So, today was all-Louvre, all the time. I thought this would be exhausting, that we’d maybe do two hours, then break for lunch, wander around outside, and come back or something. nope. 11:30-6pm, walking through the museum, with a break for about 1 hour in the Denon Cafe for lunch.

First off, let me wholeheartedly recommend the 5 euro audio guide, if you’re not already very well-versed in the history of art. Very helpful to decode a lot of the symbolism, meaning, and structure of the art to the untrained observer. We also picked up A Guide to the Louvre, a 17 euro book that’s full of pictures, and further descriptions. This was helpful in figuring out what we *didn’t* want to look at, as well as what we did. Given the size of the place, six hours in the museum got us through very little in any appreciable detail.

What did we actually see? Mostly Italian and French paintings from 1400-1800. And yes, A_B, we saw the Oath of the Horatii. In fact, it was one of the paintings I enjoyed the most, particularly with the additional information the guide and the book provided. Saw the Mona Lisa, which is disappointing only in that there’s so many people, and you have to stand so far away from it, that functionally, it’s not much different than looking at it in a book. I was much more impressed by the … er… I believe it was the Madonna on the Rocks that we saw at the National Gallery in London, because there you could get right up to the painting, and see the detail.

Still, obviously worth taking a look at.

A couple randomish thoughts:

1.) It’s really weird to see how styles evolve, and how they percolate through the entire culture of the time. The level of detail of faces, or backgrounds, varies quite a lot, and periodically, you see some outlier in a given time period, where things either look more or less contemporary for the time, and wonder WTF was going on. One that struck me in particular was a montage of various arms and hands that, surrounded by portraits and religious paintings, was photorealistic in technique, but almost abstract in content.

2.) Most of the action in a given painting appeared to be almost solely along a single plane. Or, if there were multple planes of action or movement, they were almost always split up into several discrete planes, all of which were parallel, or close to parallel to the plane of the painting itself. I saw very few paintings that had a lot of movement from fore-to-background. In certain cases, this worked to quite great effect – the Oath of the Horatii, for instance, felt so planar that it made me think of the Egyptian story wall carvings – they both have some sense of perspective and foreshortening, but still felt very “flat.”

3.) Little in the way of what I currently perceive as “motion.” Sure, there were many paintings that depicted movement, or action, but they still felt relatively still. I felt like it was almost as though one took the opposite of Jack Kirby, where he always depicted things at the very apex of their motion – stretched or squished to an impossible degree. Instead of finding the peak of motion, it was as though the painters or scuptors looked for a different moment, when the subject might have been in motion, but had stopped accelerating, and as such, looked relatively still. Sure, that varies quite a bit, and I know that I’m actually used to representations of speed and movement that rely very heavily on the vagaries of photography. So, my observation is pretty heavily biased by the *current* representations of action and motion that I’m used to seeing. I wonder what someone who’s looking at both types of representations for the first time feels is more natural?

4.) Obviously, I’m pretty out of the loop, but I never see representations of modern life painted with such grandeur. Are they still done by anyone? Do we see giant portraits or recollections of events painted in very old-school style, or has that literally been made obsolete by photography?

5.) The other weird thing is, what happens to digital media, from a future archaeologist’s perspective? On one hand, if the media doesn’t lose all its information, and the data can be recovered, it’s relatively “pure” – it’s not like the paint cracked, or the original finish has been lost – but at the same time, I have a hard time imagining that future civilizations will be decoding jpgs of current-day life. Do we record moden living in a real physical, more-or-less permanent way? Printed photos? Newspapers, sure.

Anyway – my feet, again, are toast. I’m surprised we lasted so long in the museum, but it was really fun, and consistently interesting. We ended up walking through the 14th through 17th century French painters backwards, so it was really sort of strange going back in time, and seeing who the influences were on the paintings we’d already seen. I don’t have a strong enough recollection to really post detalis, but maybe I’ll look through the book, or our photos, and post some of the things that I really liked. (no photos of the Italian paintings, though – those sections were off-limits to cameras.)

