Leaving the Louvre

The Louvre is just too much. Previously I've spent several days there but my strategy this time was 'Research and conquer'. I had selected 3 very specific collectiosn/works to see - Islamic calligraphy (research for some new ideas), the Tony Cragg exhibition (research for sculpture students) and Cy Twombley's newly painted ceiling (because I adore his work).

So I paid my ticket, got my map, had a quick lunch in the cafe to get sustenance for the journey ahead and...
The entire Islamic section was closed - till 2013.
The back-up plan of illuminated manuscripts failed also - none were on display today.

The Tony Cragg exhibition turned out not to be the installation work I was interested in considering - also there were only 6 pieces, so not the medium or volume I had hoped for.

The Cy Twombley ceiling was just straight out baffling - "why oh why Cy did you do that?"

I could of course gone and looked at many other significant works of art but without me waffling on to long about the cumbersome weight of art history prior to the 1900's and my relief and gratitude towards modernism the truth was I wanted to go shoe shopping. Oh such beauty, oh the colours, the style, the line, the form ....ahhh the joy of shoes.

So 40 mins later (20 spent in the cafe, 15 walking around looking for things) I left.

Or at least I tried to leave but it's such a labyrinth of rooms that its difficult to find the exit and of course you do stumble across some remarkable objects to look at along the way and then you ALWAYS end up being carried by the crowd in to so the Mona Lisa. Where, once again I got in trouble by a security guard - not for touching the art - but for photographing the people photographing the painting. Unfortunately this time he didn't try to evict me from the museum, which was a shame because I'm sure he would have known a quicker way to get to the exit.

You probably need to turn up the volume quite load to get a sense of just how horrible it is!