Automne à Paris: Autumn in Paris

So... it has been a little while so I need to skip back in time to fill in the blanks a little. The weekend after Barcelona was pretty calm. On Friday October 14th our Wells College program took us to see Tinguely's "Le Cyclop" in the Fontainbleau Forest, which was way cooler than I anticipated! First we stopped at the grave of Jean Cocteau, who was a French poet, novelist, and playwright, among other things. He worked with such people as Pablo Picasso, Coco Chanel, and Edith Piaf, so clearly he was pretty important. Haha! Unfortunately there wasn't really much to see there, just some cool wall painting inside the old building where he was buried.

But after we stopped there, we headed into the Fountainbleau Forest to find "Le Cyclop." This was a huge sculpture that doubled as a multi-level museum! A lot of different artists were a part of the construction of this piece. There were mangled heaps of metal and lots of old gears and a track that ran in and out through the whole thing that had big silver balls swerving and spiraling as we walked through. From the front it looked like a giant Cyclops with its tongue hanging out, which we learned came from the main room on the first floor up and was first intended as a slide for kids! At one point it was refurbished and shards of mirrors were added to the entire surface of the face of the Cyclops and the tongue, so clearly it became too dangerous to function as a slide anymore.

Up on the next floor there was one giant blob column sort-of sculpture with bits of different colored tiles covering the whole thing. Next we went through an area where metal poles hung from the ceiling in the shape of a square and as you walk through they clamor and bang against each other, but once you get to the middle where there is a small free space just big enough for one person, and from inside it is a symphony of rings and chimes. It acted as a giant wind chime, if you will. After there was an area with all different colors and sizes of circular gears that, when turned on, move at different speeds and start up the track that the silver balls run on.

On the next floor up, right above the gears, there were seats that moved up and down with the gears and off to the side there was a small window to peek through and see a full kitchen built on a tilt, almost upside down, with breakfast on the table and all. We went up to the very top and there was a shallow pool of water, meant to reflect the blue of the sky, to tie nature into the overwhelmingly industrial aspects of the work. This tied in well with the fact that the whole thing was also built around a big tree. We worked our way down from there, stopping to peer into an old train car perched high above the ground with sculptures depicting victims of the Holocaust inside.

There were so many different artists that collaborated on this gigantic piece of work that it is too hard to keep straight all the different parts of the sculpture/museum, but it was such an incredible visit and I am glad I had the opportunity to go! It was the kind of thing I don't think I could have found on my own.

Unfortunately we were only allowed to take pictures from the outside of the sculpture, so I don't have any of the individual works inside, but here are some cool views!

The rest of that weekend was spent visiting a fall festival in the Bastille area of Paris where a lot of different wine shops, bakeries, bookstores, and restaurants were giving free tastes of food, wine, and teas, hosting special musical guests, and putting on special performances. The carved fruits and gourds above were being carved outside of a Thai restaurant! It was a nice calm weekend checking out what Paris has to offer in the fall season.   :)