One last thing – Every goddamn time someone takes a flash photo of a priceless artifact, I want to punch them in the goddamn mouth. Your idiotic, poorly-framed photograph is worth destroying this priceless work of art? Fuck you. Yeah, your flash on its own makes relatively little difference, but it would make relatively little difference if I killed a millionth of you, as well. Jackasses. I can’t believe how many illiterate, or just completely inconsiderate jackasses there are. jayzis. I saw this one woman wandering around, taking all sorts of flash photos, and after every one, she’d mumble about how she didn’t think the flash would go off *this* time. Gah. Morons.

Yesterday was a bit of a blowout. It was so busy, and at times, quite frustrating. Being in a country where the dominant language is one you don’t speak is immensely tiring, and even simple crap, like not realizing you have to explicitly buy each grocery bag can add up to larger frustrations. So, this morning, we took it easy, and slept in.

Went to the Pompidou, where unfortunately, they’ve only got one floor of exhibits open to the public (the second main floor is under reconstruction for the better part of the year, as I understand). Still, the exhibits they had were one that was about motion, and the other was a guy named Hans Bellmer. The first exhibit was “The Movement of Images” – at first, I thought it was pretty much the same video-art schlock I’ve seen before, in a class I took at MIT. The first thing that really was interesting (ie: not a guy walking backwards around a tape square) was a video of car assembly, set to a nice syncopated beat. In a minute, they assemble a car, and all of their actions are tied to the rhythm. Very cool, and reminded me of a VW ad they had a year or three ago with a similar, but more organic-feeling concept. It’d have actually been nice to have seen the two juxtaposed.

There were a few other interesting pieces – some video, some sculpture, some painting. But the one that really entertained was a guy named John Wood, and another artist – they did a series of short videos, one of which was called “Board,” which was so reminiscent of Warioware, it was just uncanny. There’d be some sort of establishing shot, that would hold for a few moments, and often, a human would enter the scene, and instigate some sort of action. Often, they were simply humorous, but some of the time, the thing that would happen would really severely contrast with what you’d *expected* to happen, evoking a sense of surprise, or humor, that was really unique to that particular display. Ei-Nyung and I watched the entire series of pieces, which probably ran 15-20 minutes. Great stuff – funny, challenging, unexpected, and interesting.

The Hans Bellmer exhibit was odd. It was mostly a series of sketches, that looked like they’d be pretty at home in a deranged high-schooler’s notebook. Very sexual, very odd – imagine a sketch of the Arc de Triomph turning into a giant deformed penis, penetrating the weird four-legged mannequins from Silent Hill 2, and you’re pretty much there. Of course, the guy had the normal “traditional” technique, so it was clear he *could* draw pretty much anything he wanted, he just chose to draw brick walls with high heels cut out of them. It was interesting, no doubt, but I’m not sure I really “got” it, if there was anything there to get, other than that this guy really liked eyeballs that looked out of vaginas.

*shrugs*

In between exhibits, we jogged out to get some “greek pitas” – basically gyros squeezed in a panini press, some fries, some pastries, and a giant bottle of water. Ate that in the courtyard of the Pompidou, watching some kids firedance to loud music. There was also a guy with that thing that you do with two sticks, some string, and a top-looking thing – he was really good. The firedancers were merely ok. Some cops came by, and apparently ticketed the guy playing the music & the firedancers – something to do with the DJ’s dog, apparently.

After eating, we walked to the far side of the courtyard, and watched a guy put on a play with three non-French-speaking members of the audience. Standard street art humor stuff, but very well done. Gave the guy a couple e’s – he raked in a huge umbrella full of cashola. Still, well deserved. Funny guy.

After the Pompidou, it looked like we were pretty wiped. But after a few minutes of sitting around, we realized we still had all sorts of stuff to do. Halfway through our time hear (more than that, actually), and we hadn’t gone to the Arc de Triomph, the Eiffel Tower, or the freakin’ Louvre. It was an hour or so before sunset, though, so we figured it’d be pretty easy to knock down the Eiffel Tower, since there isn’t much surrounding it that we’re super-excited about.

