Pompidou Centre

We visited the Pompidou Centre today.  A lot less crowded than the Musee D'Orsay, possibly because it was a normal work day in Paris and possibly because it cost 13 euros each, as opposed to free entry at Musee d'Orsay.

We only got around to looking at the art on floor 5, which dates from 1900 to 1970 - the era I'm reading about in Will Gompertz's "What are you looking at?"

In particular, I've just been reading about cubism and how Picasso and Braque worked alongside each other developing it.   The book analyses  Braque's "violin and palette" and says Picasso did something similar.

Picasso's version was there in the Pompidou Centre!  In fact there were quite a few Picassos and I couldn't find a single Braque, which was a bit odd.  I didn't look very hard so maybe there were some Braques hidden away, but if I had been the curator I would have put Braque's version near Picasso's to recognise their collaboration and encourage comparison.

Similarly, I couldn't find a Georges Seurat.  I really like his "A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte".  And I've been reading about the colour theory pioneered by Seurat; putting dots of opposite colours next to each other to make the whole picture buzz with life.  I would have liked to examine that in more detail.

While at the Pompidou Centre I encountered a model of the "Monument to the Third International" by Vladimir Tatlin.  It's a sort of helter-skelter made out of wood that reminded me of the twisted wooden sculptures by Richard Deacon that Beryl and I looked at in London a couple of months ago.

When we were back in the hotel I picked up my Gompertz book and by pure coincidence the next thing I read was about Tatlin's tower - how it was meant to be a model for a huge structure, higher than the Eiffel Tower, to celebrate communism.  It never got built but Tatlin seems like my kind of guy - called himself a constructor rather than an artist.

Anyhow, it made me think - not so much about this particular exhibit but more about what's in places like the Pompidou Centre.  There's obviously a huge amount of history behind exhibits like Tatlin's tower - museums get a lot more interesting (and rewarding) when you know some of the background.

I've now gone on to read about the arrival of abstract art - Kandinsky's efforts to capture music in painting and Malevich's Black Square.  Getting tougher to understand!