Why French Art Galleries Feel So Personal

 

It is somehow intimate to enter an art gallery in France. It is not only about the paintings or the sculptures, but about the fact that even the space itself appears to be telling you to have a chat. Contrary to the magnificent reverberating halls that one is apt to see in other regions of the world, many French galleries resemble the living room of someone rather than a museum.

 I recall that one rainy afternoon I had found myself in a small gallery in Le Marais, Paris. A woman in her sixties with a scarf tied around her neck met me in a way that made me feel that we were old friends. No tickets, no ceremony, only the low tones of jazz and the faint odor of paint.

She informed me that the majority of the artists were based locally and that most of them would show up frequently to discuss their work with visitors. In some way that made all the pieces on the wall appear to be alive.

 Note: For a stress-free travel experience, I always choose meet and greet Stansted and so should you.

 That is what is different about the French art galleries. They're deeply human. They are not just the demonstration of art but the establishment of the environment in which people could touch art. You feel in the presence of a Monet in the Musee d'Orsay, or when gazing at the modern drawings in a small gallery in Lyon, that there is some sort of reverence, not towards the art, but towards the right of looking at such art.

 Something to do with the pace too. In France people do not hurry down a gallery. Individuals stand in protracted minutes with hands behind their backs and are leaning slightly forward as though they were listening to the picture.

 When you get out in the world the world feels there soft somehow. Perhaps that is the reason why the French art galleries seem so intimate, they are able to remind you that art is not something that you merely stare at. It is something you share, absorb that you take with you even after you have left the room.