So, off we went, via Paris’ woefully convoluted Metro system. Man, given that Paris is smaller than London, I’d have thought that they’d have some sort of coherent, easy-to-navigate layout, but jiminy christmas, the Metro’s a pain in the ass. Anyway, we end up at the Tower, and head up to the second level as the sun sets. Quite an impressive view – lots of pictures, though they’re all undoubtedly the same pictures everyone takes from that place. The blinking lights are actually a lot more impressive from the tower itself, and a lot less ridiculously gaudy than it does from far away. Still, looking through the history of the Eiffel Tower shows a long history of various novel lighting schemes, so hopefully, this one will eventually pass.

We walked down the stairs from the second level to the first, where we read some of the placards and looked at the various displays of the history of the tower, and such. Watched a movie about how they repaint the thing, and marvelled at the ridiculous bravery/fearlessness/idiocy of the painters in action. Once night had thoroughly fallen, we wandered down to the plaza in front of the tower, took a picture, and headed off to find some food, when we realized that, holy crap, it’s 11pm. So, off to the first place that’s lit up. Ei-Nyung got a club sandwich, and I got a Confit du Canard, which was not quite what I was expecting, but absolutely delicious. What I was expecting, in retrospect, was a cassoulet. Oops. I’ll have to have one of those somewhere before I leave.

Again, on to the metro, and back to the apartment, to let the blood drain out of my feet.

Fun! Less stressful, more entertaining, today. Tomorrow morning, the Louvre, in the afternoon, perhaps the Arc. We’ll see.

So, today was Musee d’Orsay (hopefully I didn’t f that up too much), L’Atlier de Joel Robuchon for lunch, and then Saint-Chappelle. Of the three, I was most impressed by Saint-Chappelle.

Orsay: lots of stuff, largely impenetrable. I enjoyed a reasonable number of the pieces, both painting and sculpture, but it wasn’t until I was on what felt like somewhat “familiar” territory that I really could appreciate what it all meant. Familiar being Van Gogh, in this particular case. One thing I found, which isn’t a *new* conclusion, is that I really don’t understand what impressionism is about. That is, if I had to guess, I’d say that impressionism, based on nothing but what I’m pulling out of my butt, is a move away from photorealism, towards painting techniques that substitute some sort of abstraction in the representation to communicate how an artist feels about a subject. I have no idea whether that’s the “textbook” definition, to be sure. But basically, as we moved through the museum, and transitioned from older works to newer ones, I found I had a very hard time telling the difference between certain types of impressionism, and bad technique.

Here’s where I’m going to get tripped up, because I don’t know who speciically belongs to which schools, or what’s considered what, so take this all with a grain of salt. When I look at something like a Renoir, there’s a softness, and an… airy sort of haze to some of his portraits that feel ethereal – the focus is on very specific details, and because other things have some detail abstracted, the viewer gets a sense of what is and is not important – the “feel” of the painting is intact, even though the details are not, yet there is enough detail for a viewer to understand the painting as a whole.

Monet seems to have pulled even further away from reality, and uses the color, as well as the brushwork, to create a sense of visual emotion that surpasses photorealism – the specific painting that sticks out in my mind is a bluish silhouette of Parliament against a pinkish sky.

Still, none of this really “came together” for me, until Van Gogh. There were two specific Van Gogh self-portraits on display – one with a maybe yellow-green background, with very distinct blue streaks on his face, and one with a blue swirly background. Like how I use the technical terms? Bleah. Still, the “best” painting for me was the blue swirly self-portrait. In that, the mix of realism, with such expressiveness in the brushstrokes, and the stylized, almost symbolic patterning in the background is so evocative that it felt like the culmination of what all the works I’d seen previously had been hinting at was possible. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, I don’t know. What I do know is that two rooms later, there was a Cezanne that to me just looked unfinished, and a pair of crowd scenes by, I believe Toulouse-Latrec that I literally couldn’t distinguish from the drawings of someone who has no idea how to draw or paint.

I suppose that’s the common complaint about modern art, but there you go.

L’Atlier: Ei-Nyung had the menu, so I’ll let her describe that. The basic structure for those who might not be familiar with the style of restaurant (as I was not), is that it’s essentially a bar, somewhat like a sushi bar, and there are a number of different small plate dishes, as well as some “larger” dishes, that are more geared towards being a main course.

