Today’s visit was to another one of our favorites, the Musee de l’Arte Moderne de la Cite de Paris. Not a destination for most tourists, thank goodness. It is situated on the west side of Paris, between the Arc de Triumph and the Eiffel Tower, almost right where the Seine turns to the south as it exits the city. We were able to take the same bus line as the one we used for the Musee Guimet and then walk about 3 minutes to the museum. It was a little less cold today and the sun was shining so walking to and from the bus stops was quite pleasant. Also, being Sunday, the bus was uncrowded for the ride in both directions.
Probably the major reason we love the place is because it focuses on the time period of 1900 up to the present, but it is really strong for art up to about 1950. The period up to the 50’s is of great interest to us because it corresponds to almost the same period of art in Colorado. Though up to about 1925 or so
a few Colorado artists were aware with the trends in Paris. Mainly because so many artists in Denver at the time had studied in Europe, either France or Germany and they were aware of the current trends then in favor.
The absolute draw of this museum for us are the works of Robert Delaunay and his wife Sonia Delaunay both accomplished artists. The first two galleries you enter feature their works along with artists with whom they interacted. The Delaunays were very color oriented and created works that attempted to advance certain abstract theories they held related to color and form (Orphism). Robert’s major works usually involved circular designs, while Sonia created many works in the same spirit, but also branched out into such things as clothing and jewelry design. The third gallery is dedicated to the Art Deco movement and has several lovely exhibits, including the frieze that once decorated the first class dining room of the cruise ship Normandy, in its time one of the largest and fastest of the trans-Atlantic liners.
The fourth gallery was dedicated to a celebrated art collector and patron, the Parisian dentist,Maurice Girardin, whose estate donation served as a major basis for the museum’s initial collection. He was very taken with Rouault and bought many of his paintings. But he didn’t limit himself to that one artist and bought a veritable who’s who of artists active in the 20’s into the late 30’s: Picasso, Vlaminck, Rouault, Jean Arps and Delaunay, etc. He also collected a formidable collection of African tribal art, again anchoring the museum’s collection.
We were headed into the next galleries when we discovered that they were closed, evidently due to some technical issues, but they are due to open in the next week or so. That was a bit disappointing but nothing could be done.
So we adjusted and went down one level to visit the Matisse gallery where were displayed the two major versions for the mural in the Barnes collection, called “La Danse”. The story is quite interesting in that Matisse created one and then pinned paper cuts of the figures to the background in various compositions until he had something he liked. Then at some point in the creative process he discovered that he had incorrectly measured the column widths between the arches and had to basically begin from scratch on a new version. He worked in preliminary drawings and then moved over to a studio where he would create full sized models. They identified at least 24 iterations that I saw and maybe more. Seeing two full scale efforts with different designs was very interesting. All in all we had a wonderful visit to one of our favorite museums.
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