It’s been hard to fend off emotional unraveling. Not only is it January, a month that lasts five hundred years, but tidings from the outside world carry news ranging from bad to worse. Welcome to 2025. I’ve learned better than to stake my claim on this being “my year,” but belief in this kind of defensive pessimism is flagging. If not this year, when? Yet, between the state of the world and the fires ravaging Los Angeles, my internal monologue has been chanting bleak bleak bleak. We’re supposed to be getting started, but it’s been hard to keep hold of even a single thread. The work gets done, but novels have been picked up and listlessly put back down. My mind keeps churning as the hours pass until, abruptly, it’s pitch black outside the window and I’m sitting in the dark. I’m hungry for beauty, for color, for mysticism, for change. Scratch that—for positive change. For now, Musée Gustave Moreau is the answer.
Throw a rock and you’ll hit an art museum in Paris, but my favorites are quiet, niche. Tucked away on the quiet rue Catherine de la Rochefoucauld in the 9th, Musée Gustave Moreau is an overlooked gem. Formerly the artist’s home, the property and the paintings were willed to the French state with the provision that the site would become a museum honoring Moreau’s legacy. Vanity aside, there’s something to it. Moreau was incredibly prolific—reflected by the gorgeous curation tesselating the paintings all the way up to the high ceilings.
Before becoming well-known, Moreau pondered the legacy of his work…whether his paintings and sketches would have their own life outside of his own: "This evening, December 24, 1862. I think of my death and the fate of my poor little works and all these compositions that I take the trouble to bring together. Separated, they perish; taken together, they give a little idea of what I was like as an artist and the milieu in which I liked to dream?" The impact of being surrounded by a singular artistic vision? Considerable. The effect is accentuated by his devotion to symbolism. A morning at Musée Gustave Moreau feels like walking through a series of visions.
Born in 1826, Moreau was plagued by weak health, ultimately finding his escape through art. Inspired by his mentor Théodore Chassériau and trips to Italy, his style began taking shape. Known as a Symbolist painter, Moreau’s work rejected the constraints of realism in favor of mysticism and emotion. It’s no surprise that trailing through his museum you’ll be faced with reimaginings of mythological, biblical, and historical scenes featuring Leda and the Swan, Salomé and the levitating head of John the Baptist, and Alexander the Great.
Though the museum is more easily recognized today on social media for its stunning spiral staircase than its paintings, I promise you’ll love them. Moreau’s work feels as otherworldly as the myths he describes: Byzantine columns, elaborate temples, unicorns, sphinxes, and figures fading into the mists. My favorite paintings employ exquisite detail in the midst of impressionistic surroundings, echoing the way dreams blur hyperspecificity with vague inconsistencies. Whether accidentally unfinished or intentionally so, some canvases feature ghostly figures who are only half present. These paintings feel like visions—one blink and they’ll drift away.
Writing my first novel, I brought my heroine Miriam here twice. Years after typing the end, I read a craft book that advised how parallel scenes can carry out some of the narrative’s heavy lifting. Reading the chapters back, the other writer was right: comparing the two scenes, everything had irrevocably changed. As Miriam drifted through the quiet galleries for the second time, the emotional impact of Salomé’s extended arm in The Apparition shifted from delightfully wicked empowerment to an almost painful accusation; the seductive allure of the past bottomed out in the unrelenting ache of a heartbreak made worse by the admitting she’d known better all along.
But I didn’t write it this way because I had this artful design in mind. No, it was because Musée Gustave Moreau is somewhere my imagination reliably kicks into motion. I found myself sitting on the bench in front of The Triumph of Alexander the Great puzzling out how to bring Miram’s emotional conflict to pulsing, contradictory life. Moreau believed that “divination, the intuition of things, belongs to the artist or poet alone.” It felt fitting to solve fictional problems for fictional people here, to wait for my characters to speak to me.
For the first twenty minutes, I am alone. It’s a Monday morning in mid-January and I am here again demanding dopamine. Acutely aware of my steps, I wince at the creak of the floorboards. The soft brush of the soles blends with the sound of the rain beating against the pavement outside. Gazing down through the glass case at Moreau’s palette, the whorls of paint are like clouds—mauve, periwinkle, cream. Stormy weather. Lutecian limestone. Pigments preserved after the story’s long lost. I wonder what he’d been working on. Pulling out my phone, I toggle Airplane Mode on. Just for today, I let that be the mystery that sticks in my mind.
LA Fire Relief Efforts
If you are able to donate funds to support Angelenos in need:
Mutual Aid Los Angeles Network Donation List for SoCal Locals
Emergency Shelters, Immediate Support, Housing for those displaced
Stephanie Danler wrote a moving essay on navigating personal grief.
Maximalism is alive and well. Inspired by the Icarus myth, Daniel Roseberry wows with cinched waists, ribbon detailing, and sculptural silhouettes at Schiaparelli SS25 Couture.
Tony Tulathimutte discusses moral ambiguity in fiction and Millennial literary themes with The Guardian.
🚨🚨🚨Love Letters: A Workshop🚨🚨🚨
Inspired by Valentines’ Day, I’m hosting an online workshop dedicated to showing your long-term writing projects some love. Together, we will write a series of love letters to your project in this generative writing workshop. Participants will leave with an inspirational list essay and a love letter to their work in progress.
The details: Sunday February 23rd
19h-21h CET | 1pm-3pm EST | 10am-12pm PST
Online, Zoom | Sliding Scale: 50€ - 75€
Very insightful and inspirational