Lille [11-13 November 2011] - Part II

No fancy image editing this time. The majority of the photos I've got left from our trip to Lille were taken at Le Palais des Beaux Arts (the fine arts museum) or le Tripostal (the contemporary art museum). There are a couple of other photos here and there. You've no idea 1) how difficult it was for me to covince myself to take photos of the artworks, nor 2) how difficult it was for me to not photograph EVERY SINGLE PIECE I SAW. So, here are my favorite pieces, and what I can remember about them, seeing as I've already let 2 weeks go by since I was there...




This one wasn't taken at the Palais de Beaux Art... not at all. It was taken at a metro stop. Yup, France is epic enough to just... install a Rodin statue in the subway. This is a reproduction of one of the figures from Les Bourgeois de Calais I think Rodin may be my favorite sculptor, probably thanks to Minus the Bear, or the day I spend at Rodin and Musée d'Orsay with my folks a couple years ago.




O, hai, Joan of Arc. How u doin'? Oh, gettin' burned at the stake. Hrmmm.




More Rodin, because I quite like his art, and also because this piece is so unusual. It's called Pallas au Parthénon.




Good-bye sculpture, hello paintings! Les Temps dit Les Vieilles by Francisco Goya. The woman in black is holding a sign that says "Que tal!", which is Spanish for "what's up", more or less. I just really enjoyed the colors, the realization of all the fabrics of their dresses, and the overall concept of the piece.




The lighting was so unfortunate, and I couldn't get a picture of the whole of this piece, L'Orchestre dans l'œuf by Jérôme Bosch. It was probably my favorite piece, from both of the museums we visited in Lille. It reminds me a lot of my friend Kent's art. The playfulness and imaginative aspects drew me in. In the gift shop they had some figurines from this painting for sale, but no postcards of it, which would have been oh-so-ideal.




This is from the temporary collection at the fine arts museum. La mer, by Robert Lambert-Loubère. This picture doesn't do it justice. It just doesn't.




Last, but not least, from the Palais de Beaux Arts. Almost an entire floor of the museum was dedicated to "relief maps" of various towns in Nord Pas de Calais, the region that Lille is in. Unfortunately, the lighting there, too, was crap, and they were all behind glass, so flash rendered the photos even more useless. This is Lille, the relief map gives an idea of the structure of the Citadelle.


AND NOW, ON TO THE TRIPOSTAL! Hello, modern art!




But, first, as we were walking to the Tripostal, we came across this little garden-esque thing. It's SO FRENCH. TOO FRENCH. Hello, we are the French, and we are OBSESSED with mastering nature, and forcing it to conform to our collective will. (No, this is not me talking, it's more or less a direct quote from Naomi Zack, talking about Nausea, by Sartre, in a philosophy class I took my sophomore year.)




Remember how I said I was going to limit myself and my picturetaking? Yup, that resulted in only TWO photos being taken at the contemporary art museum. This one is called I like America (tribute to Jacques Derrida) by Mounir Fatmi. The bars, painted to represent the American flag, are from horse jumping shows. The deconstructed flag represents a highly complex America, and it begins to feel even more mind-boggling and unsurmountable as you start to walk around the piece and interact with it.
[Honestly, I thought the boutique would be more comprehensive, but it was full of modern/post-modern hipster crap, and overpriced books about Dadaism.]




These old, rejected refrigerators, recycled by an artist named Kader Attia, are Untitled (Skyline). Rejected household items covered in shiny mirrors, etc, I think you get the metaphor.




Saturday night we went to a show, and outside there were artists putting on a performance with this enormous puppet. I remember their show being incredibly funny, and also quite French (kissing, needing a cigarette for the monster/puppet, mime face paint, etc...). The part I remember most, though, was how soaked with sweat the performer was when he finally got out of the massive puppet costume.

After the show, Marta and I found ourselves playing rounds of ping-pong and drinking beer with some other folks who were there. Sometimes I feel cranky about how excited I get when I interact with other people who are between the ages of 20 and 30. It's just so... rare.




On Sunday we went to the market, which was beautiful and wonderful and smelled of a million things. And, best of all, we found gaufres fourrés, or stuffed waffles.




A kind monsieur made the gaufres, which were then stuffed by his wife/booth partner, and sold WARM!




And, to end with, a picture of the outside of L'ancienne bourse, which is now the house of that lovely bookstore I wrote about in my previous post.


Next time: La Foire aux Harengs à Dieppe. (The Herring Festival in Dieppe... which was, to say the least, a quite awful experience...)