Musée Rodin

Yesterday, my boss from last summer was in town for the day. She is a commercial airline pilot, so visits Paris quite a bit, but had never been to the Rodin Museum and said she had always wanted to go. I met her there.

I really love that museum, not only for his work, but because of the general feel of the place. It is a large mansion that has been cleared out and which houses work of his as well as a few of his contemporaries and students, including his muse of 10 years, Camille Claudel. It has a beautiful walled garden behind with his sculptures scattered throughout. The inside of the house is amazing, it has a broken grandeur about it. The paint is chipping, some doors are half-painted and then there will randomly be an old wardrobe amongst the art.

I love his work in the same way as I love the mansion. The craftsmanship is astounding, but at the same time it is not necessarily smooth, manicured, tranquil or calming. Plus he has some sexy, sexy stuff which is always nice.

While walking with my friend, we started to talk about the eyes of the sculptures, her noticing how kind of strange it was that most of his work just has holes where they should be. She said it is the stuff horror movies are made of. But it made me so much more aware of their faces and the emotion behind the piece.

So I went looking for sculptures around the museum with eyes, and I came to the conclusion that this was exactly the perfect touch to his scultures. Adding eyes makes them look lifeless, but giving you a space to look into makes each person a little more full of life. Example:

Rodin sculpture of Gustav Mahler (no eyeballs)

Old statue of Julius Caesar (with eyeballs)

From now during a Sculptorades challenge when I play Cranium, I will dig out the eyes...

The Tomb

I went. It is an army museum as well, so I did that first. Suits of armor, swords, children's suits of armor (why?), miniature models, an amazing wing with an audio tour that is everything the story of Charles de Gaulle. I learned a lot about the French in WWII there.

I got a little hungry/cranky right before Napoleon's Tomb, which I was saving for last. So I got a little lunch so that I could fully enjoy it.

There are other tombs there, which I tried to admire/learn about, but I really wasn't focusing because I was also trying to ignore the main event in the middle until I could give him full focus.

When I turned my attention to his tomb, I was astounded. It was so much larger than I imagined, like the size of a car, no joke. I think 6 meters long, 2 meters wide and 5 meters high. I learned that within the red porphyry outer layer, he is in a tin coffin, then mahogany, then lead, then ebony. I went downstairs to see it at eye level.

I got a teary-eyed at the entrance, when I read the inscription above it, "I desire my ashes to be lied on the shore of the Seine among the people of France whom I loved so deeply." This was in no way his mere ashes or among the people, but oh man, they had so much respect for this guy. They moved him from St. Helena 20 years after his death so that he could be on the bank of the Seine, like he had asked. It made me so happy.

This place was totally redesigned just for him when they brought him here. The tiles on the floor are mosaics of his face and emblem. Surrounding the tomb are the places of his greatest victories, they had lists of all the great buildings and places in Paris that he commissioned. The amount of reverence they had for this truly amazing leader is amazing and totally justified. I was trying to figure out who in America would deserve this sort of memorial? Who singlehandedly changed the course of history and set in motion reform like that? I think in our case it is the communal work of a lot of great leaders, so it is hard to say. The American people could never unite and decide who was their greatest leader. I mean, these days people get mad about kids watching the President of the United States speaking about the importance of education at school.

There are bas-reliefs all around the tomb, probably 12 or 14, every one with him in Roman Emperor garb. Funny, as he is usually shirtless and ripped. Needless to say they are ideal depictions of the man.

Needless to say I wasn't disappointed. Then a few minutes later I imagined I was him when I walked down a big marble staircase.