the greatest impact on music in the 20th century, Nadia knew the lesson that was reinforced on me at Giverny. Her skills at composition were not perfect, but her encyclopedic knowledge and devotion to discipline made her an ideal teacher, so for more than fifty years she used her talents to better the world.

The lesson I posted above is one of the greatest truths I have learned so far in college. Through my student groups and conversations, I am trying to find my passions, expand my knowledge, and fire up my spirit for some great task, but I know that I am not there yet. This is a process that must be active, and must be voluntary - I am the one who will have to do the work in the end if I want to make a unique impression - to "be awake" as Nadia Boulanger would put it. I have known this truth instinctively since at least January, but with luck seeing so many of humanity's geniuses in one city will push me to be more thoughtful and intentional in pursuing it. Only time will tell.

Musée de Lettres et Manuscrits

Last Friday, May 31, our class visited the Museum of Letters and Manuscripts, a modest museum containing texts handwritten by prominent historical, artistic, and scientific figures. Though the collection was small, I spent several minutes by each piece, deciphering the descriptive plaque and attempting to unravel the unusual handwriting of the creator. At the time we left, I had only made a thorough investigation of the scientific texts and a few historical documents, but I had already found one document that particularly impressed me. Displayed below was a paper that I recognized on sight, because it teaches special relativity in the same way I learned it last fall:

Drawings made in 1939 by Albert Einstein to explain
Special Relativity to his neighbor

In a museum where so much is faded, or illegible,or written in a language I have never learned, I found this document without words astonishing. Special relativity is nothing like the beast many people make it out to be, and can be reduced to saying that the faster an object goes relative to you, the shorter it appears, and the slower time will seem to progress on that object. In explaining the mechanics of this, little math is required for a simple understanding, and what I found fascinating is that Einstein's method of explanation is identical to the one I have learned in physics classes and textbooks.

The key diagram in this picture is the M-shaped line in the lower half, which indicates the path of a light particle reflected between two mirrors that are moving at constant velocity. If lightspeed is constant, and the light between the moving mirrors needs to follow this M shape, then from the perspective where the mirrors are moving, it must be the case that time is passing more slowly for the mirrors. Much of the rest of relativity follows from this simple observation, and I am astonished and happy that based only on the barely-marked sketches of Einstein I can give a clear explanation of this fundamental piece of the explanation.

Understanding Einstein's sketch of his proof makes me feel not only academic pride, but also a sense of connection with the originator of this important discovery. I have made scratches like these on the back of several notebooks and napkins over the years, and knowing that the most revered of modern physicists did the same in his own studies makes me feel more like an actual physicist. As someone who hasn't quite figured out what to do with his degree after graduation (I don't know how to balance teaching, research, and speaking), it is heartening to know that I share these drawings and this joy in explanation with Einstein. 

Musée d'Orsay

The class spent the afternoon of May 30 at the Musée d'Orsay, a museum that hosts hundreds of paintings and dozens of statues in an enormous converted train station. We began with the Impressionists, particularly Renoir, Degas, and Monet, and then were free to roam the museum as we chose. Our only instruction was to find some piece that really struck us and reflect on it through a blog post. The museum is filled with incredible artwork, and many paintings from the day still stand out in my mind, including Degas' Dans un Café, Cézanne's La Tentation de St. Antoine, and Monet's La rue Montorgueil à Paris. Fête du 30 juin 1878. Though the subjects' expressions, style of shading, and mixture of colors in these paintings greatly impressed me, Van Gogh's Nuit Étoilée (1888)  was the singular work that most strongly gripped me today.

Nuit Étoilée (Starry Night), Vincent Van Gogh (1888)
Source: http://escalbibli.blogspot.fr/2011/03/les-nuits-etoilees.html

It may be unsurprising that I, an astrophysics major, was captivated by a painting that focuses on stars, but before I even noticed the Big Dipper in this painting, I was caught up in the deepness of the blue and the unique style of brushwork employed by Van Gogh. From his famous self-portrait to L'Église d'Anvers, blue is the main color of much of Van Gogh's work and it is ubiquitous in this work, permeating the ground and city, leaving only the stars and streetlights pristine. Blue has always been among my favorite colors, but the mixture employed by Van Gogh here and elsewhere has such great depth and variety that I am drawn into the painting. Though this photo may not clearly show it, the blue even mixes itself in stripes within the land at the bottom of the painting.

The reflection of light on water also drew me into this painting. As I observed at Monet's water garden yesterday, reflections in water can be beautiful, but they're also problematic to represent graphically. In this painting, the the triangle of light stretching down from each point of light on the river bank not only draws the eye into the terrestrial half of this painting, but also demonstrates the artist's capacity to give an impression of reality that the viewer perceives as realistic. The warm glow of these lights makes the village seem welcoming and adds humanity to a painting that is about the impersonal night's sky.

