Very interesting Art Nouveau exterior on ave Rapp. Won 1st prize in 1901 in the Concours de la Ville de Paris.
This is the tribute to Diana…. a copy of the flame from the top of the statue of liberty. It is set at the tunnel on Pont Alma. The main sponsor was the Herald Tribune. It is hard to believe that it took 45 minutes to get her to a hospital, as ambulances around here are super fast with a distinctive siren, and there is a special lane for buses and bikes that they take over whenever they wish…and, it was late at night. Hmmmm?
Went to the Orangerie to see Monets water lilies. Very impressive, very large. Hope to go out to Giverny when the garden is in full bloom.
Monet Refuses the Operation
~ A poem by Lisel Mueller
Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
The other part of the recently rebuilt museum was full of an art dealers collection. A wonderful gift was a 1.5 hour film following the careers of Picasso and Matisse: discussions of art work accompanied by personal photos and film footage. After writing my “Rodin and literature” blog, I was quite surprised to see the footage of fleeing Parisians, as well as the celebration on the streets of Paris when WW 2 ended. I was also quickened as they reviewed both artists time on the Riviera - I lived in Antibes in 1971 for the summer, and recalled going to Vennes to see the paintings there by Picasso. How fun.
Institute du Monde Arabe .. “no photos allowed”. Still, snuck a couple. Astrolobe from Spain from ~900AD… and a photo of the window looking out. Lots of history which I am sure we will see more of in the Louvre. A large market beside the building full of arab world goods… and odors. Interesting to see the map of the Middle East, and there was no Isreal.
After all, Scarlett, tomorrow is another day... day# 28 without any rain.
Jesus is happy with the fishing expedition. 
A Funeral Cortege of a 1490 duke.. life size.. very different from the usual effigies.
And then there is our friend Donald Duck.. if you look carefully at his face he is not very happy.
Ah, France... so French!
