The Louvre is completely, utterly, overwhelmingly, mind-numbingly massive. It’s like the Virgin Megastore of art museums, the Walmart one-stop shop for all your art-viewing needs. I mean, I expected it to be quite large, but the sheer density of art within each hall is, I think, enough to tire anyone out quite quickly. Plus none of the bloody placards are in English. Certainly it’s a French museum, but I would hazard a guess that the number of full or partial English speakers visiting the museum each year vastly outnumbers those visitors who understand French. I know they’re touchy about the decline of their language, but please, bilingual descriptions would be a favor to the rest of the world.
Anyway, it’s great to have so much art readily accessible in one place (if you live in Paris and are a student or fanatic of art), but I much preferred the Joan Miró museum in Barcelona for viewing experience. It didn’t plaster every available square inch with art and it gave me a much better sense of that individual artist’s work and development. The Louvre is organized by culture and time period, but hasn’t really enhanced my perception of any of them in particular at all. I feel like I’ve been assaulted by art. Perhaps if I had a year (or years) to keep coming back and slowly assimilating, I would gain a better appreciation, but for now the sum of it all is that now I can say I’ve seen the Mona Lisa.
Tags: Heavy Things, Life