Living Le Rêve

Appropriately situated in Paris’s infamous Pigalle district, just a block from the Moulin Rouge on Boulevard de Clichy, is the Musée de l’Erotisme. Relatively inconspicuous and unassuming in its exterior, at least in contrast with the flashing neon lights of the sex shops that surround it, the Musée de l’Erotisme is the museum that did not make it into your high school French textbook.

The Musée de l’Erotisme houses an extensive collection of art surrounding the theme of, well, eroticism. Over the course of seven floors, erotic works from the ancient to the contemporary are showcased in an almost bombarding manner. Framed paintings, sketches, photographs, and posters cover the walls, while sculptures of various shapes and sizes are presented in an endless number of glass cases. One is presented with more renditions of the sexual act – in every fathomable media – than one usually expects to encounter in a two to three hour period, let alone a lifetime.

The museum begins with a collection of ancient artifacts from cultures around the world. Perhaps most striking, second to the poorly translated and consequently overly vulgar descriptions, is that each artifact is a sexed up twist on an accustomed historical relic. What appears at first to be a classic Corinthian vase is revealed upon closer inspection to depict scenes that go far beyond the typical battle motif. Traditional pipes and flutes adopt a more literal form - a form that one soon finds is incorporated anywhere and everywhere in even the most standard objects. One cannot help but wonder what became of all these works after their creation. Surely the oversized phallic spout on the otherwise normal pot would have proven a hindrance in quotidian use.

Each floor of the museum moves the visitor forward on a chronological journey, traveling through the history of the Parisian brothel, the clumsy beginnings of the pornographic industry, modern reinterpretations of Hieronymous Bosch’s already sexualized triptych “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” and ultimately ending in the temporary exposition (ending in May) of Beatrice Morabito’s photography entitled “Doll’s secret diary.”

The Musée de l’Erotisme is not for the curious art-lover seeking a historical overview of works incorporating erotic undertones. What one finds is an exhaustive amassment of all things illustrating sex in its most literal rendering, from the body to the bawdy. There is such an abundance of works that the collection feels cramped even in the seven-story space. The museum, like the collection it houses, holds nothing back.

17 Boulevard de Clichy 75017

Metro: Blanche

Hours: 10 am – 2 am every day

Price: 6 € (student discount)

One does not need to have a particular interest in the practice of medicine to appreciate the Musée d’Histoire de la Médecine. Situated in a spacious room on the second floor of the Paris Descartes University on rue de l’école de Médecine, the modestly sized museum showcases a varied yet precise collection of medical instruments and paraphernalia spanning centuries.

The present museum was first opened in the same room in 1954. The room, two-tiered with high ceilings and wooden walls lined with glass cases and rod iron balconies, was built in 1905 and is a beautiful historical work in its own right. The medical collection is more or less organized chronologically, beginning with the cases nearest to the entrance.

Not wasting any time easing the visitor into examining its selection of surgical apparatuses, the museum begins with a daunting spread of what looks to be scythes, with blades of nine to twelve inches. The description reveals them to be couteaux courbes, or amputation knives, of the Middle Ages.

Confounding the objects behind the glass with gardening tools is a reoccurring theme among the surgical collection. Later down the row of cases, one can find series of saws that share a similar purpose with the couteaux. As the collection advances chronologically, the devices become less grotesque but still alarming, especially when considered against the sleek sterile contraptions we are familiar with today. Probably to the relief of most visitors, most devices are not paired with demonstrative pictures but simply a succinct description, all in French.

Some of the more visually interesting and historically grounding finds are the collection’s prosthetic hands. The four hands mark the technological innovations from the 16^th century, with scalloped knight-like armor for the fingers, through the late 19^th century, with flesh-toned wood and natural joints. The upper gallery features an eclectic mix of instruments used to perform psychological experiments, dental tools, microscopes, and hearing aids fashioned out of animal horns and seashells.

Some of the more historically notable pieces in the collection are the instruments of Dr. Antommarchi who performed the autopsy on Napoleon, the scalpel of Dr. Félix who operated on Louis XIV, and the table obscurely residing at the far end of the room that is constructed entirely of petrified bone and blood and on top of which rests a human foot. While the museum is small, there is plenty to keep one’s curiosity engaged. For the medically-minded or simply open-minded, an in depth overview of the history of Western medical practice awaits in a neatly organized presentation.

