Back to the Musée d’Orsay

My back hurts right now, and the back of my left knee also hurts, in the same way it does when you stretch. I think it’s because I jumped the turnstile yesterday. I did it in a turnabout-is-fair-play spirit—they rejected my card for no reason? Fine, I’ll jump your turnstile. So now I have a new metro card but older pains.

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One thing I forgot to mention about the Louvre. During my lecture yesterday, we passed by a closed-off wing. It had a sign about “risques d’inondation.” (risk of flood) Someone asked what that was all about, and the lecturer answered, calmly, that the Seine is rising as a result of global warming, and that precautions must be taken to shore up the foundations of the Louvre.

With how matter-of-fact this was, it reinforced how accepted global warming has become for all people not named Jim Inhofe. It was pretty incredible to consider, though, although ruining the Louvre would only be a mere catastrophe amongst apocalypses if we allow climate change to wreak its full damage. Perhaps I’m being shrill here, but I believe our relationship to the environment and what we use of it is the most important issue that the human race has to face in the remainder of the 21st century, because it is the most basic human issue, and we’re at risk of fouling everything up for ourselves as well as other species. And if you don’t believe me, look at the articles talking about the disappearance of the fish from the seas, about the roots of the conflict in Darfur and how changing farmland underlies the issue, about the possible movement of the Jetstream, and so on and so on.

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I went back to the Musée d’Orsay today, for a lecture. The lecture was on Impressionist art from Van Gogh to Matisse, and was…wait for it…interesting.

The demographics of this group skewed much older than the last lecture, although there were still a few kids scampering about. Also there were many fewer in this than the last. As usual, there was the star student: the woman who showed up before me (I was fifteen minutes early) who carried around a notebook and pestered with questions and comments constantly, sometimes jumping ahead by a few decades.

As for the lecturer, she came in late, but nervous—she was worried that she was going to miss her own lecture. She dressed in red, white, and blue, in the same shades as the French flag, and given how much she focused on the mixed-in extra shades in the Impressionist’s work, I don’t think the choice was entirely accidental. Her hushed tone was the exact one utilized by golf television commentators.

So I found myself turning on the volume to catch the insights delivered. The arts lecture was better than the others because unlike the history lectures, it focused on themes rather than a pointillist recounting of facts.

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Van Gogh paints with vivid colors, something that is typically associated with happiness or anger or intensity, but for Van Gogh, it seems a kind of a vivid depression. The brightness of many of his paintings almost enervates. It’s an intriguing, different look, but ultimately not happy.

Of the paintings of Van Gogh’s displayed at the Musée d’Orsay, they all feature either vivid brightness or some strange effect. Perhaps the only calming picture in the room is one of Arles at night, with the stars winking overheard. There’re are only two faceless souls at the bottom, but the rest is empty and peaceful.

As for the rest. All the portraits feature intense or depressed expressions or both. The landscapes feature colors that are not quite real, but are bright and oppressive. His brushstrokes are very emphasized, and he frequently employs an upwards-swirling pattern that reminds one of heat waves rising off of pavement.

One painting particularly reinforced my impression: Eglise d’Auvers. The painting features a church in the center, with a woman walking around it. The sky is an inky blue, a nightlike color, and that blue is the same blue as is in the windows. The blue in the windows glows, as if that blue comes from inside of the church. Initially you might think it’s night, but it can’t be—the front of the church casts too strong a shadow. It is day. It is about to storm.

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When we left the lower classes of Paris last week, they were angry, riotous and disorganized. While they had gained a consciousness of themselves as a distinct class, they had not risen above the parochialism of neighborhoods. Their grievances were individual rather than global.

As the reading for this week makes clear, this changed by the French Revolution. Take this revealing quotation on page 14 of Darrin McMahon’s The Birthplace of the Revolution, which, after complaining about the Duc d’Orleans plan to remodel the Palais-Royal, notes that “the Turks, who have no public places whatsoever, are the most enslaved people on earth.”

This quotation arrested me on the page; several factors contributed. First is the alleged connection between public spaces and liberty. Second is the notion that the Palais-Royal, indubitably private property, has become a public trust: the Duc d’Orleans has a fiduciary responsibility towards the public. Third and finally is the comparison drawn to the Turks, those oppressed people. What the public space achieved was the transition between fragmentary identity to shared identity: the French as a nation deserving liberty and responsible governance.

Let’s explore each of the factors in turn.

As for the first factor, the alleged connection between public spaces and liberty. Consider, to leap forward in time, the police’s surveillance of another public space, the Place de Grève during Louis-Phillipe’s reign. Casey Harison notes in The Rise and Decline of a Revolutionary Space that the police report of the day’s activities at the Place de Grève was at the top of Louis-Phillipe’s briefing every day. Perhaps this might seem counterintuitive, to suggest that surveillance of people is in fact related to the exercise of liberty, but I believe it is. Consider that the redress of the government is one crucial foundation of liberty, and what the citizens of the Palais-Royal and the Place de Grève were engaged in, besides the living of their everyday lives, was often the redress of wrongs.

