Those lucky enough to live in Paris, or those planning to go to France between now and the middle of January, should plan an adventure to The Grand Palais.

The Grand Palais' new exhibition in Paris is called 'Melancholy-Genius and Insanity in the Western World'.

The exhibit opened on October 13th, 2005.

Many of the visitors to this exhibit, designed by Hubert Le Gall, must line up outside the museum and around the block to get in. Once they are on the inside, they are finding the masterpieces to be anything but depressing.

A few of the world-renowned artists and poets, whose works are currently on display in Paris, include:

Picasso

Rodin

van Gogh

Edvard Munch

Edward Hopper

Goya

Delacroix

William Blake

On Friday, October 28th, AP Photographer Francois Mori captured these two art goers looking at a sculpture called 'Big Man' by Australian born artist, Ron Mueck (1958 -).

This larger-than-life bald, fat, naked man is on loan from the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. You can otherwise see him at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

He was made from pigmented polyester resin on fiberglass and sits "slumped" 80 1/4" tall.

"Double Portrait"

Gerard Regnier, the museum's curator and creator of this exhibit said:

Melancholy is not only negative.

On the contrary, it was a positive energy that gave strength and genius to great artists throughout Western civilization.

The goal is to show the public the complexity and variety and positiveness of melancholy.

In all, there are over 300 "melancholy" works to take in. Some of the masterpieces are on rare loan from collectors and other museums around the world.

The exhibition offers the public a glimpse of "melancholy" divided into a variety of themes:

Melancholy in Antiquity -- The devil's pool;

The Middle Ages -- The children of Saturn;

The Renaissance -- The anatomy of melancholy;

The Age of Enlightenment -- Light and shadow;

The Eighteenth Century -- The death of God;

The Romantics, The naturalisation of Melancholy -- The Angel of History;

Melancholy and Modern Times.

The museum's web site describes the exhibit this way:

No mental state has so occupied the Western mind as melancholy; going to the heart of the problems that preoccupy us today - from history to philosophy, from medicine to psychiatry, from religion to theology, from literature to art.

Melancholy, traditionally the cause of suffering and folly has also, since antiquity, has been considered one of the elements in the temperaments of those marked for greatness, in our heroes and geniuses.

Its description as a sacred illness implies a certain duality and melancholy is still mysterious even though today, with its new name of depression, there is a medico-scientific approach to it.

The iconography of melancholy is extraordinarily rich and it is therefore not surprising that it is history of art that has been in the forefront of the establishment of a new approach to the cultural history of this saturnine malaise.

Regnier fell on deaf ears a decade ago when he first tried to sell the concept to Paris' Minister of Culture and museum officials. They did not think the world's art elite would pay to see "melancholy" art, and certainly none that is associated with depression. However, they were wrong. Regnier persisted. The community around him changed. Today, depression is now an often talked-about subject on television in France.

His efforts have paid off. People from around the world are now flocking to 'Melancholy-Genius'.

Regnier said, after the exhibit was in place:

I think people are amazed by the variety and richness of all these works.

It has nothing to do with sadness.

It has to do with a moral of living, a moral of dealing with everyday life.

That may be so. However, if I am fortunate enough to get to Paris within the next three months, I will nonetheless bring along a stash of XOX Truffles to lift my melancholy soul should it become heavy.

The Galeries nationales du Grand Palais in Paris is located at 3, avenue du General Eisenhower.

The Paris exhibition runs until January 16, 2006.

The museum is open every day except Tuesdays from 10am to 8pm (the registers close at 7.15 pm).

On Wednesdays, the museum is open from 10am to 10pm.

For further details, please go directly to the museum's web site at:

Caspar David Friedrich, "Le moine devant la mer" Nationalgalerie, Berlin

If you can not make it to Paris by January 16th, 2006, you'll still have a second chance to see the exhibit, if you can make your way to Germany.

From Paris, this extraordinary exhibit will travel to Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie.

The exhibit will be on show from February 16th to May 7th, 2006.

Italo Calvino (1923-1985), an Italian journalist and writer once said, "Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness."

Inspire & Be Inspired.

Here's to healthy, adventuresome, soulful, "finding inspiration in artful examples of melancholy" living!

~ Jennifer Carolyn King, Rugged Elegance, LLC