The whole experience of walking and talking through a museum brought me back to studying art history in Paris, and the excitement of connecting meanings and movements at museums around the City of Light.
I really enjoyed the Norton Simon's French Impressionist works -- colorful, textured paintings from the likes of Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, Gauguin. Plus realist works from Manet and Ingres that made you wonder what the faces were thinking, and bronze sculptures from Rodin.
We stood a few feet from Degas' seminal "Little Dancer" sculpture with a fraying tutu, though I'm not sure it's the original since I had discovered that a reproduction even commands the Musee D'Orsay in Paris.
The contemporary art section popped with bright, witty works from Picasso, as well as paintings from Henri Matisse, Georges Braque and Diego Rivera. Abstract expressionism held court with one or two fantastical drip paintings from Jackson Pollack, whom I love and learned about after becoming intrigued by this art movement by way of Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard.
Below, I'm taking in the biggest painting there -- a colossal abstract work from California artist Sam Francis. And, of course, I had to include a Picasso that was on display. He's simply genius...