Moving on to the second factor is the notion that the Palais-Royal changed from private property to public trust, by the mere accumulation of taxes and time. This, too, is important: consider the hullabaloo nowadays when beloved businesses—old theaters, stadiums and record stores, to name three examples—drown. There is always a reaction of tenderness that transcends money and confounds the businessmen, like the Duc d’Orleans, who see what they’re doing as a mere attempt at profit. That this phenomenon happened and still happens suggests a civic engagement with the places of their lives. It means that the populace can guess at the alternatives and oftentimes prefers one over the other. In other words, it is the reaction of a community rather than the reaction of a civil war (although obviously within the community there are differing views). Furthermore, that we invest people like the Duc d’Orleans with responsibilities beyond a mere businessman suggests that we see our community as more than a relation between government and governed, that there are other complex institutions which regulate our lives for better or worse.

Last, and third, is the Turk comparison. That the writer is making the comparison between one nation and another suggests (this is begging the question somewhat) that they view themselves as a nation, with a sense of the policies of the nation as they apply to a community, with a commitment to abstract principle. It is political; more than that, it is republican.

The next question to ask is whether the public space is necessary for the expression of liberty. I think yes. The public space allows for the demonstration of overwhelming preference. More than that, the public space allows for the pollination of different cultural classes’ ideas. Note how the Palais-Royal became a melting pot, a real congregating place for all of Paris. Note, further, how the Duc d’Orleans later became a revolutionary leader, as did others from the Palais-Royal.

When I began this essay, I meant to be pessimistic about the public space in America today: think about “free speech zones” located ten miles away from President Bush. Or ponder, where do all Americans meet and congregate? I could only really come up with airports; sports would have been a worthy example but are too expensive nowadays. At any rate, neither of these allows for much political expression. But then I realized I was being far too literal about the idea of public space. I thought public space meant physical public space. The answer, of course, to America’s public space now is the internet. Not to say that it is in any way perfect—not only does it allow for too much self-segregation and, like all public spaces, reflects the excesses of the society that birthed it—but it is what we have.

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I have two regrets about missed events in the US. The first is the Roots’ concert at Stanford, which should be amazing. But I can rationalize that to myself—I’m going to a Kanye West concert in which Common opens on the 17th, so it’s not as if I’m a little orphan window-shopping. I’m not deprived on that front. (Although I would not exchange either or both of these events for being in Paris—it’s just something that I would like to have in that infinite selfishness of hypotheticals.)

One thing that I was deprived of, that is my second regret, is missing the Pats-Colts game this past Sunday. It was hyped as the Game of the Year, and it seems to have delivered. But it was one of those events that almost everyone is talking about, has an awareness of, and has an opinion about.

Sporting events only assume this kind of importance in one of two instances: when graced by a singular aesthetic genius (Jordan, Woods, Federer, Ali), or a great rivalry that encompasses two distinct points of view, whether aesthetic, philosophical or political (Federer-Nadal , Ali-Frazier, Yankees-Red Sox, Lakers-Celtics, and Pats-Colts). Pats-Colts fit very comfortably in the latter category, because Pats and Colts occupy two separate aesthetic camps.

This is easy enough to do for the Colts. They are casually identified as the romantic team—the “bombs-away” team, damn the consequences. They are small but fast. I mean romantic here in the sense of big gestures and legendary stuff. This is not quite true—their defense has gotten better and they ball control fairly often, but is true enough, for the purposes of this exercise.

The Pats seem more difficult to get a handle on, partially because the chief adjective applied to them—“scrappy” stopped being useful long before this season, and it certainly doesn’t apply now. Scrappy players don’t win 52-7. The latest platitude is that the team is more important than any one player, which, in its favor, has the fact that they constantly exchange role players, but on the other hand: Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, two men who receive more attention than the rest of the Patriots because they deserve it. They truly are more important than the rest of the team and both are irreplaceable. So that is not quite it, although it is close.

I’ve always kind of enjoyed watching the Pats, and if you asked me why, I’d say something about how “efficient” they were, which I think is closest to the truth. What the Pats represent are the modern industrial corporation. Bill Belichick is the CEO, Tom Brady the Chairman—they get the big rewards because they’re most important—and then below that valued but certainly replaceable in a pinch workers. Oh, they’ve added some important assets to their portfolio (see: Randy Moss, Inc.), but they are still a ruthless corporation.

As someone who prefers professional Tom Brady to annoying Peyton Manning, this description makes me feel much more ambivalent about the two teams than I did before I made it, but there’s the lumps right there. I’m sure after I see another barrage of Peyton Manning ads, I’ll change my tune. Now there’s an event I don’t miss.

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I will be in Amsterdam from Wednesday to Sunday morning, so you should neither count on or count out updates.