My daughter and I visited the Pompidou Museum, a GIANT modern art museum in the heart of Paris. I probably wouldn’t have gone there but my daughter wanted to go so we went and I am so glad we did. It’s an amazing place. It has five floors of art and we only went to the two that had more 2D art, though we saw enough 3D art and videos and all kinds of other things on those two floors. I was pretty excited to come across this Chuck Close painting. He paints from photographs and grids his canvas, meticulously filling in each grid with bright circles of paint. When you step back the painting comes to life. You can see some of the detail below:
Being a modern art museum, there was a lot of “interesting” art. One room was titled “Woman who cries” and it was a short film of British school children talking about a video they had been show of a woman crying. Why was she crying? The children had all kinds of ideas: she didn’t get what she wanted for her birthday, or she was so happy she was crying. It was a strange concept. And then in another room, what you see below.
And then there was the giant mushroom.
And a . . . . oh wait, that really is a chair. 🙂
And the little video of a woman dancing in a flowing dress that made her look like she had butterfly wings.
And finally an entire room of . . . . . color. Actually this one was kinda cool because you could see where the colored panels overlapped you would get a different color.
It was quite an experience. There were also paintings by many of the modern masters: Bonnard, Picasso, I saw a Mark Rothko, a few Modiglianis, and many many others. Definitely worth the visit.