Unicorns Aren't Real

Today I saw the Unicorn tapestries at the Cluny Museum. I didn't know anything about them other than they were famous. There are 6 tapestries each with a medieval damsel and a unicorn, as well as other forest creatures and lots of flowers - mille-fleure. 5 of the tapestries show her and a sense: taste, hear, smell, sight, touch. And the sixth is a mystery. No one knows if the artist was saying that they'd give up these senses for something better (religious devotion, love...) or if they were saying there's a sixth sense, and what might that be? I think we need to send a memo out to artists that the only thing they need to do to be famous is create something that is hard to interpret, then die before we can ask them what they meant. Mona Lisa, Unicorn Tapestries, (insert the name of your future work here).


The Cluny specializes in art from the Middle Ages which all happens to be religious. It seems to me that there are two art camps I've encountered a lot of lately: Naked Pagans and Christian Saints. While both leave a lot to be desired in originality, the Pagan art tends to be a little more impressive and beautiful. What's disappointing is that the Christian art, I would think, should be more meaningful and have greater depth of emotion. Unfortunately I never get that sense with most of it. It just seems gaudy and gilded, missing the whole point of the message. Or it depicts a post-biblical sainthood story, or it venerates some spurious relic, and it ends up seeming ugly and empty. But I had a hopeful and exciting discovery today. I saw a triptych that was simple and powerful. It depicted 5 scenes from the Bible: Jesus at Gethsemane, Jesus being tried before Caiphus, Jesus being mocked by the Roman soldiers, Jesus being rejected by the crowd, and Jesus being crucified among thieves with Mary at his feet. The picture didn't come out very well but here was the scene from Gethsamene. Peter, James and John are in the bottom right as Jesus is offering the intercessory prayer. I just thought it was cool that I could see all the stories I knew without any audio guide to help. And it was in plain old nothing special wood. For the first time ever (for me), I think the art served it's purpose.


After the Cluny I headed over to Arrondisements 1 and 2. I was just wandering about but decided to pop into Les Galeries Lafayette - a huge department store that's a big step up from Macy's. The shoe department back wall was lined with Jimmy Choo, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Gucci... among other more reasonable brands. Next time I pop in, I'm going to have to give myself a 30 minutes budget pep-talk first. I narrowly escaped this time because they didn't have my size and I didn't know how to say, "Is it in stock at another store?" It's a beautiful building though.