TRAVELMAN PARIS: Musée Picasso

France has a museum dedicated to Picasso. I’m a fan. ...I was into him from way back in his blue period, before it was cool. (Back when he was still painting in clubs)

(Guernica... Not! The real one is in Madrid. A reader had to point this out to me! ...silly tourist.)

(You can google what all the images represent. I’ll get you started, the Bull is man)

I really am a fan of his. Sometimes a very confused one who stands there and says, “I don’t get it.” Sometimes I’m the skeptical one scoffing at the blurb written by the art critic explaining how “the triangle defeats the tyranny of the negative space” or some other b.s. ...Whatever, it looks like a kid made it.

(Picasso painted this at age fourteen. Yep.)

Other times I am in awe, raptured. looking at his work in person feels like getting a direct line to... it feels like getting a privileged moment of absolute knowing. It’s the knowing I hope to get when I die and my mind is released from the limits of my brain. I won’t have the words then either, but I won’t need them.

The first time I “got” Picasso I was in my early twenties and standing in front of his painting, “Old Man With Guitar.”

I stood, and stood some more. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I was tethered to it. There was no chair so I sat down on the floor of the museum and continued to stare.

I couldn’t and I still can’t explain why. The other master works didn’t do that to me, for them I looked at the work for a bit and appreciated it, but I didn’t have what can rightly be called a spiritual experience. “Old Man With Guitar” woke my spirit, like it was a weary traveler seeing pictures of home.

I didn’t have such a visceral reaction yesterday, but some of the paintings made my soul buzz like a light clicking on in an old basement.

And there were quite a few that made me shrug my shoulders and wonder if the work was revered simply because it came from his hand (there are rumors that Bob Dylan recorded some bad albums on purpose, just because).

A lot of the museum focused on Picasso’s masterwork “Guernica.” Before visiting the museum, I didn’t even know it existed. The painting made a big impact as a political statement during the Spanish Civil War.

The museum also had paintings by accomplished artists that were reinterpretations of Guernica.

(I thought this was Guernica when I first saw it. ..silly tourist.)

The top floor of the museum had works from Picasso’s private collection. Cezzanes and Matisse paintings were part of this collection.

The only thing I didn’t like about the museum was that since there wasn’t a guard in each room, many of the paintings were displayed behind glass. I found this to be quite a bummer. I was surprised by how much I felt it cut me off from the work. I couldn’t look at many of them without simultaneously seeing the reflections from around the room. I had moments of anger at the general public for being such idiots.

When I was at the Louvre, I saw people touching statues (Do I have to mention what counrtry these tourists were from?) I almost screamed from across the room at the self obsessed fools.

The paintings at both the Picasso Museum and the Louvre were merely backdrops for these people’s photos of themselves. At the Mona Lisa I witnessed very few people stand and simply take it in. They got close enough, then started the pics of themselves (Looking away from the work), got the pic, and moved on. Aaaaagggghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I on the other hand am a true connoisseur of art. ...And fart jokes.

(Burp, scratch, fart)

Merci beaucoup.

!steemitworldmap 48.8598 lat 2.3619 long Musée Picasso, Paris visit, d3scr