Day 8: Additional Sites #1

The start of our second week in Paris marked our first free day.  After the impression the Louvre left, Mikayla, Emily, Julia, and I decided we should spend our day off at a few more art museums that we would not be visiting as a class.  We started the day by going back up to Montmartre to go to the Salvador Dali museum (yes, I climbed all those stairs again).  Needless to say, I was out of breath when I got to the top.  What little breath I had left when I got to the Dali museum was taken away after I got inside.  I had never really looked at a lot of his works, but he may now be one of my favorite artists.  His art is more abstract than a lot of the traditional artists, but you can actually see the story behind his pieces.  I can't remember once looking at a canvas and thinking, "these are just a bunch of random dots and lines" or "a toddler could have done this," as I often think when I look at some of the more modern works of art.  He falls in a much grayer area of art that allows the imagination to wander freely, but comes with a rope to grab onto whenever you get truly lost.

Now the Pompidou is a much different story.  While I did truly like some of the art there, some of it I just truly did not understand.  The Picasso art work upstairs was really unique and I enjoyed those, but a lot of the other artwork in the museum seemed pale in comparison to Dali's work.  Now I may just be biased because I'm a fan of Dali's, but I would recommend the museum at Montmartre before the Pompidou.