Le Musée d'Orsay

We got 2 hours in the Musée d'Orsay. Not nearly enough time, but a great way to get me super excited about being in a really amazing place and then usher me out as soon as I get started looking at the good stuff! WOO! And this time I didn't have any time to stay after and look around on my own because the museum was closing! AWESOME!

No, but really, pretty damn sweet. The Musée d'Orsay was once a train station and was converted into a museum with the help of an Italian architect who was in charge of the design of the interior to make it more art-friendly. It now houses masterpieces from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries from famous artists including Pissarro, Monet, Rodin, Degas, Manet, and Toulouse-Lautrec. What an amazing collection!
I got to see some beautiful, beautiful pieces of work at the museum, some of which have interesting stories that I will, as usual, tell you all about! We started with a marble sculpture called Femme piqué par un serpent (Woman bitten by a snake) by Clésinger, in the picture on the right. It is an incredibly erotic sculpture of a woman sprawled out on the ground with her back arched, her torso elongated, her arms spread behind her. As its title suggests, however, it is supposed to depict a woman that has died after being bitten by a snake. The snake is miniscule. It looks like a tiny bracelet circling her arm (the one that is cut off in the picture). I just thought it was funny that the artist used the story as an excuse to create an very explicit sculpture during a time when such art was taboo.
Then, we moved on to a statue based on the story of Ugolin from Dante's Inferno. This piece is called Ugolin et ses fils (Ugolin and his sons) and was done by a sculptor named Carpeaux. The story of Ugolin is that he was a count, left to die of starvation in a tower with his four beloved sons by a political/religious enemy. The sculpture portrays the moment at which a glimmer of light enters the tower and Ugolin sees parts of himself in each of his sons' faces, reminding him of a nightmare he had in which he and his sons are torn apart, and begins gnawing on his fingers. His sons mistaken that gesture as a sign of extreme hunger and they tell him that they would rather that he eat them than suffer from hunger. Eventually, he eats his sons and for that he is condemned to hell. I was incredibly moved by the tension and sense of suffering that is evident in the sculpture, with the twisted spiraling movement of the figures and the tensed musculature of each body. Disturbing, but beautiful.
Now, for something a little more lighthearted. To the right, a picture of one of my favorite pieces in the entire museum: Ours Polaire (Polar Bear) by Pompon. Yes, my favorite animal. $1,000,000 to the first person who can figure out something really funny about this picture. Hint: It's not the sculpture.
By the way, the Musée d'Orsay has the most impressive Impressionist collection EVER. Like, EVER. At least of the ones I've seen so far. When we got up to the Impressionism floor, I actually started feeling sort of anxious and stressed out because there several rooms that I wanted to go through to see all of the famous pieces and favorite artists that I never thought I'd have the chance to see, but there was this incessant blaring voice that kept coming up over the PA system in the museum informing patrons in like 6 different languages that the museum was closing in 30 minutes. But here are some of the very well-known pieces that I got to see:

Now, the amazing thing about the Musée d'Orsay is that the building itself is a work of art (like the Louvre). In an attempt to balance the majesty of the buildings on either side of the Seine River, the designers of the train station decided that they would make the outside of the building look like a palace. With its famous clock faces and detailed outer walls, the Musée d'Orsay is a sight on its own. From the clock towers, you can also get an impressive view of Paris. Here is a picture that I took of the view from behind one of the clock faces in the Musée d'Orsay. You can see Sacre Coeur in Montmartre if you look really carefully:

I hope I get a chance to go back, but at this rate (LAST WEEK IN PARIS WHAT THE HELLLLLL) it doesn't look like I'll get to.