Monday, February 25, 2013

I may never understand modern art


A couple weekends ago I went to the Centre Pompidou, which is a modern art museum in one of the most unique buildings I have ever seen. The building almost looks inside out and it has these tubes on the outside with escalators in them that you use to get from one floor to another. The view is amazing but it feels like you are in a hamster cage, not that it's necessarily a bad thing! Since it is right by Ile de la Cité there is an amazing view of Notre Dame (and basically the rest of Paris), but by the time I made it to the top to get the best view, my camera battery had died so unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the view to share. So for this blog I will just focus on the art aspect.

The front of the museum, note the plastic tubes!

I have mixed feelings about modern art. Sometimes I find it unique and creative and can understand and appreciate how the artist chose to represent a certain idea. However, sometimes I look at something and have no idea why it is art or why it ended up in a museum. Also I wonder what kind of drugs they were on. I’ll read the description, occasionally understand why it is important, but usually just end up even more perplexed and just hope the museum didn’t pay too much for it. I would probably appreciate more if I had a better background in art and could appreciate the influences and different art movements but alas I am but an ignorant American.

Since I was only there for about 2 hours I only got to see part of the museum and somehow ended up seeing the 1960-present section rather than the 1905 to 1960 section (because going in chronological order is for nerds!), which meant the art was just that much more ‘modern’. Whatever that’s supposed to mean. I’ll throw in some pictures of some of my favorite and the most memorable works that I saw. Unfortunately I saw my favorite piece there, which was a kind of 3D piece messing around with color, towards the end when my camera battery was dead so I don’t have a picture of it. Basically as you walk horizontally in front of it, the colors change and it was awesome. There was also this metal disk in front of another piece of metal with light moving on it that made it look like it was moving and it was basically just a way of hypnotizing people. I spent at least 5 minutes standing in front of it. It may have been more like 5 hrs. Not really but you get the idea.
Different figurines rotating around a
light to create the most epic shadows
Still have no idea what this is.
But the bottoms are filled with spices so it's
 a multi-sensoral experience.
Also pretty sure I just made up the word
 multi-sensoral.
But you get the idea.
A bunch of lit up words that mean 'vagina'.
I kid you not.
Well technically they mean" female sex organ"
But same thing


Supposedly a sofa.  I really wanted to play on it.
I'm still a kid at heart.
I probably should've been kept on a leash around things like this.
This is art. ?
Overall, if you like modern art, making fun of modern art, seeing amazing views of the city, or pretending to be a hamster, you have to go to the Centre Pompidou. It’s very well done. There is also a Dali exhibition right now but it actually costs money and the line was over an hour long (plus I just went to a Dali museum) so I didn’t go to see it, although I would like to go sometime during the week when it isn't as crowded. So yeah, stay tuned for my next post about my trip to Rouen on Saturday. It’s where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake so it must be interesting! Probably. 

1 comment:

  1. Bring that sofa home! That thing is suh-weet!

    ReplyDelete