urbansuburban (a Gillefond adventure): Le Louvre

Final blog post about Paris! It is fitting to close with the Louvre. More specifically, an art history and tourist lesson on the Louvre, courtesy of the Gillefonds.

walking in from the metro

outside may be the best part

First, when visiting the Louvre, do as we did and go at night. It is open until 11pm on Wednesdays, so by 6pm there are no lines or crowds.

However, eat a hearty snack before you go. Do not do as we did and get lost in Ancient Egypt, starving, sure your remains would be found weeks later and swept under some sarcophagus.

Finally, it's probably worth it to learn a bit about art before visiting the world's most famous art museum. We did not follow this advice. So we saw the beautiful and the famous, and then misbehaved like teenagers on a field trip.

Enjoy!

armless Venus

I actually love Cupid and Psyche. The story is woven into many fairy tales, and generally told as the mortal consequence of sexual love. Nice light reading.

gorgeous

different take on the lovers

obviously

ML's crowd

Louvre costume!

Now comes the sophomoric bit. I mentioned we were hungry. We also got lost. And the sole of my boot broke. So we found ourselves hobbling, starving, through a dark castle of a museum (seriously- the place relies on large windows with outside lighting to illuminate the art- so at 8pm its a bit dark and creepy in there). To pass the time, and distract ourselved from the certainty that we were never getting out of there, we came up with a scavenger hunt. We determined that most Louvre art can be broken down into one of four general categories. I present them to you now:

1. Things being done to boobs you're supposed to pretend not to notice.

dont mind this grown man suckling in the hallway

just having a discussion, no one noticing she decided to whip out a nipple

spoiler alert- we later did some reading on this painting and hence learned all of the symbolism of the nakedness, the sister pinching the other sister's nipple, and it made it a lot less weird. Still, at first glance, Reg's face sums up our initial impression.

#2 Before babies were cute

ignore the circumcision- check out that ugly ugly baby!

like your middle aged creepy uncle you dont want to sit next to at Thanksgiving

He has your eyes, dear.

#3. Homoerotic poses you're supposed to pretend not to notice

Oh that's just Paul, thrusting again.

I think this pose is called a half-wheelbarrow, but I could be wrong. Dont forget to look up- this was on the ceiling.

#4. Starving artist Jesus. I sadly don't have any photographic evidence of this category, so just take my word for it. In European art, Jesus is totally hipster- hips jutting forward, slouching, looking like he's been so busy with his art (that you are far too mainstream to understand), that he forgot to eat those loaves and fishes.