It’s story time! And why not? It’s feels amazing to go back in time and revel in bliss. Quite often I think I went to Paris at the perfect time especially visiting certain places like Musée Rodin. I think visiting that museum truly changed my life. I was never big into sculptures. I’m more of an impressionist/abstract artist gal. It’s one of the reasons why I love Musée D’orsay with all of my heart and soul! I love impressionism. It’s the main thing I look forward to seeing when visiting museums. I guess it’s easy to find everything online but I hardly ever look for art online except when I made collections on Society 6. Surprisingly, they still have all my collections I made over six years ago on their website. But I digress…. I love to go to museums so I can discover new art. I never heard of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux until I went to Musée D’orsay and the first time I laughed the day after my birthday was seeing a sculpture made by him. As soon as I saw La Danse, I instantly smiled. It’s the one thing I absolutely love about art. Reactions… good, bad, indifferent, etc. Art can invoke so many thoughts and feelings and I just love the theoretical and also philosophical aspect of art especially when exploring color. But… I digress again. The main purpose of starting this blog post was to talk about the featured picture! See how art is just amazing? It’s so easy to fall into that rabbit hole of awe!
Well… as the weather report said, it was going to rain on the 8th, 9th, and possibly the 10th. All at different times. I was fully prepared to have all rainy days. Not ideal… but I was expecting rain throughout the trip. At some point in the air, it rained in Paris before leaving the airport at around 12pm on 12/8/21. I didn’t realize it rained until I was at the hotel. The ground on the balcony was a little bit damp. The reason why I mention this is the featured picture of this post. While walking to Musée Rodin, I stumbled upon a rainbow. I was generally in shock. Like an idiot, I only took two photos of the rainbow. I didn’t expect to see it. I thought it looked amazing! What a wonderful way to start the journey in Paris. To be greeted on my first day walking throughout the city with a rainbow. I didn’t see a drop of rain on the 8th or on my birthday the next day but to have such beautiful views and weather was just amazing! Plus… since my birthday is December 9th, it’s perfect because it’s two weeks before Christmas. Where I think if my birthday was a week later there could have been more people at Musée Rodin. It felt kind of empty in certain places, especially near the Kiss. It’s the sculpture I was looking forward to seeing when visiting this museum. The main reason why I wanted to visit Rodin. When I first seen the sculpture online, I was thinking that I need to visit this museum, lol! The magnetic pull… While I was at the sculpture, there were hardly any people around and I was able to make a small video.
One thing that’s interesting about visiting museums is learning more about the history of the art made. There’s one sculpture that I absolutely love in the museum called L’Âge Mûr (The Mature Age) by Camille Claudel who was a student of Rodin. I didn’t know much about Rodin before visiting the museum. I don’t know a lot about the lives of popular artists. There are popular names and pieces of art I know but overall I don’t have extensive knowledge about art. I guess that’s to my detriment but throughout my travels, it gives me an opportunity to learn more. I actually like it this way. Discovering art and the history behind it while on my travels. I think it heightens the experience. Well… at the time, I took a photo of L’Âge Mûr and didn’t know anything about Camille Claudel. I heard she was an inspiration of Rodin but I don’t know much about Rodin other then a few popular sculptures he’s made and that’s just about it. Honestly, I don’t like looking into the personal lives of any artist. Almost every time I do, I find something that’s surprising and sometimes the surprise is not good. I always like to separate the work from the artist. It helps me keep the fantasy and love alive within the work itself. Yes… you can call that blissful ignorance but it makes me sad finding something unpleasant like with Camille. Since I had no idea who she was, I looked more into her recently and I won’t go into details here but her story is very tragic. After reading a bit about her, I definitely wanted to dedicate something to her for this album. Sadly, I wish I took more photos of her work in the museum and I wish I knew more about her before visiting Rodin. She destroyed a lot of her work but there is a museum dedicated to her in France. I would love to go back to France and visit the museum. But… at this point I don’t think that’s going to happen. One can dream…
There’s so much research that goes into planning trips especially to museums but I really do love the discovery. Learning more about art and history is fascinating, even if some of it can be absolutely tragic. Everyone has a story and some great pieces of art have been made by individuals with pasts that can easily render you speechless and in tears. Van Gogh instantly comes to mind.
I have my playlist of designs I’m going to be working on for this album. However, I’m still trying to work out the size dimension issue. I took every photo on my phone which has great quality but unfortunately, I took photos in the wrong size dimensions. It’s causing a huge issue that has me very worried for this album. I should have started making designs by now but I honestly don’t know how to fix this problem at the moment. I’ve been testing different size dimensions but most pictures look distorted. I guess I can try to make it work but I’m going to keep testing until I find a sweet spot. I plan to make book covers for most of these designs for kindle books and there lies another problem. I can easily make the book covers but I wanted to make designs that had more a landscape look instead of portrait. Plus… it’s going to be a huge problem making the video album or any speed art music video. I have to figure this out or the album is going to be a disaster.
Well… If you’re reading this before I publish the album, wish me good luck! Below you can see my design playlist. I was on the fence with two designs (The Thinker and one windmill picture I took near Moulin Rouge) However, I just had a random thought to combine The Windmill pic to Mona Lisa. I have no idea how that’s going to work alongside my abstract drawing but I’m really curious. If it’s a complete horror show when making the design, then I’ll just focus on Mona Lisa. The picture you see a few paragraphs above is of Les Invaildes. I was going to make a design featuring Les Invaildes but sadly I didn’t take a good photo. I also wanted to feature something from inside the Louvre so I replaced that design with Faune Endormi (Sleeping Faun). As soon as I saw the man’s sleeping pose, I knew I had to work with that sculpture. In some ways, the top of Les Invalides has a similar aesthetic to the Pantheon, so it’s not a total loss.
- Eiffel Tower (Named after Gustave Eiffel whose company designed and built the Eiffel Tower)
- Louvre
- Pierre de Wissant (Made by Auguste Rodin)
- The Kiss (Made by Auguste Rodin)
- Arc De Triophme
- Moulin Rouge
- Petite Palais
- Notre Dame
- Faune Endormi (Made by Edme Bouchardon)
- Mona Lisa/The Windmill (Mona Lisa made by Leonardo Da Vinci)
- La Danse (Made by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux)
- Duquesne (Featuring a picture from my hotel room balcony at Hotel Duquesne Eiffel)
- Sacré-Cœur
- Pantheon
- L’Âge Mûr (Made by Camille Claudel)
I will be making designs in no particular order on the list except Pierre De Wissant which will be my first design and Eiffel Tower will most likely be my last.