The Louvre.
Amazing in every way it could possible be. The building, it’s history, the crowd, the collection…
We got there very early. We walked around in awe of the detail of the building.. We saw the triangle thing and worked our way to the quickly growing forming queue at the entrance. We had to throw out our bottled water, walked on through as our bags were scanned and found the self serving ticket machines. All relatively easy for such a huge space.
I skipped the first floor as I has little time and wanted to see paintings. I had a little list, which included Durer and the such. I only found one of his works, but there were a few Holbein’s that were amazing. I also got to see the “Winged Victory of Samothrace” which was brilliant to see her for real. I had a photograph of her in my folio for years as a teenager. A very loved art teacher of mine gave it to me when I was about fifteen/sixteen years old. Gene was quite impressed with her too, which always makes me feel good. (Sometimes I feel like I bore him with art museums)
We then made our way to the Mona lisa. I don’t believe I have ever been pushed and shoved so much except for at a rock concert… (Or more like the bad Coco Rosie gig I went to in Melbourne, those indie art students can be feisty!)
Anyway…when we turned the corner and saw the crowd, I couldn’t believe it. Nothing like I expected. There was a crowd all around it all holding their cameras high above their heads and trying to aim and click. It was impossible to get to the front of them, not that I tried too hard as there was a barrier that held everyone back by at least five meters, and not too mention it is behind a thick piece of bullet proof glass. Gene and I looked at the crowd and walked around it some.. Then we both looked at each other and laughed..”It’s got to be a fake!” “How can you tell it’s the real thing if you can’t get anywhere near it?!” I believe were some of the things we said.. So we then took photos of this, of which are displayed above.
It really makes me question the way in which we display art and the importance that is placed on certain pieces but not others. If a work is considered that important and under some kind of threat, why bother displaying it at all? It is proven that flash photography damages work. So they go through all this ‘security’ precautions to protect it, yet they let people take thousands and thousands of photos of it with flash everyday.. It makes no sense to me….Maybe the glass is also UV resistant. God, that’s fancy.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the Mona Lisa and her demise.
Very impressive! Thanks for sharing your experience.