Step back out onto Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the main square of this once village-like district. Across from you are two of the world’s most revered cafés, Les Deux Magots and, a little further down the boulevard, Café de Flore. While there might be more talk of fashion than philosophy on the Saint-Germain streets these days, the area has been an icon of intellectualism since World War II, when the city’s top talkers and thinkers turned the cafés around here into their offices, meeting rooms and stages. At the centre of the action, writing and chatting away at the Flore, was the philosophy power duo of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir — arguably the most awe-inspiring Parisian double act since Voltaire and the Marquise du Châtelet.
Take a seat at Café de Flore — en terrasse if you want to indulge in some fascinating people-watching, or inside with a good book if you’d prefer to focus your thoughts a little more inwardly. Sartre and Beauvoir started coming here in the late 1920s, as philosophy students, shunning Les Deux Magots, which was more fashionable at the time. During the war years, as full-time writers and thinkers, it was on these red moleskin banquettes that they would beaver away, a pot-belly stove keeping their bodies cosy and brains fired up. And it was here that Sartre, with Beavoir’s help, incubated his theory of Existentialism, writing his seminal essay L’Être et le Néant (Being and Nothingness), in which he famously proclaimed ‘existence precedes essence.’
Sartre and Beauvoir would rarely, if ever, have stepped foot into the local church. They were atheists, as were many in France by this time, the Church and State having been officially separated in 1905. Still, the non-believers were desperately searching for meaning to life. Whom or what could faith-yearning Parisians look to in a godless world? For Sartre, you turned to yourself; you could be your own God, in a way. Humans are not pre-programmed by a higher power, he argued; we’re free to forge our own paths in life. We create our own meaning.
Sartre’s impact on his fellow Parisians cannot be overstated. The void of choice he presented was both inspiring and terrifying. For some, it was empowering in its promise of self-realisation, a way to start afresh after the traumatic war years. And Beauvoir showed how women could stunningly apply Existentialism and its tenets of freedom and authenticity to their own lives, with her seminal proto-Feminist thesis, La Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex), much of which was written at the Flore in the post-war years. But for many, the pressure was too much to bear, and the suggestion that life was essentially meaningless too downright depressing. Which is how Existentialism got its reputation for debauchery, as a jaded generation partied their sadness away in the cafés and jazz bars of Saint-Germain, clad in black as though in mourning for lost hope.
You’ll likely spot a few skinny, black-wearing Parisians in the modern Café de Flore, but it’s a happy kind of place these days, dishing up highly palatable Gallic comfort food (omelettes, welsh rarebit, onion soup, profiteroles) and buzzing with good-humoured conversation. If you’re not scribbling deep and meaningful thoughts into your notebook, you can easily spend hours in observation of human behaviour, as Sartre did before you. He wouldn’t have seen the tourists who flock here now, of course (the swishy-haired trust-fund kids picking at their food amid a whirl of cigarette smoke, and the women d’un certain âge wrapped in scarves and an aroma of nostalgia), but the waiters could have stepped right out of the Existential age. They’re still dressed in black, with a large white napkin tied around their waist, a uniform first seen on the itinerant Saint-Germain coffee seller back in Signor Procopio’s time. And they still flit around with the ‘precise’ and ‘rapid’ movements that inspired Sartre’s concept of bad faith: that we’re acting in mauvaise foi when we slip meekly into a specific social role, because in this way we’re not being our true selves, we’re ignoring our inherent freedom to choose our identity.
The first time I went to Café de Flore was probably very much in bad faith. Suffering from existential angst, I had taken time off university to study French in Paris for a few months. A fervent fan of philosophy, as only a uni student can be, the Flore was my very first stop of the trip. I ordered black coffee and started jotting in my notebook and was acting exactly how I thought I had to — probably badly and faithlessly so. But over the years, even as I’ve been able to laugh at my younger existential self, I’ve come to realise that, even when I know I have many other Parisian café choices, I choose to go back to the Flore. Sure, the modern-day Sartres are not there; they’re probably out at some gritty, edgy bar. As my Parisian friend Catherine sighs every time I’m in town: ‘I must get you away from the Flore; there are so many cooler cafés in Paris now.’
