Pompidou Center

Impressive......  It is such a strange looking building.   And it's an art museum.  All the "works" for the building  are on the outside.  In the first picture, above, that thing that snakes up the side is the esculator.  Brilliant!...to put it on the outside.  You can see the view as you rise up six stories to the top....watch the streets and people below get smaller and smaller as you rise up.  They put all that on the outside so that all the room inside the building could be for the Art.  It may not be pretty from the outside, but it makes the inside a marvel.

With apologies to some of my artist friends, to whom, I have already gone on and on to, about what I saw on the other side of all this exterior structure......here is a brief description.  Again, I'm so sorry, but they ask you not to take pictures so I would encourage you to go look at the website.  

They  have an extensive collection of 20th century art and up to today. It's kind of divided up into two parts:  art from 1905 to the 1960 and then 1960 to the present.   So there was definitely some impressionist stuff from the early 1900's and then some of the impressionists work as it changed into different styles, going into the 20th Century.  Fascinating stuff from every decade. 

Then they had two huge special exhibits.  I spent most of my time in the two exhibits.  Tried to see the permanent exhibits, but by then my leg was telling me to get off it.  As it was I was there for about six hours....on my feel most of that time.  I will go back at some point and see the rest of it.  I tried to make a quick look-see at it and realized, I really did want to see it better.

But the two special exhibits were fantastic.  One was called Matisse (Pairs and Series) and the other was called Dance Your Life.   The Matisse exhibit was fascinating.  It showed themes in his art in pairs, repetitions, variations, series, oppositions, etc.  Part of his process was to repeat the same composition with different canvases and treatments in pairs or series....some series consisting of many similar pieces.  From one work to the next he would vary the framing, the design, the touch, the color.....  It was sort of a way of exploring the nature of painting itself.  There is a video on the Pompidou Center website, under the sub-heading for the exhibit, which very nicely illustrates the point.  Worth taking a look.  It's only 3 minutes long.

The other special exhibit was also fabulous, especially if you like modern dance.  It's called Dance Your Life.  The title of the exhibit is taken from a quote by Isadora Duncan where she describes her dancing as "I dance my life."  Even Nietzsche said "and we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once."   This huge exhibit includes, pictures, lots and lots of film clips and films, paintings, installations, models....everything you can think of to do with modern dance and movement.  Just fabulous.  One of the first things you see on entering is a dimly lit room with a huge screen and on it they are showing a film of Nijinsky with what I assume is the Russian Ballet, performing Afternoon of the Fawn...from all those years ago - 1912, and it looks like it was shot yesterday, but it's actually Nijinsky!!  I was transfixed.  If any of you can get your hands on a video of it....if such a thing exists....you should....so worth seeing.  

On the outside the building, in a sort of couryard, they have a very whimsical fountain, that has weird sculptures that play with the water features.  It is called the Stravinski fountain.  It was not "doing it's thing" while I was there....I think they wait until a little later in the summer.  But here's a picture of how colorful it is.  This is just one of the sculptures.  There are quite a few of them.  It's interesting, because, taken from this angle, what you see in the background is one of the oldest churches in Paris.  Quite a contrast.