Since Ei-Nyung had splurged on the menu, which ran E98, even at lunch, I figured I’d go for something… cheaper. still not cheap, mind you, as it ended up running about $56 for the dishes I had, but what are you gonna do? It’s like, #25 in the world, right? I had L’Aubergine, or as we yanks know it, the eggplant. The dish consisted of a sprig of thyme, perched atop a stack of grilled zucchini, grilled eggplant, a slice of grilled tomato, and a slice of fresh mozzarella. There was, I believe, a comma-shaped dollop of basil sauce at the base. That is, I believe it was basil – it definitely was there. The little stack of vegetables and cheese was absolutely spectacular. Something about the seasoning, and the grilling of the components was spot-on, and the balance of flavors was just perfect.

Next up was a quail dish. There was a small, licorice-y salad of greens, a multi-ingredient mashed potato side, and the quail – split up into two leg pieces (leg & thigh), and two breast pieces, which looked like they were stuffed with some of the innards from the bird. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you what the bird was stuffed with, but that’s what it seemed like. I figured I’d get the quail becuase a.) I couldn’t read the vast majority of the menu, and at that point, we’d asked so many questions, I didn’t want to press much further, and b.) we’d recently had quail at Chez Panisse, so I figured why not compare? As it turns out, the quail had been the weak point in the dinner at Chez Panisse, and the quail at L’Atlier was far superior. Crispy skin, done to perfection, not dry or greasy in the least, and in a small amount of perfectly seasoned jus. A piece of the breast meat, with the stuffing, a leaf or two from the salad, and the potato fit on a fork nicely, and all the flavors complemented each other perfectly, with the bitter brightness of the greens offsetting the richness of the meat & potato.

For dessert, I had L’Orange. Yeah – this was an odd thing. Good, but odd – and more challenging than uniformly “delicious,” I think – perhaps a more sophisticated palette would find it uniformly enjoyable, but to me, it was far more academically “neat” than out-and-out to-die-for-delicious. Still, a totally unique experience, and worth every moment. Basically, the dish consisted of a canape of orange sherbet set atop slices of mandarin orange (the slices were cut, not peeeled), which sat in a pool of orange juice. On top was what appeared to be a very thin, pressed piece of the caramelized rind. I was wrong about the rind – though it looked as though that must have been what it was, it was a very thin layer of orange-flavored sugar – though that doesn’t really describe it accurately, because it was far more savory than sweet. It was like they had pulled all the savory components of the flavor of an orange, isolated them from the sweetness, and then turned that into a thin layer of completely un-sweet sugar.

Very strange. Even weirder was that the orange sherbet had a strong clove (and possibly nutmeg) flavor that again accentuated the savory aspect of the orange. This had more of a hint of sweetness than the “rind,” and was a little more accessible. Turns out that the orange slices were also sitting in what appeared to be a second orange sherbet, which was even sweeter, but again, was paired with some sort of spice that accentuated something different. I can’t even really describe it, except that it tasted like a halfway point between the clove/orange sherbet and what you’d normally expect. The orange itself was exactly what I’d have expected, as was the orange juice, but in comparison/contrast/complementing the other flavors, what you ended up with was that each mouthful felt like a different perspective.

I always think that it’s weird on the Japanese Iron Chef when you’d get someone saying something ridiculous like this, but basically, it was as though you’d put an orange on a pedestal in a darkened room, shone a spotlight on it, and taken a variety of pictures from different angles. Each mouthful was like eating one of those pictures – each slightly different, with a slightly different take on the flavor. Maybe it’s like you got a bunch of impressionists all painting the same orange, and then you’ve eaten all their paintings and gotten a bunch of different perspectives on the same subject matter. (Ei-Nyung suggested that something like that (a variety of impressionists painting the same subject) would be really illuminating in a museum like the Orsay.)

Anyway – I really enjoyed L’Atlier, but I do confess that I wasn’t prepared to really sit down and confront that kind of food for lunch. It was basically more than I could really “understand” outside of dinner. Dinner ended up being far more pedestrian – we got some gnocchi, lardon, tomatoes, and an eggplant sauce, and cooked it all up at the apartment. Delicious, and way, way cheaper.

