Musee d'Orsay

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Takes off from where the Louvre stops. So called "realism" covers the bottom floors. Mostly Biblically themed French art. Unwed motherhood glossed over. No teething babies nor every 2 hour feedings with sleepless nights depicted here. You'd think all these renditions of how wonderful unwed motherhood is, would leave some traces on an impressionable young audience?

A bunch of impressionist work from Van Gogh, Degas, Renoir, etc. is on the top floor. No glorifying virgin births here. The bottom floors were realistic depictions of imaginary scenes, such as angels and virgin mothers. The impressionists painted (and sculpted) vague notions of realistic scenes such as forests, nature and actual people.

W.. was getting a bit museumed out, so we rushed through the top, just long enough to make an impression and rushed out. A lot of people were taking pictures of the impressionist work. ummm ... The impressionist evolved to counter the invention of the camera. Since a camera could make a realistic copy of a real scene faster and more accurately than a human, the impressionists supposedly produced what an unimpressed critic of the day called "impressions" of reality. Now people are using this very same technology to copy these "impressions" of reality!

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