Week of January 10th 2011: The De Young and the Musee D'Orsay Exhibit

I’ll never forget my first trip to Paris. As the tour bus pulled into the city, I was instantly floored by its beauty and it only took a couple of days for me to fall in love with it. I was so excited to see all the main sites (Versailles, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, etc.), but at the end of my second day I found myself with a couple of hours of free time and choice between two museums I was eager to check out: the Musee Rodin and the Musee D’Orsay. 

I opted for the latter and it was truly incredible. For the first time in my life, I was so thankful for my junior high art classes where we had to memorize different impressionist painters from Van Gogh to Cezanne to Manet. (It makes me wonder what this blog post would look like if we had done Thinker sculptures like we were supposed to…).

When I heard that there was going to be a Musee D’Orsay exhibit at the De Young in Golden Gate Park, I was ecstatic, but you know how way leads onto way and suddenly the exhibit was close to being over and I hadn’t seen it yet! So my aunt and uncle decide that as part of their trip to take me to Beach Blanket Babylon, we would also go to the exhibit.

It really was beautiful. When we walked in, the first thing we saw was a giant, gorgeous painting called La Carmencita. It’s always remarkable to me to see a painting from far away and then to move up to it and see each little brush stroke. How up close, it doesn’t look like much but when you take a few steps back and see the whole picture, each stroke comes together to make something beautiful. As a painter, it’s something I want to learn how to do. I feel like what I do is so smooth and still rather cartoony. I’d love to learn how to step back from my paintings and appreciate the big picture.

I won’t go into the detail of every painting we saw, but I did have one that I could not stop going back to. I’m a big fan of Pointillism paintings. I think it goes back to the idea I mentioned above. I love how a bunch of tiny little dots can come together to make something beautiful. The sum is greater than the parts. There were several amazing Pointillism paintings, but the Beach at Heist caught my eye with all of its vibrant colors.

I like to think of myself as somewhat of an artist, but I only paint or create something when I get an idea in my head, an inspiration or a thought that I need to make into something. It’s been a while since I’ve had a really good one and my lack or artistic creations have shown that, but seeing the Beach at Heist inspired me create something new again. I have all of the supplies, now it’s up to me to make the time.

After the Musee D’Orsay exhibit (which by the way, made me even more excited to return the visit the real Musee D’Orsay in a couple of weeks), we walked around the rest of the museum. The Realism pieces in the American art area were really cool. My Tia and I were both fooled by a couple of pieces, including one of a chalkboard with a little pencil hanging. There were also some incredible glass sculptures that were breathtaking.

I wish we’d had a little more time to walk around the museum as a whole but we were already going on about 6 hours straight in the De Young and our eyes could only appreciate so much artwork. It’s definitely a place I need to make it back to soon and I’m really contemplating getting a membership.