I have successfully fended off Christmas from my awareness despite all the tinsel and signs around me...until this week that is. First, there was the undeniable fact of below zero temperatures on the thermometer for most of the days and especially the nights. Second, Christmas sales all over the city were just way too enticing; ended up buying some bargains and found out they were products made in China! Finally, snow - but not in Paris, but in Chartres. This is my tenth week (have two more weeks to wrap up this sojourn) and it is a week of revisits and reconnections.
Revisits came in the form of going back to the Louvre, Musee Cluny and Musee Carnavalet during the first few days of the week. But instead of a survey of the collections I focused more on interesting items that were useful references to the studies of future work. From the Louvre I reviewed Italian and French paintings from the 16th to the 18th centuries, especially the work of Leonardo, Botticelli, Giotto, Ingres, Delacroix and David. Found myself keenly interested in depictions of the Parisian socialite Juliette Recamier whose portraits are in the Louvre and in Carnavalet. Also paid close attention to the "Primitive italians" and icon-painters of the thirteenth century.
From Cluny I caught the exhibition on Medieval games from Europe and elsewhere and discovered many interesting objects - all the ancestors of modern board games and online strategy games such as MMPORG. Coincidentally I have been reading an e-book biography by Sylvia Nasar on American mathematician John Nash and found the fascinating world of games theory and strategy games like Hex, Kriegspiel and Nash. At Carnavalet I focused on historical and documentary paintings, both of which fell out of service from the art when photography took this role with sufficient muster and truthfulness.
On Wednesday we caught the last few hours of the free exhibit Paris Vu Par Hollywood at the Hotel de Ville where various objects, film clips and memorabilia of Hollywood representations and recreations of Paris where shown. It was an interesting medley - barely chronological - or sketch of the rich relationship of filmmakers and Americans with Paris. It began with an early film reel documenting a promenade to the iconic Eiffel tower during the Exposition, to clips of Lon Chaney as the Hunchback of Notre Dame, curious theatrical fight scenes of the French revolution and the Terror and then the marvelous musicals with dancing Gene Kelley, Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire etc. On display were the iconic Giverny dresses and jackets of Hepburn as well as production notes and drawings from the films of Woody Allen including his latest, Midnight in Paris starring Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams. (Found Midnight in Paris available in HD in a Youtube channel - found it funny, very Woody Allen - but also a bit irresolute and inconclusive as many characters just seemed to fall off like Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Picasso. Adrien Brody as Dali was quite a sketch, a superb rendering of the quirky genius!) Paris Vu Par Hollywood also made me think of how Americans actually packaged Paris for Filipinos. It was THEIR perspective and representations of the French (from the randy skunk Pepe Le Phew to Audrey Tautou) that shaped our notions of this nation and thus we shared their nostalgic pining and thought of the Paris as a cinematic wonderland where we could sing and dance like Astaire or Hepburn and shout Bonjour, Paris! and the locals would respond like a chorus line. Try dancing in Paris and you'd be stared at and even thrown some centimes if you are lucky. Paris is NOT Disneyland nor Hollywood.
The highlight of the week is my two-day visit to Chartres, southwest of Paris. My obvious object of interest is the cathedral, also called Notre Dame. While Chartres is but an hour away and is considered a day trip in most itineraries, I wanted to observe the cathedral in various times of the day and took a hotel that was virtually beside it.
Some impressions:
The design of Chartres is simpler relative to its eponymous sisters in Paris and in Rouen but I found its mix of austerity and ornamentation in good restrained taste, I like it. There is also a sense of transition in Chartres: its Western and Southern portal sculptures tend to look Romanesque while the Northern doorway had the extreme polish of High Gothic. The difference in design between its older Moon tower (a tall tapering pyramid) and the Sun tower (ebullient, and heavily ornate) illustrates this feeling of being a composite. It makes me think of the Cathedral as a mature woman wearing trinkets of far more later time: a groovy lola. I have wanted to see the famous Sancta Camisa - the tunic of the Virgin Mary which caused this church to be built (or rebuilt) - but was barred from it by a thin strip of cordon due to continuous renovations of the central apse. I discovered how to "read" the famous stained glass windows of Chartres and for the first time I understood why French cathedrals and churches lacked rebultos - the windows and the architectural sculptures were the devices used to tell the story of Salvation! While attending services here and later in Paris, I understood that the French Gothic holy spaces tended to shape or be constituted of a community - the form of worship is communal, hence the emphasis on very wide and tall spaces that seem to envelope one and all. Unlike ours where Spanish colonists gave in to our penchant for intimate spaces of worship, hence our home oratorios, our rebultos, our sacramentals. Matters of the spirit in the Philippines tend to be a family affair, not much of a communal one.
But what set the experience of Chartres apart was the fact that it was the locus of the first snow of winter. The encounter with snow for Filipinos of the tropics is the ultimate proof of "you are not home". It was quite picturesque to see my first snow in Chartres where the quaint character of this very small city of Eure et Loir lent it mystique, charm and lasting impressionability.
