For our third day in Paris (Monday--eep, I'm really behind), Jenny and I aimed at more recent histories of the city--of-'about' and of-'by'--by combining a visit to the Centre Pompidou, Piano's / Roger's / Archini's Eiffelesque homage to pop art (the structural elements are exteriorized, with different functions distinguished by primary-color coding) housing the National Museum of Modern Art, with window-shopping on the way back from the Beaubourg to Montmartre. From this perspective, the city both hosts a gallery that is itself a work of--controversial--architectural art, and is a gallery of sorts, with displays whose architectures in turn are arranged roughly according to arrondissement, preserving aspects of older local characters while also speaking more recent visual languages, especially from the late 19th century. All of that seemed emphasized by the time of year, when swathes of the city are done up for the holidays, les fêtes.
That's evident from even the beginning of our day, when we got to see two more of Montmartre's works of art: "Le passe-muraille" (upper left of the quartet), visualizing a short story by Marcel Aymé, in which a man living in that quartier discovers he can walk through walls--wonderfully, the sculpture is by Jean Marais, actor beloved of Jean Cocteau, e.g., la bête in La belle et la bête, another fantasia; and Baron's and Kito's "Le mur des je t'aime," a wall paneled in hundreds of ceramic tiles showing "I love you" written in hundreds of languages. Together these two works seek to transform walls or borders, which otherwise separate, into places of contact: the sculpture's lower hand has been polished too a high gloss by countless touches over the years, and the queue for photos in front of le mur was sweet and orderly--all without any oversight.
Serendipitous connections continued in a way, more sentimentally, over the hour's walk to the Pompidou: a street named after a Stevens, and a restaurant called "Marcelle." We didn't stop there--there wasn't time--but it was nice to see a concrete shape taken by a more abstract thought my family has had for decades: our Marcelle, my grandma, always wanted to go Paris and never got to. Jenny and I have spoken about her thusly a few times, especially since our visit here coincides with Hanukkah, so in a small proxy way, she has. !זיכרונה לברכה
Then our destination for the afternoon, the Pompidou. We skipped the temporary exhibitions (including one devoted to text / Francis Bacon: although I love classical receptions, and he's got an Oresteia, neither one of us is really lit afire by his art) to divide our time between the two gallery floors, 5 for modern (1905-60) and 4 for contemporary (60-present). I won't annotate all that follows except to emphasize that the experience of viewing art in a city historically so concerned with it was intriguing: the atmosphere of the galleries was contemplative and adventurous ... a few very long attempts at selfies in front of works notwithstanding. (I'll also name a few favorites from the photos that follow.)
Top center is a brilliant Richter, 1024 Colors, which seem to flicker and move as the eye tracks across them: a terrific step beyond formal exercise into 'animation' always constituted in the mind's eye. Middle center is a Rohrschachian Pollock, splendid in its spread and form, although even more powerful Pollock will follow. I don't remember whose / what is the middle right, but I loved it, reminded of Hartigan's Dido in the McNay Museum of Art.
Left is a detail from Yves Klein, whose famous blue ... well, obviously; right, ditto from Joan Miró! (Additional exclamation points for sense of color in relation to texture.)
Additional play with use of space especially in works of art juxtaposed to raise questions about meaning being implicit or depending on observation. (Top right, again I don't remember artist or title, was stunning and is a new favorite.)
And speaking of juxtaposition, these two pieces within eyeline of each other just did so much with relatively negative space, different purposes for--and exploding ideas about--'the same' color, and historical context: the bottom is in context of Hungary's occupation by the Soviet Union, such that, as in the top image, any play or particularly retirement implied is shadowed, a kind of distortion as reflected in the water and embodied in the 'incorrect' background.
... and so much more! After the Pompidou we walked back towards Montmartre through Vivienne, enjoying the arcades--I thought of Baudelaire's wonderful "Rêve parisien," describing the city as "Babel d'escalier et d'arcades / c'était un palais infini"--especially the eponymous Vivienne, done up grandly for the holidays. It includes the splendid Librairie Jousseaume, where I happily became the first customer to acquire their newly designed tote:
... and an outpost of the café chain Valentin, where the server spoke with us unhappily about the ongoing grève: thanks to it, she walks three hours every day for a job that then has her entirely on her feet. Her comments joined a chorus: we've spoken with literally no one who supports the transit strike, as workers are penalized in fact by slow or non-existent transit, businesses are suffering from lack of foot-traffic and reduced tourism, etc.. For us, the strike has meant much walking, with the positive effect of seeing much of the city at that slower pace (à la flâneur), but at the end of long days--and when rushing to be on time for a reservation--with the negative complement of car-service. Only on Thursday did we finally have a trip for which the métro made sense: our only use the whole visit. At the least, an interesting experience of the city, echoing in ways Monday's mixture of contemporary and--in society-minded France--traditional ...
Finally, in keeping with our contemporary theme for the day, we rounded out the evening with a nice dinner, one of Jenny's favorite moments so far (pictured), at Vava in Montmartre:
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