One article we read before leaving for Paris talked about how at the turn of the century, Paris was flush with painters, composers, writers, poets, and all other manner of artist - and that chance interactions between these individuals served to spark creative inspiration more rapidly than if the artists had been widely dispersed. (Article is here.) It is interesting, therefore, to note that the painting I found most entrancing of the whole of the Orsay was not painted by Renoir, Monet, or Bazille, who lived together, nor by any of the other artists who frequented Paris during their lifetimes. At the time Van Gogh painted this piece, he was living in artistic isolation in the French village of Arles, with limited contact with other artists. Obviously, his case does not disprove the article, but it is fascinating to note that I prefer not the collaborative paintings of the people centered in Paris, but the work of an artist in isolation working through his own thoughts. Perhaps it is because with their depictions of people or buildings, I need to work to find the message or emotion in a face, but with this starry sky, I know the message because there is none. The sky exists for itself, and Van Gogh is simply putting the simple clarity of the night on canvas.

Musée Marmottan

Yesterday, our class spent the morning at the Musée Marmottan, a private home converted to present a variety of paintings. As we walked through, I took notes about what each painting seemed to indicate about its style of painting, and wrap up with general thoughts about Impressionism.

One of the first paintings I saw was Rue de Paris, Temps de Pluie (Paris Street, Rainy Weather). After a very rainy first few days in Paris, it struck me that I think I have seen this particular street corner in the past few days. So many buildings in downtown Paris clearly date back decades that it will be a shock to return to a city that had barely been founded the last time Paris was renovated. I'm off to investigate more of that archaic feel this afternoon, and it's hard to believe I get three more weeks here to look around.

Au Bord du Lac (On the Lakeside), Bethe Morrisot 1883

Paysage de Tours (Countryside of Tours), Berthe Morrisot 1892

The two paintings above showed me one of the more interesting features of Impressionist artists - their ability to use few brushstrokes to give a clear impression of form and substance. In the first painting, Au Bord du Lac, my focus is not on the foreground figures, but on the swan and the horse in the background. The horse is composed of perhaps six brushstrokes, and the swan of no more than twenty, and yet the viewer sees clearly what species each animal is, where it is in relation to the foreground, and what it is doing. At a distance of five feet, it is obvious that each of these animals is no more than a collection of brushstrokes, but from a distance they blend with their surroundings to become something more.

The same is true of Paysage de Tours. Look carefully at the people in the foreground, or the Roman statue in the background and each one is just a collection of a few lines in a neutral background, but from a distance they become something more complex.

Impression, Soleil Levant (Impression, Rising Sun), Claude Monet  1873

When I found this painting, I tried an experiment - I wondered if I could tell, just by looking at the painting, whether the sun were rising or setting. In the five minutes I stood there, I realized that this was not as simple as I had hoped, and that I had to think about the painting from a different direction. If I thought about the painting as though the title described a setting sun, I got a different impression of the painting - the boats in the foreground were moving in a different direction, or the painter's perspective on the port changed. This is the fun part about impressionism - the painting doesn't strictly define itself to the point that it cannot be interpreted. Whatever the subject, it is the viewer's choice what to see and where it appears.

To close, impressionist paintings strike me more like the description of a location as described in prose than like the Mona Lisa. They suggest a general outline of what can be seen without telling the viewer exactly what is there, so the viewer's imagination fills in the remaining gaps. When I look at the paintings above, it is easy to imagine wind blowing through the trees or rippling the water, and these automatic additions make the painting more than a two-dimensional rectangle on a wall. Instead, it becomes a sort of moving picture with a different character than any precisely painted portrait could have.

AVANT

What do I imagine Paris will be like?

Coming from a lifetime in the Midwest, where Milwaukee and Minneapolis are considered large cities, I know that Paris is an order of magnitude larger than the two cities where I have spent my life. The constant press of French from all directions will likely be disorientating for at least the first few days, but I hope to adapt to it and understand overheard French by the end of my time in the country. As for the surroundings, I remember much more stone and gold in Paris than in any other city I have seen, as well as large courtyards and other grand spaces. The city will be foreign and far from home, but I hope to become comfortable there by the end of my stay.


What do I hope Paris will teach/show/inspire in me?

My time in Paris for this class will be the longest continuous time I will spend abroad in the foreseeable future, so I hope to use the opportunity to learn about another culture's norms and perspective. From art to conversation to people-watching, I expect that even breathing in Paris will show me details of French and European culture that I could not learn from reading an article or watching a video. I'm starting to feel unsure about leaving my base of comfort in America and going to a place where even the language will be difficult, but I know that the novelty of the experience is why I signed up for it.

What is my favorites work of French music, art or literature and why?

In high school, I read Le Petit Prince and found that it had an interesting take on life and existence. The story is very simply told, but the messages contained in it are still profound. In terms of art, I don't have a wide range of experience, but I had the opportunity to see an Impressionist display at the Milwaukee Art Museum a year ago, and found the subtlety of the paintings to be incredibly interesting. Honestly, being surrounded by the architecture of Paris is the singular artistic experience I most look forward to, because the structures are different enough from those I am used to that the difference will be significant.