With definite resolve I will come back to France in the future and definitely settle for some days in Chartres.
Revisits came in the form of going back to the Louvre, Musee Cluny and Musee Carnavalet during the first few days of the week. But instead of a survey of the collections I focused more on interesting items that were useful references to the studies of future work. From the Louvre I reviewed Italian and French paintings from the 16th to the 18th centuries, especially the work of Leonardo, Botticelli, Giotto, Ingres, Delacroix and David. Found myself keenly interested in depictions of the Parisian socialite Juliette Recamier whose portraits are in the Louvre and in Carnavalet. Also paid close attention to the "Primitive italians" and icon-painters of the thirteenth century.
From Cluny I caught the exhibition on Medieval games from Europe and elsewhere and discovered many interesting objects - all the ancestors of modern board games and online strategy games such as MMPORG. Coincidentally I have been reading an e-book biography by Sylvia Nasar on American mathematician John Nash and found the fascinating world of games theory and strategy games like Hex, Kriegspiel and Nash. At Carnavalet I focused on historical and documentary paintings, both of which fell out of service from the art when photography took this role with sufficient muster and truthfulness.
On Wednesday we caught the last few hours of the free exhibit Paris Vu Par Hollywood at the Hotel de Ville where various objects, film clips and memorabilia of Hollywood representations and recreations of Paris where shown. It was an interesting medley - barely chronological - or sketch of the rich relationship of filmmakers and Americans with Paris. It began with an early film reel documenting a promenade to the iconic Eiffel tower during the Exposition, to clips of Lon Chaney as the Hunchback of Notre Dame, curious theatrical fight scenes of the French revolution and the Terror and then the marvelous musicals with dancing Gene Kelley, Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire etc. On display were the iconic Giverny dresses and jackets of Hepburn as well as production notes and drawings from the films of Woody Allen including his latest, Midnight in Paris starring Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams. (Found Midnight in Paris available in HD in a Youtube channel - found it funny, very Woody Allen - but also a bit irresolute and inconclusive as many characters just seemed to fall off like Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Picasso. Adrien Brody as Dali was quite a sketch, a superb rendering of the quirky genius!) Paris Vu Par Hollywood also made me think of how Americans actually packaged Paris for Filipinos. It was THEIR perspective and representations of the French (from the randy skunk Pepe Le Phew to Audrey Tautou) that shaped our notions of this nation and thus we shared their nostalgic pining and thought of the Paris as a cinematic wonderland where we could sing and dance like Astaire or Hepburn and shout Bonjour, Paris! and the locals would respond like a chorus line. Try dancing in Paris and you'd be stared at and even thrown some centimes if you are lucky. Paris is NOT Disneyland nor Hollywood.
The highlight of the week is my two-day visit to Chartres, southwest of Paris. My obvious object of interest is the cathedral, also called Notre Dame. While Chartres is but an hour away and is considered a day trip in most itineraries, I wanted to observe the cathedral in various times of the day and took a hotel that was virtually beside it.
Some impressions:
The design of Chartres is simpler relative to its eponymous sisters in Paris and in Rouen but I found its mix of austerity and ornamentation in good restrained taste, I like it. There is also a sense of transition in Chartres: its Western and Southern portal sculptures tend to look Romanesque while the Northern doorway had the extreme polish of High Gothic. The difference in design between its older Moon tower (a tall tapering pyramid) and the Sun tower (ebullient, and heavily ornate) illustrates this feeling of being a composite. It makes me think of the Cathedral as a mature woman wearing trinkets of far more later time: a groovy lola. I have wanted to see the famous Sancta Camisa - the tunic of the Virgin Mary which caused this church to be built (or rebuilt) - but was barred from it by a thin strip of cordon due to continuous renovations of the central apse. I discovered how to "read" the famous stained glass windows of Chartres and for the first time I understood why French cathedrals and churches lacked rebultos - the windows and the architectural sculptures were the devices used to tell the story of Salvation! While attending services here and later in Paris, I understood that the French Gothic holy spaces tended to shape or be constituted of a community - the form of worship is communal, hence the emphasis on very wide and tall spaces that seem to envelope one and all. Unlike ours where Spanish colonists gave in to our penchant for intimate spaces of worship, hence our home oratorios, our rebultos, our sacramentals. Matters of the spirit in the Philippines tend to be a family affair, not much of a communal one.
But what set the experience of Chartres apart was the fact that it was the locus of the first snow of winter. The encounter with snow for Filipinos of the tropics is the ultimate proof of "you are not home". It was quite picturesque to see my first snow in Chartres where the quaint character of this very small city of Eure et Loir lent it mystique, charm and lasting impressionability.
With definite resolve I will come back to France in the future and definitely settle for some days in Chartres.
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