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Versailles, France
Life was leisure, learning French words, staying in white rooms without any style
I have been to Versailles before and at the time thought that once was enough. It's kind of a pain in the ass to get to, there are way too many people there and the excess of all of it is almost soul crushing. So there has to be a reason that I would go there again, wait in crazy long lines and suffer through all those other tourists on a Sunday, a day that Rick Steves himself says should be avoided at all costs.
On Sundays, Versailles is extra busy and more expensive because they turn the fountains on. And one of the reasons that I pushed through all of those tourists was to see one of the fountains.
If I have a favorite living artist, at this point it has to be Olafur Eliasson (sorry finalists Richard Serra, James Turrell, Wayne Thiebaud, Anselm Kiefer, Jenny Holzer and Michael Heizer, among others). His work is often surprisingly architectural and almost always highly immersive. I have stood in a gallery transformed into a Icelandic landscape, walked through a saturated rooftop rainbow circle in Arhus and marveled at the kaleidoscope in Kanazawa. In 2008, Eliasson scattered some artificial waterfalls around New York Harbor, precipitating my first ever visit to Governors Island to see one up close and personal. And in 2016, he had a temporary exhibit at Versailles with interventions all over the place. The big one though had to be the Versailles “Waterfall”, an exclamation point right dead center in the oh so symmetrical garden and one that from all the right angles managed to look like a waterfall pouring right out of the big empty sky. Amazing in person.
You have seen the long Grande Perspective view, framed by the allés of trees, but up close it gets even more magical. From the right angle it looked impossible, as if something ripped open the sky and water rushed through. From other angles it looked slightly less magical. It turns out that something did not rip open the sky (probably a good thing if you think about it), and all that magic water got up there through pipes held up by structural support. But even from the wrong angle, with the man behind the curtain staring you in the face, there was still water falling from the sky. Something you just don’t see everyday.
There were Eliasson pieces scattered across the château, pieces that I hunted down and enjoyed as most people seemed either confused, ambivalent or annoyed with them. At the end of the Hall of Mirrors was "Your Sense of Unity," totally out of place and yet totally at home in one of the most famous and crowded rooms in all of France. Meanwhile in another room, “Solar Compression” confused all of the tourists who were still trying to figure out how to pronounce Olafur.
Carved into a wall was a little yellow mini eclipse, a great photo opportunity that is most likely described by returning tourists as "some weird yellow thing" or "I don't know what the hell it is" or " I think it was art or something."
One of the facts (for better or worse) about a lot of the pictures in this slideshow is that no matter how badly you want to see some of it for yourself, you'll still find yourself out of luck. If you wanted to see Olafur Eliasson at Versailles, it's already too late. Sure we’ll always have this slideshow, but regardless of how long and adjective filled the always drifting narrative may be, it will never be the same as being there.
If you take away the waterfall, the most impressive piece at the Versailles installation was "Fog Assembly.” Hidden in a hard to find grassy courtyard was a man made fog, a ring that shot out just enough mist to make the muddy grass almost impassable. But it also met its promise by blurring the line between grass and sky and cloud, and when the wind was just right it was pretty damn magical.
If this seems familiar, that's because I've been here before, even if "here" wasn't quite here. Diller + Scofidio's 2002 Blur Building on Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland used the same technology to create a great big wet (and hard to navigate) cloud. Of course there are differences between the two (other than time and space), but the similarities are downright striking no matter how you look at it.
Depending on when you go, the fountains at Versailles are not always on. In fact, it’s far more accurate to say that they’re rarely on and usually not. Since I wanted to see the full experience with Olafur Eliasson’s “Waterfall,” I intentionally decided to brave the massive lines, higher prices and insufferably annoying slow moving crowds just to have a few extra moments like this, where the crowds are all cropped out and it’s just me, the back-lit Latona Fountain and no one else in the world.
