Flashback

The writer and artist Audrey Niffenegger remembers her first trip to Europe, 1985

THIS WAS TAKEN AT THE LOUVRE in 1985 – I was 22 years old, I had recently graduated from art school [the School of the Art Institute of Chicago] and I was in Europe for the first time, having won a travel fellowship for graduating students. It was nice because they didn’t giving many awards to printmakers; they gave them to video people and performance artists – disciplines considered sexier than printmaking. At the time, almost anything was considered sexier than printmaking.

Anyway, I managed to snag this award and thought, ‘OK, it’s time for my grand tour of Europe!’ I have a deep, deep love for the Netherlands – it’s a gorgeous place full of beautiful things – and I started off in Amsterdam, then went to Munich, and then to Italy, where I spent a couple of weeks kicking around with crazy fashion people; that was fun.

The picture was taken by my boyfriend at the time, Bert Menco. Bert met me on Christmas morning in Amsterdam and we took a highspeed train to Paris. The Louvre in those days was kind of ramshackle; they hadn’t gussied it up or put in glass pyramids. And it was December – it was cold and dark inside and my measure was American museums like the Met in New York and the Art Institute in Chicago, which were a bit more ‘ta-da!’. Of course now the Louvre has totally changed its vibe. But even then it was full of incredible stuff.

It was a life-changing trip. I grew up in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, and I got a great education, but I knew that I was going to have to go to other places to see the stuff I was interested in – New York or Paris. If you want to understand art you have to see it. I didn’t have a clue how far my ignorance extended but I knew I had to get busy.

The trip lasted a month but it felt like about 10 years. I had spent so much time sitting in dark rooms looking at slides – but half the time they’re out of focus, and you don’t know how big the picture is, what the colour really looks like. All of a sudden you’re in the Uffizi, you’re in the Louvre, you’re in the Rijksmuseum and it’s so amazing to see real pictures in a real room with the light changing how they look – there’s nothing like the first impression.

My hairstyle in this picture was partially inspired by the photograph of [writer] Jane Bowles on the cover of the biography of her, A Little Original Sin. So it’s very short on the sides and

In those days they hadn’t gussied the Louvre up or put in glass pyramids

back and it’s doing its crazy vertical thing on top – you just perm the bejesus out of it. And it’s unfortunate that you can’t see what I’m wearing because it’s a coat that one of my friends made, one of the fashion people, who later went to work at Benetton; she made it for herself and I ended up buying it off her. The coat came almost to my ankles – and had shoulder pads of course. It’s still in my collection here in Chicago.

The reason I have that knowing look is because everybody who goes to art school has this idea that they’re going to be the one who makes it and all those other people are going to have to work at Starbucks. I was making artist books – my idea was the book as a total artwork – and I was convinced that I was going to take over the world with my printmaking. — Interview by Jessamy Calkin Bizarre Romance, stories by Audrey Niffenegger illustrated by Eddie Campbell, is published on Thursday (Jonathan Cape, £16.99)

Niffenegger in Paris, at the Louvre