But you don’t go to the Flore to be cool. You don’t go to be authentic. You go for something much more important: happiness. The last time I was there, I was merrily eating my favourite Flore dish (warmed goat’s cheese oozing on Poilâne toast) when a three-person band set up in front of the terrace, and broke out into ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy.’ How apt, I thought. Because while the French have a reputation for melancholy and moodiness, they’re at heart a pleasure-seeking people who love their small luxuries and rituals. And one of those, their café culture, is what keeps them connected to humanity. Even Sartre saw through the doom and gloom to believe that we all could rise to the challenge of moral responsibility. An observer of human behaviour like Voltaire, he too believed in a better world, and in the ultimate goodness of people.
And as much as Paris suffered revolutions and riots and the horror of German Occupation, it has rebounded. In more recent times, the Parisians’ response to terrorist attacks has been to flock en terrasse, determined not to let anyone scare them inside, or get in the way of the right to enjoy life. That’s what Café de Flore represents. A resilience of spirit. There might not be many philosophers working on breakout theories at the Flore anymore, but maybe that’s because the meaning of life is found right here — in sitting down among so many others, enjoying a soul-comforting dish and glass of wine.
Spend your afternoon reading or filling up that notebook, or come back and forth (for afternoon tea and, later on, apéro) in between sessions of Saint-Germain shopping. I for one seem always to find myself back here with comforting regularity, to rest my walk-weary feet and refresh my overstimulated senses while shaded under the canopy laden with flora, in tribute to the goddess who inspired the café’s name. After all, we must cultivate our garden, non?
Itinerary
• Jardin des Tuileries: 113 Rue de Rivoli 75001; 07.30-19.30 (October-March), 07.00-21.00 (April-September)
• Musée de l’Orangerie: Jardin des Tuileries, Place de la Concorde 75001; 09.00-18.00; Closed Tuesday, 1 May, morning of 14 July & 25 December
• Musée d’Orsay: 1 Rue de la Légion d’Honneur 75007; 09.30-18.00 (Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday); 09.30-21.45 (Thursday); Closed Monday, 1 May & 25 December
• Musée Rodin: 77 Rue de Varenne 75007; 10.00-17.45; Closed Monday, 1 January, 1 May & 25 December
• Musée Delacroix: 6 Rue de Furstemberg 75006; 09.30-17.30 (until 21.00 on the first Thursday of the month); Closed Tuesday, 1 May, 25 December
Walk westwards through the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, away from the Musée du Louvre, and you might think you’ve left the world of art behind. Not so fast: In Paris, art is not confined to a frame or a room; it’s all around you, particularly throughout the city’s gardens. Not only are Paris’s green spaces well-crafted works of botanical art themselves, but they’re showcases, too. Look to your left and right, and spot the sculptures of female nudes coyly peeking out from the labyrinthine hedges that radiate outwards. The curvaceous bronze forms are the creations of turn-of-the-twentieth-century sculptor Aristide Maillol, celebrated for his Modernist spin on Naturalism. They’re monumental yet also, simply, part of the landscape. Art is something of exceptional beauty in this city, of course, something to be admired; but it’s also something essential, like the air you breathe, or the trees that oxygenate that air.
Wander
down the stairs into the Jardin des Tuileries, where you’ll be welcomed by the minxy statues Nymph, on your right, and Diane Chasseresse (Diana the Huntress), on your left. The Tuileries is an open-air museum as much as a park, an extension of the Louvre, which manages the grounds. Sculptures were first installed here in the early eighteenth century, when it was for a time the private playground of a little Louis XV. Many of them remain. Around the Grand Basin Rond, statues of antiquity and allegory sigh and swoon and scowl. Weave your way through the verdant chestnut groves and around the gravel paths, and you’ll delight in more artistic flourishes still, representing a spectrum of twentieth-century sculpture (look for the ‘fallen tree’ by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone, and Roy Lichtenstein’s pop-piece Brushstroke Nude). Don’t forget to stop and admire the flowers, too; the gardeners are also artists here, often composing flowerbeds in the same inspired way that, say, Claude Monet would stipple his pigments over a canvas.
