My time in Paris has been extremely important to me, not only in my social and personal growth, but in my academic as well. Paris has offered me a lot of opportunities that I had not previously had, and I like to think that I have taken advantage of a lot of them. From the walking tours to the Normandy trip, it is very hard to figure out which of the experiences I have had in Paris have affected me the most. After re-reading my papers and thinking about what I consider the most ‘fun’, I believe that I have narrowed my experiences to the highlights of the trip. Although I have learned a lot during my time in Paris, I feel like I have left with a new sense of art in context, learning not to judge too quickly, and that anything can be seen as art.

On my second day in Paris, I decided to head to the Louvre with some of the other group members. Being a big fan of art, I knew that I had to go there. On my first visit to the Louvre, I was very impressed, but I missed the idea of context and how to properly hang and exhibit paintings, so to me, the Louvre looked like a big, jumbled mess. After the class talked about proper exhibition, I went back to the Louvre, and the whole museum made a lot more sense to me. Paintings suddenly worked with one another to tell a certain story, and a lot of aspects of paintings seemed a lot clearer to me. In my final paper, one of my main points was how other paintings worked to leave the viewer feeling certain emotions, and how they helped Napoléon Sur Le Champ de Bataille d’Eylau tell a story about Napoleon. Moving forward in my career at VMI and after, I think that this knowledge will help me take a look at the ‘big picture’ of a situation, and I will be able to see how certain things work together, instead of just looking at one option at a time.

When I heard we were going to the German cemetery at Bayeux during our trip to Normandy, I was very skeptical at first. Why would I want to go visit German dead? They were the enemy, the bad guys of World War II. More importantly, I go to a military school, and the American’s beat the German’s. I was very confused by the whole idea until we arrived at the cemetery. Instead of finding a cemetery that commemorated the Axis cause and glorified the ideals of World War II Germany, I found a very somber, sad cemetery that commemorated the lives of the young Germans that died. The cemetery brought these Germans to a human level, somewhere where I could relate to them. It was funny, because I went from thinking that they were terrible people, to a point where I was cleaning off graves that were dirty and taking time to read the stones and really feeling bad about their experience. These people were not evil; they were just doing what their country asked of them, and at the end of the day, that is exactly what we do in the military. This experience drove home the point that history is really written by the victors, and that, because Germany lost, they were seen as the evil power in the Second World War. In the future, I believe that this experience will help me keep a level head about things, and not be biased about things.  Too often, humans jump to conclusions about things that they do not know about, and this causes unnecessary conflict in the military and professional world. I know that with my experiences in Paris, I will be able to step back from new information and try to learn as much about something before I form an opinion on it.

Finally, in Paris, I learned that anything could be art. When I first came to Paris, I pictured art as something that took a lot of time and took a lot of skill. I really associated the word art with the ideas of ‘fine art’: sculptures, painting, and literature. The turning point for me in the class was two-fold. When the class traveled to the Carrier-Belleuse exhibit, I saw all of these normal household items that were now being exhibited as art. I have many lamps and other small appliances in my house, and always saw them as something that was mass-produced and simply used for it’s utility and not as something really beautiful. When I looked at everything in the exhibit, I realized that an artist had to design all of these things, and that a lot of work went into each design, even if in the end everything was mass-produced. Adding onto this was a reading “The City as a Work of Art” by Donald J. Olsen. In this reading, Olsen discusses how the people that designed Paris took time to make Paris beautiful, while continuing to make it useful to the people that lived there.  As I walked around the city, I started to look at the architecture, and how the time period really affected the way that certain buildings were built. Even a simple apartment building was constructed in a way to make it look beautiful. This experience was really eye opening for me, because I started to wonder how many places that I had passed through that had all of this beautiful architecture, and I had just missed it. It really is a shame that I might have missed so much about a city because I did not take the time to look up. In the future, I hope that these experiences make me slow down and take time to look at things instead of just rushing through life, because that is where people lose a lot of details.

Paris has been indescribably important in my academic career. Here, I got a taste of what it means to slow down, take time, and truly enjoy life, while continuing my education in art history. I have enjoyed my time immensely, and I know that the memories I have had here, and the lessons I have learned, will impact my life for years to come. Although all of my experiences in Paris cannot be written about due to page and time constraints, I truly believe that the three listed above were the most influential during my time in “The City of Lights”. Whether I learned about art, history versus memory, or just to slow down, I know that these experiences will remain with me for the rest of my life.

Works Cited

Monfort-Eaton, Taylor. Man, This Art Stuff is Hard. : , 2014. Print.

Olsen, Donald J.. The city as a work of art: London, Paris, Vienna. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Print.