Maursupial

Juxtaposed renderings of David (the marble one within The Academia was shot sneak-style with my iPhone because photography isn’t allowed. The other is in a piazza). 

To everyone who insisted I visit the Musee D’Orsay: Merci beaucoup. The collection there was spectacular and I was absolutely in my element pacing through the exhibits during one of my Parisian afternoons. As a worshiper at the shrine of the impressionists I marveled at piece after piece that I had only seen printed in books. Total immersion. I took the special exhibit- Degas et le Nu- as proof that Paris was welcoming me personally by highlighting my favorite painter and his progression through his nude work. The pictures here aren’t the best because photography wasn’t allowed but I managed a few shots. The real images to see are the ones within the gallery anyway, and I jotted down a few new pieces I fell in love with (excuse any spelling mistakes, my jotting is not anything close to readable): 

• Leo Gausson’s La maison
• Seurat’s Poseuse DFace
• Maximillion Luce’s Une Rue de Paris en Mai 1871
• Degas’ Danseuses Bleues, Femme Debouf, Femme Debouf dans une Baignoire and Femme assise sur le Bord d’une Baignoire, S’epongent le Cou
• Pissarro’s Rue Sur La Cote des Mathurins Pontoise
• Giovanni Boldini’s Madam Charles Max
• Toulouse-Lautrec’s Le Lit and Lous Bougle

Street art in Paris. 

I visited Tacheles, the famed but now fledgling Berlin art collective. After the Berlin wall came down, the immense drain of people from the East to the West left lots of empty buildings and around that time this group squatted one. The Tacheles art collective thrived from that point on, a warehouse full of studios, artist residences and at one point even a bar, that was all always open to the public. But as East Berlin developed around the group, the worth of their warehouse rose and government pressure was put on the people to pack up. Eventually the artists in the bottom floor of the warehouse took a collective settlement to leave and Tacheles is now hanging by a thread- any day now the remaining  people who refused a payout could be evicted. I wish I could have visited the space in its heyday, but I’m glad I was able to experience Tacheles in some sense before its demise. With art inside that spans from abstract acrylic work to lewd collages to tattoos and a structure covered floor to ceiling in graffiti, the space is very much a staple of Berlin. 

Photo of me on some of the many steps of Tacheles by Alex Sanchez. 

Finally got to the Works on Paper Exhibit! I’d definitely recommend it. Nudes, photography and geometrics- - what could be better?