After a truly fantastic time at Y/CON, my wife and I spent the next few days touristing around Paris. We visited the Musée D’Orsay primarily because they had an exhibit of work by John Singer Sargent, who I very much like. My wife was blown away by his Smoke of Ambergris.
We also had the pleasure of learning about Brigid Riley, who took her inspiration from Georges Surat, but whose work in color and minimalist shapes and lines really spoke to me.
I found a Monet I liked. This is a first. I am not a fan of Impressionism. But, as usual, I found that looking at the paintings themselves, rather than images of the paintings, changed my impression. I have a complicated history with Van Gogh, but actually seeing The Starry Night Over The Rhone was very moving.
The next day we did the Louvre, where we went to a Jacque-Louis David exhibit. Sitting in a room surrounded by 3 Death of Marat was something, let me tell you. Also, if you are interested in David, go watch this Great Art Explained video about him, because he was 100% the radical leftist edgelord who ends up working as the propaganda machine for an autocrat. So that is, exhaustingly, eternal. Human nature does not change.
I took 15 million pictures of Nike of Samothrace, because she is my absolute favorite piece in The Louvre.
Wednesday night, we had dinner with a new friend from Y/CON, Shane. On Thursday we decided to go to an exhibit that my wife had seen advertised in the Metro for Manga. Tout un Art! at Le musée national des Arts asiatiques – Guimet and wow, we were impressed! The exhibit began with a history of comics in Japan, beginning with strips in Punch magazine and other media, including a kamishibai theater on a bicycle.
The main focus of the exhibit was Shounen manga and relating famous titles to Japanese folklore and artifacts from the Guimet’s collection. Naruto was connected to the nine-tailed foxes art pieces in their collection, Dragonball to art depicting Journey to the West, Demon Hunter to yokai art and One Piece to.. a massive art board given to PM Macron by Oda himself.
Of course Tezuka rated a room and we were pleased to see an old friend in original pages of Ribon No Kishi.
The lighting was very bright, so everything is a little wonky, so it wasn’t all glare and shadow.
There was a room of Shoujo manga among all the Shounen, and that presented me with yet another old friend, one that you might expect to see in France of all places…The Rose of Versailles.
And, relevant to my recent review of Witches Of the Orient, a few pages of Attack. No. 1 in Margaret Magazine.
This made us incredibly happy, as you can imagine! Interestingly, Marie Antoinette owned several piece of her toilette that were in Japanese style. This was one of those “oh, right, cowboys and samurai were contemporaneous” moments. ^_^ This portion of the exhibit ended with manga-inspired fashion.
I’ve uploaded all the (unedited) pictures I took to this Gallery.
The exhibit continued on another floor with more of the museum’s permanent collection, of literary scrolls that depicted popular stories, then early commercial books in Japan.
We ended up in the museum cafe overlooked by art depicting the Koream tiger and magpie motif we now call Derpy and Sussy, thanks to K-Pop Demon Hunters. ^_^ You have watched that, haven’t you? You should. It was very good. Not Yuri, but worth a review one day.
And that was the end of our trip to Paris! It ended as it began, with manga and anime that we love.
Thank you again to everyone at Y/CON, and Paris for being a lovely place to visit once again – I look forward to vising again soon.
Looks like an amazing exhibit. Rose of Versailles continues to be relevant more than ever. Never been to France myself, but I’ve seen some similar exhibits, in terms of scope, earlier this summer when I went to Scotland, England (particularly in London), and Belgium. I know my cousin in Belgium has visited Paris (he and those he is living with travel on trains everywhere across Europe all the time). First mention of K-Pop Demon Hunters on here (I think?). I’ve watched that movie more times than I usually rewatch films and of course I’ve written about it a bunch of times in my newsletter. It isn’t yuri but… the whole “polytrix” (Mira, Rumi, and Zoey) ship has been pretty popular, and the fandom has completely exploded. Glad that the film is doing so well and even has the sequel set in stone for 2029. It’s funny because the husband of the director (Maggie Kang) is Radford “Rad” Sechrist, who designed the cat/tiger (Sussy), and is known for creating Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (and his own animation school). No yuri in that series either but it is still enjoyable (of course I have the DVD), and the main VA in that series also voiced Glimmer in the She-Ra reboot/revival (that was one of the reasons I stuck with it). I’ll definitely have to read your review of “Witches of the Orient” and look at your other photos you’ve shared here.