Sainte-Chappelle: whoa. For all the idiotic panhandling they’ve set up at the Notre Dame, S-C was done right. The information stuff, and the “shop” and what have you were downstairs, in the much less impressive but still cool lower area, and the upstairs was left relatively untouched. And holy crap, it’s astonishing. Too much, perhaps. While the interior of the building is relatively straightforward, and the sculptures of the apostles were neat, it all pales in comparison to the stained glass. Yeah, this is useless without pictures, as I’m at a loss to describe it to anyone who hasn’t seen it already. It’s very “noisy” and frankly, though it’s appearently quite narrative, the stories are very, very hard to make out because the space between the narrative panels is taken up by repetitive colored patterns, and the visual density of it all makes it completely and totally overwhelming.

Still, it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, frankly, and astonishing that apparently, 2/3rds of the stained glass is original. Yeah, Notre Dame’s gigantic, and on the exterior, far more elaborate, but if that took 200 years to build, it must have been a Herculean effort to put up S-C in a mere six years. Wow. We have 4 day museum passes – I’m hoping that we get a really bright day, so we can go back and check it out in its full glory. It was a little dim by the time we got to the place, and cloudy, so it wasn’t as intense as it probably might have been.

Anyway – after all that, we came back to the apartment, and sat around. I’m definitely getting trip fatigue, and can walk less and less each passing day. I miss my dog, and my house, and my friends. Still having a ball, but yeah, whoo – tiring.

And for the record, the wedding, IMO, was just about as good as one could have expected. The weather broke (in a good way) for the day of the ceremony, and it was a truly spectacular time. Being married is indeed more or less as I’d expected – not a huge change from say, the day before – but still, sort of an interesting change. Got a ring on my left hand, which I’ve now worn for just about the entire week, which makes it the longest, already by an order of magnitude, that I’ve ever worn any piece of jewelry. Wacky stuff.

Yeah, now I call her “the wife.” It’s weird.

So… for the last week, we were in London. We’re in Paris now, but have only just arrived. Quite different.

I enjoyed London quite a bit. We went to a huge number of museums – not normally my thing, but the combination of them being 1.) free and 2.) diverse meant that they were a really good, and interesting way to pass the time.

We started off at the National Gallery, which was a good thing, because the organization of their exhibits was excellent. I went in without much context, or understanding about the real evolution of the various works, but left feeling like I had a reasonable idea about how various paintings were thematically or stylistically connected. The only thing that really left me cold was the section that was focused entirely on really old religious iconography, which I simply didn’t have the knowledge to even begin to comprehend.

After the National Gallery, we ended up at the Tate Modern (excellent content, very poorly organized, IMO – no sense of continuity or context – organizing modern art by theme (landscapes?) seems almost the worst way to have organized the various works. After that, off to the British Museum. We ended up focusing solely on the “left” wing (ha-ha), where their Egyptian, Greek and Roman works were kept. We took a quick spin through Korea, but basically, there was so much stuff that by the time we were completely wiped out, we’d still only seen half the museum.

On the last day in London, we went to the Imperial War Museum, and saw the Children in War exhibit, which as expected, was heartbreaking. There was more time, but I couldn’t really bring myself to go look at more of the consequence of war. Very interesting, very informative, and very, very heavy.

In terms of food, we did quite well, I think. We ended up eating at a couple excellent places – Gordon Ramsay’s Boxwood Cafe was quite good, and the best “bang for the buck” that we had, I believe. I had a really vivid dream about the dessert that evening – a Passionfruit Fool (basically, a yogurt/whipped cream mixture, flavored with passionfruit). Excellent stuff, and I hope that I can find a recipe somewhere to make some attempt at making it when we get home.

Still, the best meal I had in London was the dinner at the Savoy Grill. Started off with a variety of little things, but my starter was a smoked haddock omelette – easily the best egg dish I’ve ever had anywhere. Perfect in every way. The main was a lamb neck, which is kind of strange, but was done really well. The jus was a touch salty, but the meat and vegetables were perfectly done. The dessert was a rice pudding, which was good, but couldn’t hold a candle to Ei-Nyung’s cinnamon-infused creme brulee.

Whew.

