M'O

This is the new logo of the Museums of Orsay and of l'Orangerie. It looks a bit like the MOMO, right? Whilst the Louvre was "my" museum during my first year in Paris as I had got a membership card, I have chosen the M'O as "my" museum for my second year in Paris. As a matter of fact my Louvre card gave me a reduction on the M'O card!

On Sunday I inaugurated my M'O card by seeing two temporary exhibitions at the Musée d'Orsay. The first exhibition "Degas and the Nudes"  was interesting, but nothing more than that. However, the second exhibition "Misia, Queen of Paris" was a real surprise! I had never heard of this Polish pianist, but I had seen the front page of La Revue Blanche, where she once appeared:

Misia was born in 1872 and died in 1950. She was a colourful character who married and divorced and remarried and divorced and .... and .......  She was the grande dame, the reine, the queen of Paris. She knew everybody and frequented everybody, and that is exactly what made the exhibition so interesting. She knew the painters Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Vuillard and Vallotton, and she was friendly with Gabrielle Chanel and Jean Cocteau. She was involved with La Revue Blanche and the Ballets Russes, but she ended her days near blind and addicted to morphine. The exhibtion contained photos and paintings, drawings and objects, musical notes and jewellery, note books and letters, posters and records. It gave such a colourful insight to the life of a certain kind of artiste in the first half of the 20th century.