Day at the Lourve.

Bonsoir a tous!

Since my brain is mush and I cant remember what has happened since the last time I blogged, I'm just going to move on.

Oh wait, I have started French lessons with the university, and still have no idea about what else I'm supposed to do yet.

Anyway. Today being saturday, some of the exchange girls and I decided we'd hit the lourve. And guess what, we totally get in for free. So sweet. Hope its the same at most of the museums. So you will probably see a few lourve updates since we probably only saw like 1/10 of what was on display. The place is massive.

Some pretty amazing works, and the setting is pretty nice hey.

I didnt particularly like the random sculptures of this guy Cragg, black and chunky with all these pristine sculptures? Yeah... weirdo.

Creepy dog...

This was epic, really interesting sculptures in this room.

Leeches!

Just the lourve ceiling...

Even I can find food sculpture in the lourve. :P

Rembrandt. So very awesome.

This was a room for artists in residence I guess. This guy was really good, there was a lady in the previous room that was terrrrible. She must have felt so bad.

The view from the lourve.

Another replica. So... how do you know if the paintings are real huh?

Another creepy dog...

This view from the lourve is part of my walk to uni. Pretty special huh?

Another view of the ceiling...

Pretties.

The architecture seems to change a lot with each room you enter. Its fairly interesting.

A random contemporary art work...

The room with the Mona Lisa. Every other part of the lourve is like 4 people in a room. This room is packed... I want the mona lisa on a tea towel. Yet to find one though...

A view to the storage/restoration room? I so would love to get to look at the restoration side of things.

Oh and you know, Eclairs...

The shopping centre is pretty lavish, check out the pipes!

Paella! Yumyum.

After the lourve we went on a journey to montmartre to look at some fabric shops. The place is filled with stores overflowing with fabrics. This is outside one of the shops. There are also lots of crazy costume places here, that sell these outfits for supercheap. Insane!

So many trimming stores too... good to know where they are. This one had an entire back wall of buttons!

And a pretty dress in the window.

and to end, some food. I didnt have this tonight, I had chinese, but at some point in the last week, I ate this, and it was yum. Creamy mushroom sauce on roast chicken and creamy polenta.

I really like food.

l'Ecole Nationale Superieure de Beaux Arts

Bonsoir!

The last few days have been filled with uni admin type stuff. The universities curriculum is so badly organised. You dont seem to register for classes, or have regular classes, or have to turn up for some things. The semester is 30 credits. 15 of these are studio, and in studio you dont have any classes or lectures, you approach a proffessor and hope they will let you in their studio, and then you talk to them about your art, if they are ever there. Then you have two 6 credit units called technical skills. In these units you can learn fresco painting, mosaic, foundry work, stone cutting... as well as painting and photography and such, but how strange. No textiles of course... Damnit. These courses may be a one day workshop, or two half days, or once a week, or once a fortnight, its so confusing. I dont know if I need to sign up, or if I turn up, or anything... The last 3 credits is French as a foreign language. As you can believe I'm in the beginners class. The test didnt go well... This is the only class that actually has two set days and times a week, and you have to turn up, and its only 3 credits... I'm looking forward to learning french properly instead of out of phrase books.

Anyway, enough about the course, the campus is much more interesting.

The building you see is all artist studios. Lots of painting, smoking and drinking in this building. This courtyard looks out onto the seine.

There are statues everywhere. The collection must be worth heaps.

This is the way to the photography labs. They are in the dungeon, which is very dark, and beautiful with the exposed sandstone and curved ceilings.

Everything is so pretty. The place must be amazing in the spring.

Just a hallway to another building... with mosaic tile floors, and egyptian wall carvings and such...

I have no idea what this is. But remember this is an art school not a museum, its crazy.

This little courtyard is so cute. Yesterday there were icicles on the fountain.

Every angle of the place is amazing.

All along this courtyard there are these statues, and everyone has graffiti on it, or bits broken off, generally the penis... They just dont understand how lucky they are to have such culture and art around them constantly, but then again, it is an arts school, and we graffiti everything at arts school back in perth...

This amazing building is the library. It has artists names carved into the outside of the building and is surrounded by statues.

This is the inside of the library. No joke. This place is amazing.

Would you believe that it is even more impressive from upstairs? The ceilings are painted and gilded in gold, its like versailles for goodness sake.

foot!

This is the entrance to the mediatech, where there is a weath of knowlege on dvds, and catalogues coming in daily.

To the left are some spaces that are the equivilant to our tangent or thinktank gallery in that any student can book out the space to display some work. Except these ones have columns in them...

Everywhere you look there is something amazing, this place is sure to be good for inspiration.

Just around the corner, and on the way back to my apartment, this building pops up, its just a building used by the other university... These people know how to do universities.

The ice is starting to melt around the fountains now. We had a little bit of sun today, but it will be warming up this week with the rain. (I never thought I would say that its going to be warmer because of the rain).

Just a post about the university, I'll get back to the food and random stuff in the next post.

Bon appetit!