Philistine

Here’s why I’ll never be a real intellectual: I prefer experiences with people to experiences with art and usually, I’d even rather be outside in a park than indoors standing before any number of the world’s most celebrated paintings.

This was brought home to me in stark relief yesterday as I enjoyed far more drinking wine and laughing with old friends Monique and Olivier in a park called Buttes Chaumant than I did gazing at and stroking my chin thoughtfully in front of Monet’s superb Water Lillies at the Orangerie Museum in the Jardin du Tuilleries.

In fact, I’d even say I got more out of the ferris wheel ride Mimi, Jen, and I took than the paintings; in any case, I enjoyed the view from the top of the Grand Roue—which afforded us a spectacular view of Paris from above—more than the sight from the museum banquets—which only gave me a perspective on the marvelous surface of the great artist’s work.

And although the Monet are unquestionably among the greatest pieces in the history of art, modern and classical, I think I was more moved by playing petanque with my old buddies and several new acquaintances; certainly I had way more fun throwing larger steel balls at a smaller wooden one than I did casting my eyes at paint on canvas.

The high point for me, probably, from the standpoint of visuals, was seeing Mimi and Hippolyte, the five and a half year-old son of a couple with whom we were playing petanque, climbing up on the base of a monument in the park and striking heroic poses a la the other nearby sculptures. That image will likely stay with me longer than the memory of the dozens of marble (or was it bronze, see?) animals that adorned the gardens though which we strolled earlier.

But then, that’s because I’m such a philistine; or maybe because the wine flowed more freely with people than with art.