It’s not hard to see how this was a favourite spot of the Impressionists. They loved nature, for one, preferring to paint en plein air. But there’s something here about the shimmering colours, the way the light diffuses through the leaves of the thousand trees … Monet and Camille Pissarro painted ethereal portrayals of the Tuileries that seem infused with gold dust, while Édouard Manet depicted the park’s social scene of the 1860s, in La Musique aux Tuileries. In an era of industrialisation, Impressionists reminded Parisians of the simple, satisfying pleasure of just sitting in a park, watching the minutes dissolve in a swirl of sunshine.
In the south-western corner of the Tuileries, you’ll find the Musée de l’Orangerie, so called because the neo-Renaissance-style edifice was built, in 1853, as a fancy greenhouse (it nurtured the orange trees of the old Tuileries Palace). The Orangerie is now home to Monet’s Nymphéas (Water Lilies), which the painter offered to the French state in commemoration of the Armistice of 1918. And there truly is something peaceful about these scenes of rippling water that reflect marshmallow clouds and skies of every blue, graceful willow branches and, of course, the famous water lilies. It’s all displayed in pastel, panoramic glory in two purpose-designed, softly lit elliptical rooms. Monet laboured over the panels in his twilight years, as his sight was failing him, and perhaps he worked so hard at capturing moments by his beloved pond out at Giverny because he was losing his fight with time. You can lose a sense of time here, as you immerse yourself in the serenity of the space. Short of tripping to Giverny, there are few experiences as blissfully relaxing as this to be had in Paris, a city that is so wont to overstimulate all the senses. Before you drift out of the museum, make sure to scope the rest of the collection, which features a line-up of luscious, velvety paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and some seminal Post-Impressionist works by the likes of Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse.
But let’s stay in the lovely, soft, sun-dappled world of Impressionism for a little longer, and head to the Musée d’Orsay, just across the river, and a block east along Quai Anatole France. Of course, you could spend most of a day at this museum, and at some stage you should. But for the purposes of today’s tour, head straight up to the Impressionism collection on Level 5. Yes, that’s right: Level 5. I’ll never quite get over the fact that a museum that boasts just about the greatest collection of Impressionist art around has shunted it up to such nether regions, while the ground floor of the main, light-drenched hall showcases many works that, while impressive enough, can leave you a little cold. Take, for instance, the Academic Art of the nineteenth century, so named because it was the style promoted by powerful Académie des Beaux-Arts: sweeping, stylised historical scenes featuring an array of nudes, angels, gods and Romans, where line was as important as colour, and details had to be meticulously rendered, right down to the perfect glint on a Grecian headwear. And perhaps the Academic painters’ penchant for shiny helmets is what led to the genre being named Art Pompier (fireman), a rather derisive term that brings to mind pomp and pompousness, both of which also happen to loom large in Academic paintings. Take, for instance, the quintessential work Romains de la Décadence (Romans During the Decadence) by Thomas Couture, which you can’t miss about halfway along the ground level.
Keep walking to the end of the museum, and then upstairs to the Impressionists, relegated to the attic like noisy kids to a naughty corner. Which is rather apt, as the Impressionists were the enfants terribles of the Parisian art world for a long while. One of the first Impressionist works you’ll see — if you start in Room 29 — is Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner Sur l’Herbe, a regular summer picnic scene, except for the fact that the men are clothed, and the women decidedly not. Manet submitted the work to the 1863 Salon (the annual art exhibition run by the Académie), which promptly rejected it, shocked at the brazen portrayal of everyday life — the nudes were all too real, not idealised goddesses draped over a column and in gossamer. The painting was scandalously exhibited at the year’s Salon des Refusés, which established Manet’s avant-garde reputation. He and other Impressionists — Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley — went on to have their own renegade exhibitions during the years they were shunned by the Académie. It’s hard to believe they once outraged Paris, so timeless is their work.
