In 1975, the largest collection of impressionist and modern art works in Paris was stored in the National Museum of Modern Art at the Palais de Tokyo and the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in the Tuileries Garden next to the Louvre. These collections were eventually split and moved into Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris at the Palais de Tokyo, Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou in 1977, and finally Musée d'Orsay in 1986. Since modern art was my main interest at the time, I headed off in haste to all such museums, but I do not remember much at all about them. I cannot tell you where I saw one impressionist or another. It all runs together now. Only an impression remains of a stream of impressions.

moreau


One impression unexpectantly remains. Wandering around Montmartre, because I heard it was the center of the art world in the 20th century, I came upon the Musée National Gustave Moreau. Liquid touch, liquid light, paint pouring down unfinished canvases. If only acrylics had been around in his time, he would have come closer to his liquid vision. You can see Moreau's influence in Dubuffet's highly textured canvases. I suspect that much of that vision also made it across the sea in the 1950's onto to the canvases of New York artists who radically changed our way of seeing as much as the Impressionists before them.

palace


From the Palais de Tokyo, it is a short 20 minute walk across the Seine to the Eiffel. Here was my view taken by an anonymous photographer from colourbox.com.


tower