Continuing with my series of photographs (finally!) from the most epic European dad-daughter trip of (probably?) our lifetime –
29 days from December 2023 to January 2024 via planes, trains and automobiles.
In this post, we remain in Paris and pay a visit to the Centre Pompidou and the Musée National d’Art Moderne.
Dad-Daughter Trip 2023/24: Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou is one of Paris’ most iconic (and controversial) buildings. It was designed by the architectural team of Richard Rogers, along with his wife Su Rogers, their partner Renzo Piano (who also designed the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC and the Shard in London), and Gianfranco Franchini.
It houses the Bibliothèque publique d’information (Public Information Library), a vast public library; IRCAM, a center for music and acoustic research; and the reason for my latest post – the Musée National d’Art Moderne, the largest museum for modern art in Europe.
Centre Pompidou’s funky red escalator tube
In 1969, Georges Pompidou, the Prime Minister of France, decided to create a venue like no other: a center for art and culture capable of housing both the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, a large public library, and a center for musical research and creation, all together in the same building situated in the heart of the capital.
Construction began in May 1972. Alas, Georges Pompidou died in 1974 before he could see the Centre Pompidou completed. It was inaugurated by his successor Valery Giscard d’Estaing in the presence of his wife Claude Pompidou on 31 January 1977.
“Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel” (1913) by French-Russian artist Marc Chagall
Pompidou’s wish for the Centre that bears his name was “to have a cultural centre like the ones they’ve been creating in the United States. It will be both a museum and a centre of creation, where the visual arts take up residence with music, film, books and audiovisual research.”(*)
The design for the center was inspired by the new generation of museums which were springing up across the USA. Museums like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim in New York. The goal was to create a structure that differed from the more traditional designs of museums like the Louvre; museums whose form and function had scarcely changed since the end of the 18th Century.
However, the Centre Pompidou caused uproar when first unveiled in 1977. Some admired its daring and inventive design, but others derided it as an “eyesore.” French newspaper Le Monde called the structure “…an architectural King Kong.” The Guardian simply deemed it “hideous.” Le Figaro announced: “Paris has its own monster, just like Loch Ness.”
The 540 feet long, 195 feet deep, and 136 feet high (10 levels) center has a dramatic, brightly colored, and industrial exterior, showing off a color-coded map of air-conditioning ducts (blue), water pipes (green), electricity lines (yellow), escalator tunnels (red), and escalator tunnels (clear). Its exterior appearance has been fiercely debated now for over 40 years.
“Ten Lizes” (1963) by Andy Warhol that is part of the permanent collection at the Centre Pompidou
What cannot be debated is the impressive collection of art housed inside the center’s Musée National d’Art Moderne. The Centre was our first stop the evening we arrived in Paris on December 7th of 2023. We started with “Picasso. Dessiner à l’infini” a remarkable exhibit that celebrated the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death by exploring the artist’s drawing practice through nearly one thousand works. It was the greatest retrospective ever organized of the artist’s drawings and engravings.
We would return again while in Paris to view the rest of the museum’s many offerings. It is a must-see museum in Paris and one of the highlights of our time in the “City of Light”. Nuff said.
Enjoy the photographs…
“Les toits rouges” (1953) by Marc Chagall
(Top L-R) “Esquisse pour Le Repos” (1968) & “Esquisse pour Nu mauve” (1968) by Marc Chagall
“À ma femme” (1933/1944) by Marc Chagall
“Cradle of Civilization with American Woman” by British-American artist Malcom Morley
“El marco” (1938) by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo
(Top L-R) “Untitled” (1912) by French medium Hélène Smith & “Nefertari as Lautrec” (1979) by French artist Jean-Paul Chambas
“Erinnerungen an die Spiegelsäle von Brüssel” (1920) by German painter Otto Dix
(Top L-R) “Coldroom I” (2020) by French artist Julie Curtiss & “O Salvador” (1966) by Brazilian painter Antônio Henrique Amaral
“Chat et plateau” (1910-1911) by Russian artist Natalia Goncharova
“Bewtiful & Stwong” (1971) by American painter Peter Saul
(Top L-R) “Il Ritornante” (1917-1918) by Italian artist Giorgio De Chirico & “Belinda Ade Kazeem-Kaminski with a Purple Lily Fan” (2020) by Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo
“Jeune Finlandaise” (1907) by Sonia Delaunay, a French artist born to Jewish parents. She was the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in 1964.
This colorful young lady looked like a piece of art so I asked if I could photograph her. She obliged…
“Picasso. Dessiner à l’infini”
The museum celebrated the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death by exploring the artist’s drawing practice through nearly one thousand works. It was the greatest retrospective ever organized of the artist’s drawings and engravings.
“Corps à corps: Histoire(s) de la photographie”
This fascinating exhibition brought together more than 500 photographs and documents by some 120 historical and contemporary photographers for a unique insight into photographic representations of the human race in the 20th and 21st centuries.
American documentary photographer and photojournalist Dorothea Lange
American sociologist and muckraker photographer Lewis Hine, whose photographs were instrumental in bringing about the passage of the first child labor laws in the United States.
Chris Killip, widely regarded as one of the most influential British photographers of his generation.
Photographer Tarrah Krajnak (self portrait above) was born in an orphanage in Lima, Peru in 1979 and adopted by Slovak Americans as a baby. Her work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Pinault Collection in Paris and Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
American photographer, composer, author, poet, and filmmaker Gordon Parks.
Russian-American photographer Roman Vishniac was best known for capturing on film the culture of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust.
French visual artist Annette Messager
Stay tuned for more images from our epic dad-daughter trip. In my next post, we bid “au revoir” to Paris, but not before paying a visit to the historic Musée du Louvre.
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All photographs taken the Xiaomi 13 Ultra, a remarkable camera phone that features a variable aperture 1-inch main camera and Leica co-engineered Summicron lens.
