Pompidou Center

From the outside the center looks like an oil refinery - it's turned inside out. All air and water ducts, lifts and escalators are visible on the outside. Building attracts attension and can't be bypassed unnoticed. In the environment where everything dates back in to the same period of time - the most save way of building something new is to make it totally different. I guess it was one of the ideas when Pompidou Center was designed - to make it really stand out - because it would be tasteless just to imitate architectural style of surrounding buildings. My favorite from all the art museums that I have seen by my own eyes is still Museum of Modern Art in Graz, Austria. Go check it out! It's really weird - in a positive way.

To go through all the exhibition rooms in Pompidou Center takes time - I think that I used something like 5 hour all together. On upper floors there was a exhibition called "Airs de Paris". The theme was urban city and it's variable environments. Exhibition included photographs, video installations and many other mediums of art. The title "Airs de Paris" takes its inspiration directly from the ready-made work by Marcel Duchamp, dated from 1919. There was interesting section of industrial desing in one room. Apparently there are plans to make underwater research center and a motor vehicle for the moon. I was taken by the detail and desing of these models - and there was even a great introduction 3D-animation of these projects. Beautiful work!

Annette Messager - 'les messsagers' exhibition was very surprising. Her medium is stuffed animals, soft toys, fabric, wool, photographs and drawings. Messager rips teddy bears and other sweet fluffy animals in pieces and hangs them on a rope from the roof. There was one room full of movement and hissing sound of engines. Movement was caused by the stuffed animals going up and down or just traveling around route in a floor and on the ceiling. Sound came from the small motors that were pulling the strings which were moving the animals. Exhibition included works from 70's to present day - so the presentation of Messagers works was quite broad. 

On entering Philippe Mayaux's exhibition I saw a sign on the wall which warned of the explicid nature of the exhibition. Some of the works were grotesque displays of food servings made out of human body parts - mainly from fingers, eyes and genitals. Without thinking about what they were made of - these foods looked quite pretty and decorative. Only little detail were bothering me and that was the small plastic flies that were placed on a foods. They were cheap looking and took idea away from seeing these decorative body parts as something else than they were. Mayaux had also painted thirteen small pictures of a bark of different trees. He had included the name of the tree which bark was represented in the painting. Letters looked like they were engraved to the skin of the tree. Mayaux's works are very detailed and they can be looked from a close distance - if you don't feel disgusted of various elements in his works. 

By the way - if you want to see beautiful ladies then go to a art exhibition. You will never see so much beauty in anywhere else than in the art exhibition. Nowadays art is ugly but the spectators are beautifull. How paradoxical!