The term Impressionism was initially a put-down, but it was also felicitous, as Impressionists depicted life as their idealistic eyes saw it. These artists painted with their heart more than head, emotionally reacting to what was before them, without overthinking it. With this in mind, meander through these rooms, stopping at any work that takes your visual fancy. These are joyful, uplifting paintings that seem to almost glimmer, an effect of the quick, small strokes that were necessary to capture moments of fleeting beauty. Impressionists didn’t want to paint a landscape or person so much as the effect of the light of a particular time on said landscape or person. They weren’t interested in learning from the old masters, in a studio; their muse was Mother Nature, and their workshop the great outdoors.
After the horrors of the Prussian Siege of 1870 and the ensuing civil war of 1871, Impressionism burst forth like a flurry of pastel confetti, showering down on the parade that was Paris of the Belle Époque, a city determined to party away its grim memories. Traumatised, starved Parisians craved to live well, and to find beauty in life once more, and the Impressionists showed them how. They urged Parisians to go boating or dancing, to dine in the open air with friends, to go to the ballet, or to take the train to the countryside for a fix of haystack-scented air and fresh river water. One of the paintings that best captures the determinedly joy-chasing spirit of the age is Renoir’s Bal du Moulin de la Galette (painted in bucolic Montmartre in 1876). In this sun-spattered garden dance party, couples sway and friends banter, and men in boaters flirt with flush-cheeked women in frocks adorned with stripes and bows. It’s a moment of light-hearted loveliness that seems suspended in time. And it’s the perfect impression of happiness.
There are a couple of cafés at the museum, but for a treat dine at Le Restaurant on Level 2, beneath an opulently gilt-flecked, fresco-painted ceiling. The ultra-glamorous room was once the formal restaurant of the Gare d’Orsay — the Orsay train station, which opened in 1900. This previous life explains the overblown Beaux-Arts style of the building, so typical of Parisian train stations of the time: the large arched windows festooned with flowery garlands of stone; the iron-and-glass vault, decorated with frilly coffers, into which trains once glided; the large, prominent clocks. Impressionists, suitably, loved such train stations (you might have just spotted Monet’s The Gare Saint-Lazare); they were a symbol of modern everyday life for one, but also a means of pastoral escape.
By 1900, the Impressionists were not only accepted by the art world but also internationally acclaimed, many rich beyond their wildest childhood dreams. The other artist of the moment was sculptor Auguste Rodin — Monet’s good friend — who had similarly suffered many tortured years of rejection by the Académie. His enchanting museum is a twenty-minute walk away — just t
he thing to work off your lunch. At the forecourt of the Musée d’Orsay, turn left onto Rue de Bellechasse and venture south until you hit Rue de Varenne. Turn right to find, a few blocks ahead, the Musée Rodin.
The museum is located in the Hôtel Biron, an eighteenth-century townhouse that transformed into a convent school for much of the following century. By the time a newly flush Rodin was looking for studio space in town, the dilapidated mansion — stripped of most of its original detailing by the luxury-averse nuns — had become an artist’s residence, boasting such esteemed names as painter Henri Matisse, dancer Isadora Duncan, and poet–playwright–filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Now restored, the museum is more like something from a French home magazine. The pistachio walls, caramel parquetry floors and moulded cream ceilings are a dream combination, and some of the original panels, removed during the mansion’s austere convent life have been reinstalled for a gleaming effect. And then there’s the famous staircase, a study in that simple chic the French do so well: a beige curve of classic stone, trimmed with ornate black-and-gold rails, and set against chequerboard floor tiles.
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