12 Rue de l’école de Médecine 75005

Metro: Odéon

Hours: 2-5:30 M-S

Price: 3.50 €

Nestled away within a quiet cobblestone courtyard in the heart of a district known as The New Athens, just a short walk from the hustle and bustle of Paris’ Boulevard de Clichy, is the Musée de la Vie Romantique. Easily missed on a stroll down the quiet rue Chaptal, the museum is situated in a quaint two-story house that lies at the end of a long shaded passageway. The house, the epitome of picturesque with its pale green shutters and false balconies, was once owned by the Romantic painter Ary Scheffer and remained the property of the Scheffer-Renan family until 1983 when it became the Museum of the Romantics.

True to its name, the museum showcases a focused collection of artifacts of the Romantic period in Paris, namely through the lives of writer George Sand and artist Ary Scheffer. The ground floor is devoted to the keepsakes, art, and furniture of the Sand family, while the upstairs holds a collection of Scheffer’s paintings. The ground floor memorabilia room is lined with wooden display cases presenting a beautiful spread of pendants, brooches, paper knives, jewelry, and seals branding Sand’s initials. The blue drawing room on the opposite corner of the house features Sand’s detailed watercolors of sublime landscapes. Climb the narrow staircase to the second floor and the various works of Scheffer, portraits, religious, and historic, line the walls of the various rooms.

While the collection is small and possible to enjoy in its entirety in less than an hour’s time, every moment within the museum is an experience to take in. Upon entering through the stained glass doors, the visitor crosses a threshold into a flashback of early 19^th century Parisian life. The surroundings maintain the atmosphere of a home, cozy and still furnished in period-appropriate design. Throughout the house, the subdued melodies of Sand’s lover Frédéric Chopin’s Deux Nocturnes and Polonaise fantaise can be heard playing from the drawing room, truly making the experience an immersion of the senses into the vie romantique.

16 rue Chaptal 75009

Metro: Blanche or Pigalle

Hours: 10 am – 2 am every day

Price: free

When One Man Will Do [What He Wants]

Click-click-click-click-click goes the flashing imagery of a 19th century peepshow to the interminable whirring of an oversized zoetrope opening the exhibit. At the installation’s end, a Marc Jacobs doll, rotating like the zoetrope before but at snail speed, bids farewell to his guests as he turns and turns. The Louis Vuitton - Marc Jacobs exhibition, held from March 9th through September 16th in Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs, is a dizzying experience.

The exhibition attempts to present a hybrid show featuring two distinct identities that, despite their commonality of brand, don’t quite mix. Rather than reconciling the inherent disconnect between the French founder Louis Vuitton and the New Yorker, Marc Jacobs, who has been the brand’s artistic director since 1997, the two-story exhibition separates the worlds of each man into independent spaces. Though it provides a plethora of products to be viewed, from 30 antique trunks of Vuitton to the fantastical display of purses and clothing ensembles under the direction of Jacobs, the exhibition does very little to explain how the brand developed from the craftmanship of luxury luggage to the rock ‘n’ roll infused glamour icon it is today.

The result is a disjointed imbalance. There is little among the beige offerings of the Vuitton section that can compete with the kaleidoscope chaos of the floor above. Climbing the stairs, we enter Marc’s world with a bang, confronted with an overwhelming wall of backlit graphics and video monitors, flashing erratically to the blaring of Mariah Carey asking “why you so obsessed with me?” It is an alarming bombardment of the senses and hardly a transition. While it takes up considerable space, the larger-than-life seizure-inducing mood board is not grounded in anything beyond Jacobs’ fancies.

The rest of Jacobs’ world works like a walkthrough advertisement of the body and fantasy of the Louis Vuitton brand today, under the distinct direction of Jacobs. The incoherent pairing of the multitude of trunks with the bombastically executed publicity spectacle forces one to wonder if it might have made more sense to have just focused the exhibition on one man, who ends up stealing the show anyway.