Musée d'Orsay

For this field trip, we went to the Orsay Museum, and it was probably my favorite so far. The site itself is an old train station that has been transformed into the home of impressionism style paintings, which seem to be my favorite style. These are some images of the museum itself.

Some of the more famous pieces in this museum belong to names like Van Gogh, Degas, Monet, Manet, Seurat, Gauguin, and Cézanne. Here are some of the more famous paintings that I think we've all heard about along the line.

Luncheon on the Grass - Edouard Manet

Poppy Field - Claude Monet

Les glaçons - Claude Monet

Mont Sainte-Victoire - Paul Cézanne

Bedroom in Arles - Vincent van Gogh

The Circus - Georges Seurat

Two of my favorites of this selection would be Monet's Luncheon on the Grass and Seurat's The Circus. I like these two and for two totally different reasons.

The first one, Luncheon on the Grass (1863) was pretty controversial when it came out, so controversial that it was rejected from the Salon, but then accepted into the Salon des Refusés. It has been said that the woman in the front without clothes on is there for the pleasure of the two men, to put it kindly. And people didn't like seeing that, as it wasn't something that was talked about so out in the open. The lady in the back is for some reason, a lot larger when compared to the people in the front. Logically, if she is further back in space, she should not appear to be the same size as the subjects up front and close to us. Apart from the shocking and confusing subject matter, Manet also strayed away from traditional techniques in the fact that he didn't really blend his colors like most artists had before him. This made the image appear flatter and the colors to appear as shapes. This piece stands out to me because Manet seemed like he had the mindset that he wasn't going to follow the typical rules and regulations to be considered an artist. He painted what he wanted to paint, and how he wanted to paint it. That's why this piece is sometimes considered the painting that started the movement towards Modern Art. I like how this piece stirred up ideas and emotions and started conversation through it's subject matter. Like we talked about in class, I think art is a good middle man to bring up certain otherwise taboo topics.

The second piece is Georges Seurat's The Circus (1890-91). My main reason for liking this particular piece is the fact that the whole image is made of dots, little pieces of color that blend only when coming in contact with eyes. I mean that's what most of art really is, a visual connection. But Seurat managed to figure out how to get the human eye to do most of the work. By applying what is known as the Divisionist theory to his piece, he was able to mix colors optically instead of physically. This allowed him to combine the artistic world with the scientific in that instead of the viewer just looking at a piece and never really going further, the viewer would look at this and try to understand why is it they see this range of colors when they aren't technically there. That is the draw I have towards this piece. It also makes the viewer think about what they are looking at, but in a different way than what Manet accomplished. I guess in a sense, I like both these pieces for the same reason in fact because I like art that requires the viewer to do more than just look. I like pieces that ask the viewer to look deeper than the canvas and interpret what it is they're looking at and why it makes them feel the way they do.