Modern Art

Friday afternoon took us to the Center Georges Pompidou, a modern art museum commissioned by former French President Pompidou. Emma remembered visiting the Children’s Gallery last summer and asked to return. Though Mom and Dad aren’t huge fans of modern art, they knew the building would be air conditioned and remembered the spectacular view from the top of the building. Some say it rivals the view from the Eiffel Tower and might even better it because one can see the Eiffel Tower along with Paris’ other major monuments. The focus in the Children’s Gallery this year is “faces.” We created a variety of different faces using magnets, felt faces we could not see, changed faces into masks on one computer screen, altered our own faces on another, and saw many faces painted and sculpted, some by artists such as Matisse and Picasso. One of the special exhibitions on the top floor was a collection of sculptures by American artist David Smith. Some of them were impressive, while others definitely fit our impression of modern art. We asked Emma to guess the titles, which she did exactly on sculptures like “17 H’s” Yes, that was a sculpture made by using the letter “h” seventeen times. The main focus in the larger part of the museum this summer was on Cinema as art. It was interesting, but I think we preferred last year’s light selections. However, Emma did enjoy dancing in the room full of pink lights with one giant red shoe at the end. We agreed the exhibit would have been cooler had the shoe actually been a slide. A favorite exhibit of paintings and drawings was by Jean Bazaine, who we think is a genius, but not because of his artistic ability. The exhibit was titled “Artworks Accepted in Lieu” and after some reading we discovered the artist donated his works in lieu of paying taxes he owed the French. Which brings us to a question for Gramps: “Think this will work for us in the U.S.???”
After a little over two hours in the world of modern art, we were spent. The day’s highlight came minutes later at the crazy fountain located in the square Igor Stravinsky. When we visited last summer it was on a rainy day. Apparently on sunny days many get into the fountain. So, Daddy rolled up his shorts and accompanied a gleeful Emma into the fountain. Mommy, of course, needed to stay out of the water to take the pictures! When they’d finished playing, we rung out Emma’s dress and went back to our area in search of food. Chinese was the selection for the evening and Emma fell asleep in her fried rice around 5:30 pm. We carried her back to the apartment where she napped until around 8:00 pm.