An Art Lover Goes to Paris

Joan and I fulfilled a dream last October, finally making it to Paris. Our primary destinations were the Louvre and the Impressionist exhibits at the Musee d'Orsay and the Tuileries Gardens. A highlight of our visit was a side trip to the Monet gardens and lily pond at Giverny (Zhiv-er-nee).


The autumn glow of Giverny
Shown velvet soft on you and me,
No breeze astir, no gust to sway
The lily pond of Claude Monet.


We stood at the foot of the lily pond, looking across at the Japanese footbridge. I glanced from the actual scene to the Monet print in my hand. It seemed, as I compared the impression to the reality, that Mother Nature had not quite captured it -- a strange reversal indeed. I realized then that I had long ago fashioned from Monet’s impression my own imagined reality. And it had little to do with the lily pond at Giverny.

The artist gazes upon a reality and creates his own impression. The viewer gazes upon the impression and creates his own reality.


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There is this instant nostalgia you feel as a couple in Paris. It is the sense that you are creating a memory. The words from Casablanca, “We will always have Paris,” seem to have been written for you alone. The feeling builds as you stroll up the Champs Elysees toward the Arc de Triomphe. The avenue seems endless; the Arc looms in a blue haze, seeming always in the far distance. You move as if in slow-motion, the focus of some hidden camera, other strollers just figures in a blurred background.


Paris seemed our private "parc"
For us alone its charm beguiled
For us the Champs stretched to the Arc
For us the Mona Lisa smiled.


At the Louvre, the crowd gathers in a semicircle, roped off to a distance of about 25 feet from DaVinci’s masterpiece. People jostle to get to the front, so as to turn to a friend’s camera and get a photo of themselves with the Mona Lisa in the background. If you stand off a bit and take in this scene, the Mona Lisa seems to look past the crowd, her eye catching yours, her enigmatic smile intended for you personally.


I imagine the young Madonna Lisa del Giocondo posing for her famous portrait, and it occurs to her that in all her life to come, whenever she gazes into a looking glass, she will behold the Mona Lisa – and a strange little smile comes across her face.

~ Robert Brault