Medieval History

Les Lundis du Louvre

Hello... Do you come here often?

Every Monday we go to the Louvre. This is our big gift to the children, and, it turns out, to ourselves and our survey courses and our thinking about The Big Picture of art history. I have not chronicled these as I would wish, but then it's only now that I realize that there's a routine, that we've actually been doing this for six weeks in a row. The kids led the way today, and because we were finishing up Greek art and starting Etruscan and Roman art, they knew the way. Gift may be too ideal a word (the Louvre is always crowded, stuffy, echo-y, and splendid all at once), but the kids are into it - each with their Louvre notebook that they sketch and write answers to my wacky questions in - and that is the greatest gift. We ended our visit today in the Roman galleries, with Caracalla here glowering at us (he's the one who killed his brother and had his memory damned - damnatio memoriae - he was about as nice as his portrait busts make him look!).

We started the day in the Hellenistic galleries, late Greek art and its fabulous dilemmas and paradoxes and complexities. I found several new works I want to teach, especially this Hermes - he's pausing in the act of putting on his sandals so as to listen to the message that Zeus wants him to bear. The puzzle is to try and figure out, is Hermes being asked to bring glad tidings, or horrible news? This was the cause of much discussion based on facial expression, body language, what people thought of Hermes in the first place. And what is the idea of a god caught in the act of doing something as mundane as tying his shoe? The dilemma there, of the divine caught up in the ordinary, really fascinated Oliver and he went back a couple of times to confront the statue. Hermes has his body folded in upon himself in such a way as to make you think... (for you to decide!)

We came up with several titles for our dilemmas: "cute and cruel" for that horrid little boy who is strangling a goose; "pain and pleasure" for Pan pulling a thorn out of a satyr's foot; "good and gruesome" for the man dressed in a sheepskin skinning and gutting a deer. Eleanor chose this satyr to write about. She said she liked the weirdness of his smile - he's really happy and he looks really happy, she reasoned, but then, chances are he's also drunk. So is this the real him happy or the drunk him happy? Does the drunk him rule out the real him? (Her questions) Bottom line, she liked him. There are a lot of Pan and Silenus figures in the Room of the Caryatids - that Hellenistic pull towards the weird and compromised, a nice smooth contrapposto all but impossible anymore - satyrs grinning at children. Oof!

Iris, mighty Iris, chose the Nike of Samothrace to think, talk, write about. I asked her what she thought the dilemma was there, and she said (and I wrote this down) "She keeps on going despite an obvious wind." I just love that phrase, "an obvious wind" - there are a lot of those out there, it's a great great life metaphor. It's also an exuberantly defiant piece of sculpture: wings of marble, wet drapery in stone - all of it. Diaphanous drapery, I remember learning in college. Wet drapery to simultaneously conceal and reveal what's underneath. To insist on the strength rippling beneath. I like thinking of Nike as undeterred, as keeping on despite an "obvious wind" - what makes a goddess like her alight in the midst of earthly humanity? Whom is she gracing with victory and why? She holds her spot at the top of a huge central staircase really well, combating now invisible but obvious winds.

Crouching Venus, hidden children

I just love this picture. That is all, really. Aphrodite crouching now, her desirable belly in folds, her legs impossibly elegant for such a pose, her head (oh what was the expression on her face!) turned just so. And the kids on the step in the back, and this crazy dramatic swath of light between them and the Aphrodite. The girls were actually trying to figure out her back, and also her motivation, and what her dilemma might be. Goodness knows what Oliver was doing. Aphrodite crouches on, perpetually perturbed and turning, always graceful and ready. Mighty Aphrodite, this one.

These last two are just so I don't forget ever ever. And it's more praises for the Bistro Victoires - the little bistro up the street and around a couple of corners from the Louvre. It bustles and we settle in and here's Eleanor wanting to have a discussion about the dilemmas of courage (what is courage? is it always fighting? is it sometimes running away?) - Oliver quoted Gandalf saying something about courage, and Eleanor decided to have her dad draw a stick figure of a man being chased by a dragon wearing a fedora. What would Socrates have answered?

Iris, untroubled by these dilemmas and questions, sat absorbed in her reading of an Asterix find (in English!) in the little alcove that our table retreats into. There was poulet rôti, and entrecôte, and (for Mac) canard. I don't want to forget, and sometimes I wonder why I'm so afraid that I will (because of an encroaching present? Because how do you remember? How do I get back to this feeling and this place?). So, to write, to consider the details of a day, the events that make museum days so different from library days. To think of how I can be changed by this; of how my teaching might be changed. To note the new mannerisms the kids have picked up (flicks of hair, positioning of hands, raising of eyebrows). To be here completely, to treasure the ordinary within all this extraordinary. To marvel at a god tying his shoe.

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Medieval History