Strangely, one of the other best meals I had was from a place called Bang! which you might have guessed was a sausage grill/bar place. Strangely, it was just across the way from the hotel, and looked sort of crap from the outside, but was actually quite elegant on the inside. We got a trio of sausages, mash, and onion gravy. The sausages were delicious, and varied, the mash was perfect, and well-complemented by the gravy. Also one of the cheapest meals we had while there.

Other meals of note, which I’m sure I’ll write about at some point:

Fish & Chips at a place called Rock and Sole Plaice – best fried fish I’ve had – the crust stuck to the fish like glue, and was nice and crispy. The chips were also great – greasy, to be sure, but nicely crispy and well-flavored.

Wagamama – a noodle chain – got a spicy chicken ramen which was largely unremarkable, but some duck gyoza that were delicious. The chocolate cake with a wasabi-infused frosting was also surprising, and quite good.

Yo Sushi was a bit of a letdown, but I should have known that going in. We hadn’t quite gotten adjusted to HOW GODDAMNED EXPENSIVE everything in London was, and looking at the menu, there were only a few things we were willing to gamble $10 for a bite or two on. They had some really excellent cheap dishes, like a chicken katsu curry (for $7), but the pricing was prohibitive to the style of dining they require.

Anyway – after all the museums and the food, what I left London with was a sense of affection – I really rather like the place, and there’s enough that we missed that I certainly wouldn’t mind going back. I could see living here for a year, maybe two, but holy crap is it expensive.

Paris is quite different – a little taller, and a little less like say, New York. There were moments in London, walking down Oxford St., that felt just like walking in midtown Manhattan, and not in a way that I particularly enjoy. Walking down Rue de Rombateau (I’m sure I butchered that), the sense I got was very different. On Monday after Easter, which is a bank holiday here, there was a huge tourist glut, but still, the open cafes and food stands was a welcome and interesting change from the place we’d spent the previous week.

And just for the record, the thing I thought when I walked out of the subway stop in Picadilly Circus was, “Hey, I’ve been here in PGR!” while walking by the Pompidou Centre, I thought, “Man, this looks much better in real life than it did in Midnight Club 2 or Midtown Madness 3.”

Tomorrow, we’ve got a city to explore. Tonight, we wash socks.

Hrm. Day after tomorrow’s the wedding. Programs and other paperwork printed up, collected, and stuffed into envelopes. Gifts for the various participants (save a few we haven’t figured out yet) mostly accounted for. Flowers being taken care of my mom. Wedding music taken care of by a friend of Ei-Nyung’s. Ceremony’s been revised and sent back to the officiant. Location’s set, the food order’s been placed. Right now, I’ve gotta look through iTunes and find a collection of inoffensive dinner music, and stuff to potentially dance to.

Other than that, things seem pretty well set, and orderly.

Why am I getting nervous NOW?

So, picked up my cousin at the airport. On the way home, we decided we’d grab some lunch. We went to Gregoire’s, a place Colin had recommended. I was wearing my Sega jacket. The guy at the register asked me if I worked on the DC, and I told him I worked on Seaman, which he didn’t recognize. Happens a reasonable amount of the time when I’m wearing the jacket, so no big deal.

As we’re waiting for food, he asks us (my cousin and me) if we *both* work in game development. I mention he’s my cousin. The guy at the counter says he’s interested, ’cause his girlfriend’s a game journalist. I figure, what the heck, there aren’t too many of ’em, there’s a good chance I’ll recognize the name. He says, “Jane Pinckard.”

So, I knew Jane Pinckard years and years ago, when I was in Japanese school with her and her sister. We played when we were kids. About seven or eight months ago, I somehow ran into her name on the internet, and found out she was now an editor at 1up.com. At the time, I couldn’t place the name or the face, and e-mailed her, asking why I might know her from way long ago. Weird and stalkery, yeah, I know. But I found out the next day where I knew her from from my mom, and sent her a followup explaining WTF was going on. She didn’t respond, as was expected (yeah, I knew even then that the e-mail I was sending was odd). But then today, we meet her boyfriend at a random restaurant, as the result of a nearly random conversation.

Yes, the links are all there, and they all make a certain amount of sense. But still, it’s a small damn world.