Pionnières Creating Beauty and Doing What Needed to be Done - Thursday, 21 April

So this afternoon I headed down to the Musée du Luxembourg to see their recently-opened exhibit of works by Parisian female artists of the Roaring ‘20s - mostly paintings, but also works of sculpture, architecture, literature and design.  

As you entered the exhibit you encountered videos from the late 19-teens of women performing what were formerly men’s jobs before they went off to war - in factories, on railroads and trams, on roadways (including devising fulcrums and levers to get trucks out of muddy ruts), assembling and packing munitions, sweeping chimneys, lighting streetlamps, etc. - many of the snippets were quite amusing.  

Another video presentation, though, was the most affecting for me - you saw women artists and craftspersons creating masks for soldiers who lost parts of their faces in WW1 - measuring the portions of the faces that should be covered, forming the masks, fitting them, painting them to look realistic, calculating and attaching straps that allowed the masks to stay in place without being too obvious, all while obviously interacting with the wounded men in a very caring and sensitive manner.  It was moving and heartwarming and inspiring.

Ya, the artwork was great (although there were a few too many nudes for my taste), but the video glimpses into the century-ago world of clever and hard-working women at work was most rewarding.  

https://museeduluxembourg.fr/en/agenda/evenement/pionnieres

I took a walk in the gardens after viewing the exhibit.  The spring bulb flowers have gone kinda wild and are on their last legs, but they’re still beautiful. Perhaps a lesson for us all!