Musee Picasso Morning

& Other Stories sweater (similar)
Uniqlo shirt
Wilfred dress (similar)
Rouje boots (similar)
Vintage Birks handbag (similar)
Celine sunglasses
Linjer rings (c/o) (similar)
Mejuri earrings (similar)
Location: Rue Saint-Anastase – Paris, France

Paris, October 8, 2021

Dear friends,

It will probably surprise you less than it surprised me to know that the thing I found I missed most about Paris was looking at art. Maybe it’s because I’m a libra – someone said this to me in a job interview recently and I laughed so hard that it was probably unprofessional, but her description, while totally inappropriate in that context, was apt – or maybe it’s something else. It doesn’t matter. Art always has been, and always will be, an incredibly important part of my life. Spending time wandering aimlessly among sculptures and paintings is a kind of therapy for me, one whose importance I didn’t full appreciate until it became inaccessible. We plan to visit five museums on this trip. The first, this morning, is the Musee Picasso.

If you know my taste in art, and some of you might be starting to grasp it, the Musee Picasso seems an unusual first choice. It is. I am not, and never have been, a particular fan of Picasso. Between his work and his known misogyny, I find little to admire. But the museum is close to our apartment. Still jetlagged, we don’t want to travel too far today. More importantly, they are currently showing an exhibit that juxtaposes Picasso’s work with the work of Auguste Rodin, who does rank among my favourite artists. It’s an opportunity we can’t miss.

We are ready early, and about to leave when it occurs to me to double check the museum hours. They’ve just pushed back their opening time this week, it turns out, from 9 am to 10 am. Although it doesn’t feel that way with the sun shining outside, this is a sign; fall is here, tourist season officially over. Parisians don’t go out before 10 am. (And in this way, I will never be one of them.) I can’t bring myself to wait any longer. We decide we’ll stop for coffee on the way.

The Musee Picasso is housed in a hotel particulier on rue de Thorigny. It closed for many years for renovations, so this will be out first visit since 2009. To my surprise, I still know the way, and at first I can’t think exactly why. It’s when we turn down rue Saint-Anastase that it comes to me. When we visited in 2009, we were living in Montmartre. We took the metro from Barbes-Rochechouart to Saint-Sebastien-Froissart that cold, grey morning. It was our first time visiting le Marais, our first time walking up the stairs at the metro station that would, three years later, become our own. We followed the signs for the Musee Picasso with no real sense of if we were going the right way, but when we reached rue Saint-Anastase and saw the sign for rue de Thorigny, I knew we’d made it.

The Musee Picasso was showing a Daniel Buren exhibit that day. It was my first encounter with the French artist’s remarkable glasswork, which I’ve been lucky enough to see again since on a couple of occasions. But more importantly, it was my first encounter with a place I would fall quickly and deeply in love with, a place that would eventually become the home that I return to over and over again: le Marais.

If Paris gave me the space to become the person I wanted to be, then le Marais showed me there was a place already waiting for her to fit into when she was ready for it; a place to which she could anchor herself and always return, no matter how far or how long she travelled.

Rue Saint-Anastase is bathed in early sunlight this morning, nothing like on that day in 2009. The corner where it meets rue de Thorigny is a shade of pale amber that can’t be recaptured or recreated, so naturally we stop to snap a few photos before settling on a cafe. I’m not exaggerating when I say that Parisians don’t go out before 10 am. The streets are practically deserted, the cafe empty but for a single patron. I love this time of day best of all, especially in le Marais, because I can feel, if only briefly, like I have my favourite place in the world – a place rightly loved by so many and thus most often extremely crowded – all to myself.

It never lasts. By the time we reached the Musee Picasso at 10:02 am, there is a line-up of people ahead of us waiting for their tickets. But the fact that it is so fleeting is part of what makes it so magical. We’re home. I haven’t been to a museum in over a year, and here, I have my pick of the best ones in the world. Maybe it’s because I’m a libra, or maybe it’s something else, but my deep desire to be surrounded by aeshetically pleasing things is very real whatever its origin or cause. And inside the Musee Picasso it is, finally, fulfilled.

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