A palace embracing a mythical world, the Gustave Moreau Museum in Paris

Paris, the beautiful rigor built on freedom, equality, and fraternity.

There is a ‘discipline’ that governs a city or space. That discipline implicitly governs our behavior and world of consciousness. For example, we do not make noise or run around in art galleries and libraries. It is a promise that the people there implicitly made with the space. The audience gathered in the concert hall sings together or quietly enjoys the performance. This is a case where the attitude toward the artist and music matches the norms provided by the space. Sometimes these disciplines come across as moments that we must overcome, but they also help us refine our attitude and mindset towards those spaces and places.

Paris, the city of culture and art, is a beautiful palace-like place built on strict rules. A complex yet systematic urban structure radiating in a circle around District 1, the regular height of buildings that Baron Haussmann adhered to in his urban planning of Paris in the 19th century, manners of looking into each other’s eyes and toasting when drinking wine, etc., and waiters at restaurants. Rules built up over a long period of time exist everywhere, such as the patience to wait for the restaurant to arrive, the dress code required by the Palace Hotel’s Michelin restaurant, and RSVP. The deeper you look, the stricter, stricter, richer, and more beautiful the city becomes.

I came to Paris quite often, whether by coincidence or necessity. This place, which I thought was free-spirited at first, soon turned into a cultural and artistic playground governed by strict rules, which attracted me. Therefore, at some point, whenever I visited Paris, I began to create my own ‘routine’ and perform a ritual of immersing myself in the city.

Exterior of the Gustave Moreau Museum / Photo. © Jinseop Lee One of them is visiting the ‘Gustave Moreau Museum’ that we will introduce today. The reason I visit this place every time I make time in Paris, where there is so much to see, hear, and eat, is because it is the place that made me feel most vividly the intense times the artist went through for the first time and the creative imagination that cannot easily be violated.

Gustave Moreau Museum 2nd floor atelier / Photo. © Jinseop Lee

Mythological symbols and erotic metaphors
The space where Gustave Moreau lived and the cradle of creativity

Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) is a representative painter of the 19th century who depicted conceptual and fantastic worlds on large canvases. Somewhere on the border between romanticism and eroticism, tragedy and comedy, he expresses multi-layered stories and the psychology of characters in an original way.

The dramatic material of Homer’s and I in Greek mythology is the motif of the paintings that Moreau studied and completed countless times. From an art historical perspective, Moreau is known for all of the complex composition and aesthetic elements of Mannerism immediately after the Renaissance, the scale of the Baroque born from Caravaggio, and the bold emotional expression and color shown in classicism and romanticism in the 18th and 19th centuries. He is a writer who embraces

In other words, Gustave Moreau is the sum total of all art styles since the Renaissance, and he is said to have been directly influenced by two artists who were his neighbors, Eugène Delacroix and Theodore Chasseriau.

Traces/photos of Gustave Moreau, who was a collector. © Jinseop Lee The Gustave Moreau Museum is the house where he and his family lived, and the atelier that was also his work space. Moreau’s father purchased a townhouse on this site in 1853 and converted the top floor into a studio, taking over the entire building. In 1895, a few years before he went to heaven, he asked architect Albert Lafon to convert this house into a museum, and to this day, its original form has remained almost intact, maintaining its legacy.

Gustave Moreau Museum 2nd floor atelier / Photo. © Jinseop Lee On the first floor, the space where Moreau’s family lived has been restored, and the pottery, paintings, furniture he made himself, and the matiere he studied are on full display. Among them, there are portraits of the Moreau family, as well as works donated by Théodore Chacerio and Edgar De Gas.

This museum is filled with creaky wooden floors, thousands of sketches, huge creations made with studies and pencils, and so many allegories and metaphors that you won’t know where to place your eyes when you first enter. The characters painted in large sizes on huge canvases are expressed very realistically with erotic elements, and it feels as if characters from mythology have been recreated and brought to life in the hands of Moreau.

