Centre Georges Pompidou (7/11/2016)

Monday, July 11, 2016 (continued)
Across Place Igor Stravinsky stood the ungainly Centre Georges Pompidou.

Centre Georges Pompidou (1971-1977) was designed by the British
architect Richard Rogers, and two Italian architects; Renzo Piano
and Gianfranco Franchini, as an exoskeleton with the
infrastructure on the outside (KSS)

We went first to Atelier Brancusi, the workshop of Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi who lived his last 50+ years in Paris. He willed his workshop to the state, and it was moved here in 1997.

Atelier/Workshop Brancusi with a roof covered with pigeons

Inside the workshop, 137 sculptures, 87 pedestals,
41 drawings, and 2 paintings were displayed (KSS)

Also all of Brancusi's tools and some personal items

Now to enter Centre Georges Pompidou

and take the escalator to the top floor (KSS)

A view down on Place Georges Pompidou, with the
center's air vents in the background

View from the 6th floor of Paris, where you can see the dome of the Pantheon beyond
the square towers of Notre Dame to the left, the church of St-Merri in front, and the towers
of St-Jacques and Montparnasse (1969-1973, designed by architects Eugène Beaudouin,
Urbain Cassan and Louis Hoym de Marien) to the right (KSS)

The fifth floor of Centre Georges Pompidou houses the Musée National d'Art Moderne/National Museum of Modern Art with art from about 1905 to 1980. (We were not able to visit the Musée d'Orsay that covers the period of art between the Louvre and Pompidou.)

Studies for stained glass windows (1948-1952) of
Chapelle du Rosaire at Vence, by Henri Matisse (KSS)

The groundwork of Impressionism led to Modernism about 1910, which was centered in the Montmartre section of Paris.

Homme à la Guitare/Man with Guitar (1914)
by Georges Braque, in Cubist style (not to
be confused with his Femme à la Guitare!) (KSS)

Cubism seems to take pictures of a subject seen from many angles and combines shards of those pictures into one painting.

La Bal Bullier/The Bullier Ball (1913) by Sonia Delauney;
fragmented yet colorful (KSS)

Formes circulaires, Soleil no 2/Circular Forms,
Sun No. 2 (1912-1913) by Robert Delauney;
he and his wife, Sonia, have a similar style

À la Russie, aux ânes et aux autres/To Russia, the
Asses and the Others (1911) by Marc Chagall,
who had his own style (KSS)

Improvisation XIV (1910) by Wassily Kandinsky;
Abstract Art using new patterns from lines and colors (KSS)

In the 1920s, the center of Modern Art moved to the cafés of Montparnasse in Paris.

Entassement réglé/Ordered Compression
(1938) by Wassily Kandinsky (KSS)

Composition en rouge, bleu et blanc II/
Composition in red, blue and white II (1937) by
Piet Mondrian; art reduced to basic building blocks (KSS)

Le Coq/The Rooster (1935) by Constantin Brancusi,
sculptures reduced to their essence (KSS)

Portrait of Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926)
by Otto Dix (who went through a variety of 'isms')
in Expressionist style (KSS)

Guillaume Tell/William Tell (1930) by
Salvador Dali in Surrealist style; jumbled
bizarre images of a fast-moving world (KSS)

Le Modèle rouge/Red Model (1935)
by René Magritte; Surrealism as a
dream/nightmare (KSS)

World War II resulted in the death of values, led to cynicism and decadence with distorted reality made ugly. The center of Existentialism moved to the St-Germain-des-Prés area of Paris.

Le Stropiat/The Cripple (1948) by René Magritte (KSS)

Abstract Expressionism where the center of the art world moved to New York City.

Number 26A, Black and White (1948) by
Jackson Pollock; the focus shifts to the art of
creating, the dance between the artist
and materials (KSS)

Shining Forth (to George) (1961) by Barnett Newman; huge
but spare canvases indicate we are but a speck in the universe (KSS)

Ten Lizzes (1963) by Andy Warhol; Pop Art questions society's
values where we are bombarded with commercial
repetition until an image or subject is cheapened (KSS)

Down to the fourth floor and contemporary art of the 1980s to the present, where "the paintbrush has been traded for the blowtorch, then a computer mouse," and mixed media and art installations engage multiple senses and audience participation.

Trame altérée/Altered Frame (1965) by Julio le Parc,
an example of Kinetic Art (KSS)

See the kinetic art moving in this video:

Puppets (2009) by Rirkrit Tiravanija and Philippe Parreno,
with a likeness of Tiravanija on the right, and Parreno 3rd from right;
they are actually ventriloquist dummies (KSS)

A special exhibit: Homage to Jacqueline Picasso, Pablo Picasso's muse and second wife.

Pablo Picasso and Jacqueline in California (undated) (KSS)

Jacqueline seated in a rocking chair (1954)
by Pablo Picasso (KSS)

Horizontal (1974) by Alexander Calder,
an example of Abstract Surrealism (KSS)

We headed back to the Latin Quarter.

Free samples of Coca-Cola's "adult" soft drink,
Fïnley Mojito, offering the taste of the cocktail
without the alcohol (KSS)

Cleveland Cavaliers LeBron James and Kyrie Irving in Paris,
with Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and Paul George (KSS)

Dinner at Restaurant La Harpe, where we had the fixed price menu giving you an appetizer, main dish and dessert:

Escargots à la Bourguignonne: the implements for eating snails

The "proper" way to eat moules/mussels by using the shell to grab the meat

For the main dish, Kent had a turkey cutlet, and crême brulée for dessert.
Next: Seine Cruise.