Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ible creativity and happiness, as he was overwhelmed by the bright colors, landscape vistas,
and common people—an Impressionist's dream. But being alone in a strange country began
towearonhim.Anuglyman,hefoundithardtogetadate.Theclose-upperspectiveof
Van
Gogh's Room at Arles
(
La Chambre de van Gogh à Arles,
1889) makes his tiny rented room
look even more cramped.
Van Gogh wavered between happiness and madness, even mutilating his own ear at one
point. He despaired of ever being sane enough to continue painting. His
Self-Portrait, St.
Rémy
(1889) shows a man engulfed in a confused background of brushstrokes that swirl and
rave, setting in motion the waves of the jacket. But in the midst of this rippling sea of mys-
tery floats a still, detached island of a face with probing, questioning, yet wise eyes. Do his
troubled eyes know that only a few months on, he will take a pistol and put a bullet through
his chest? Vincent van Gone.
Nearbyarethepaintingsof
PaulGauguin,
whogotthetravelbugearlyinchildhoodand
grew up wanting to be a sailor. He traveled to the South Seas in search of the exotic, finally
settling on Tahiti. There he found his Garden of Eden.
Arearea,
or
Joyousness
(
Joyeusetés,
1892)showsnativewomenandadog.Inthe“distance”(there'snoattemptattraditional3-D
here), a procession goes by with a large pagan idol.
Pointillism, as illustrated by many paintings in the next rooms, brings Impressionism to
its logical conclusion. Little dabs of pure colors are placed side by side to blend in the view-
er's eye. In works such as
The Circus
(
Le Cirque,
1891),
Georges Seurat
(1859-1891) used
only red, yellow, blue, and green points of paint to create a mosaic of colors that shimmers
at a distance, capturing the wonder of the dawn of electric light.
The Rest of the Orsay:
The open-air mezzanine of level 2 is lined with statues. Stroll
the mezzanine, enjoying the works of great French sculptors, including
Auguste Rodin,
who combined classical solidity with Impressionist surfaces. Look for
The Walking Man
(
L'Homme Qui Marche
, c. 1900) by room 71. Like this statue, Rodin had one foot in the
past,whiletheotherwassteppingintothefuture.Withnomouthorhands,thesubjectspeaks
with his body. The rough, “unfinished” surface reflects light in the same way the rough Im-
pressionist brushwork does, making the statue come alive, never quite at rest in the viewer's
eye. Rodin's powerful, haunting works are a good place to end this tour. With a stable base
of 19th-century stone, he launched art into the 20th century.
(See “Eiffel Tower & Nearby” map,
here
.)