The space and atelier where Moreau worked on the third floor of the Gustave Moreau Museum / Photo. © Jinseop Lee You can admire Moreau’s major works on the second and third floors. The third floor is also where Moreau had a studio where he painted during his lifetime. There are about 1,000 oil paintings, sketches, and drawings here, and including his collections and paintings belonging to the Gustave Moreau Museum, a total of about 25,000 works fill the space. Gustave Moreau donated it all to the French government.

Moreau’s approximately 7,000 sketches and actual pencils/photos he used. © Jinseop Lee

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A space where you can see Gustave Moreau’s best works in their entirety.

Zeus (Jupiter, god of gods), famous for his lust, swears on the river of death, Styx, that he will grant Semele whatever she wants. His wife Hera (Juno, the god of marriage and protection), who found out that her husband was having an affair, is in no position to punish Zeus, so she transforms into a nurse and tries to punish Semele.

Hera (Juno), who transformed into a nanny, said, “There are a lot of fraudsters these days, so check to see if the person you love is really the god Zeus. “If it’s real, I’ll show you how lightning strikes,” he says, stimulating Semele. Semele begs Zeus to show her the appearance of a god, and Zeus shows himself to Semele.

Zeus revealed his true form with the brilliance of God and lightning. Semele, who could not face the glory of God in human form, was burned to death when she saw Zeus. At this time, Semele was pregnant, and Zeus took the fetus out of Semele’s body and placed it in her thigh, and after completing the remaining month, the child was born. This is the moment when ‘Dionysus (Dionisos/Baccus)’, the god who presides over ‘wine, vines, abundance and ecstasy’, is born.

-From Greek mythology [세멜레 이야기] extract

<img src="https://img.hankyung.com/photo/202410/01.38486278.1.jpg" alt="귀스타브 모로 (circa 1895) / Photo. © Jinseop Lee “/>

Gustave Moreau (c. 1895) / photo. © Jinseop Lee Gustave Moreau created this moment where tragedy and comedy coexist as a work of art (circa 1895) over the course of about seven years through numerous conceptual works and sketches. At first glance, this painting resembles Indian Gandhara art or Persian mythology, and is decorated with numerous symbols and allegories. When viewed from afar, the clear outline of a person or subject appears blurry when viewed up close. This is also Gustave Moreau’s unique painting style, which he studied and painted over with numerous fine strokes. This effect of applying atmospheric perspective elements to the characters adds to the mystery among the complexly intertwined objects and maximizes the aesthetics of the painting itself. (1868) / Photo. © Jinseop Lee “/>

Gustave Moreau (1868) / Photo. © Jinseop Lee Prometheus stole fire, which was the exclusive property of the gods, and brought it to humans. For refusing Zeus’ request to predict his fate, he is punished by being chained to the Caucasus Mountains and having his liver eaten by an eagle. The story of Prometheus’ liver, which was pecked out during the day, sprouted again during the night, and then the next day, an eagle came again and pecked out his liver again, is depicted in surrealistic hyper-realism in the 1868 work.

The atmospheric perspective of the Caucasus Mountains, the boundary at the end of the world, and the world beyond, the dynamic and brutal depiction of an eagle lifting its head to feast on the liver, and the way Prometheus looks directly at pain. This is the highlight of the picture. For this work, Moreau won a medal at the Salon of 1869, but was also criticized by the press for its cruel depiction.Details/Photos. © Jinseop Lee”/>

Details/Photos. © Jinseop Lee

Maison Gustave Moreau Museum embracing the mythical world

The Gustave Moreau Museum is not as large as other museums in Paris. However, the mythical world that Moreau left here is vaster and grander than anywhere else. The Gustave Moreau Museum is a space where the moments of his fierce thought and struggle remain as hot as the heat of a furnace even as time passes.

“My brain and reason are fleeting, like a doubtful reality… Gustave Moreau, who said, “Only inner feelings seem eternal and certain,” pursued freedom in conception and passion in expression and color. He was more visionary than any other artist of his time, knew how to balance surrealistic madness and realistic enthusiasm, and was a practical idealist. Gustave Moreau was the teacher and visionary of Henri Matisse and Georges Henri Rouault.

“Gustave Moreau made us imagine.”

– Henri Matisse

Paris = Columnist Jinseop Lee, Guest Reporter Arte