Musée Rodin et les jardins charmants

Another beautiful, sunny Friday in Paris has come and gone!

Caitlin and I slept in this morning, and decided to take a leisurely stroll through the Marché Raspail, which is an upscale, organic farmer’s market pretty close to my apartment.  We made our way across the city to Musée Rodin, which I have been itching to do for quite a few weeks now.  Ever since seeing the movie Camille Claudel, I’ve had an intense fascination with both artists and their relationship.  They had a passionate love affair, in which Rodin (who was married at the time) admitted that Claudel was his muse, his inspiration.  According to the (most likely biased) film, Claudel felt that Rodin was using her and her artistic genius to make up for his lack of ingenuity later on in his career.  She claimed that he was only great because she made him great.  It’s debatable, most likely because Claudel became famous because of Rodin and his faith in her art.  Either way, the movie was great (albeit long), and I recommend it if you’re interested in art and/or French films!

Anyways, so the museum!  I managed to finagle Caitlin into the museum for free, even though she lacked her student ID, passport, and actually any proof of identification.  My sweet talking skills in French have finally started to improve, and I’m sure my big, doe eyed look helped a bit, too.  We wandered into the gardens, and the first sculpture we saw was the famous “Gates of Hell,” which was quite impressive.  We walked through the gardens and looked at all the beautiful statues in bronze and marble, marveled over the flowers and trees in bloom, and enjoyed the fountain and the view of Hôtel des Invalides.  We made our way to the actual museum, and saw the rest of his artwork.  We also saw a room with some of Camille Claudel’s work, which I found beautiful.  Her attention to detail was impeccable, and I really enjoyed seeing first-hand the actual pieces from the movie.  The two pictures that I’ve included in this blog are the Thinker (the man is in a *surprise* thinking pose) and La Cathédrale (the one of the hands).  There were so many other beautiful works, but I obviously did not take pictures of them all, and the ones I did take pictures of I just put up in my Facebook album, so you can check those out.

Tonight I believe we’re going out to a bar somewhere close by in the Latin Quarter.  Hopefully it will be cheap and FUN!  Happy Friday, everyone!