Following
the successful rehang of its modern art collection
(1906-60), the Centre Pompidou has scored another hit with the new
presentation of its contemporary collection (1960-present), showing
individual pieces chronologically in loose groupings that bring
out correspondences and contrasts in colors, textures, forms, surfaces
and subject matter, while giving individual works the space they
need to express themselves.
Examples abound:
One of Yves Klein’s large monochrome “Anthropométries”
paintings, in his signature brilliant shade of blue, hangs across
from the wild slashings of Willem de Kooning’s “Untitled
XX,” with its softer pastel blues tempered by gray, peach,
white and touches of red and green. These are followed by Philip
Guston’s “Ravine,” with a muted blue-green sky;
the brilliant turquoise and screaming yellow of Georg Baselitz’s
“Les Demoiselles d’Olmo II,” with its upside-down
figures on bicycles; and Ellsworth Kelly’s “Dark Blue
Panel,” whose canvas seems to curl away from the wall, the
result of an optical illusion.
As you pass
by these paintings, enjoying their sensual use of color, don’t
miss Toni Grand’s sculpture “Double Column,” standing
in the center of the wide aisle. Partially painted with a soft blue-gray
and white moonscape, it seems to glow with light from within.
Niki de Saint
Phalle’s disturbing all-white sculpture “The Bride,”
with her desiccated face, tiny head on a huge body, and gown encrusted
with baby dolls, lizards, snakes and other animals, stands across
from John Chamberlain’s very different conception of a bride
as a sort of car wreck made of twisted pieces of white-painted chrome.
Side rooms
contain thematically arranged groups. One, “Forms and Attitudes,”
features post-minimalist sculpture from the 1960s and ’70s,
including Giuseppe Penone’s terracotta “amphora,”
which encompasses male/female and positive/negative in one piece,
with the imprint of the artist’s body topped by a creepily
evocative cast of the inside of a mouth on one side, and a very
feminine round shape on the other. In the same room, Eva Hesse’s
sinister larva-like “poles” with splashes of what look
like blood, make a perfect foil for Yayoi Kusama’s “My
Flower Bed.” The latter, made of reddish stuffed cotton gloves
and fabric-covered mattress springs, looks like a living, growing
thing and manages to be erect and flaccid at the same time.
Elsewhere,
a room-sized Sarkis installation evoking a factory, with a metal
sculpture and a recording of repetitive clanking sounds, contrasts
with the silence and warmth of the room next to it, lined with rolls
of felt and a silent piano in the center by – who else? –
Joseph Beuys (his felt-wrapped piano is shown elsewhere in the exhibition).
Another room
not to be missed, entitled “La Rose des Vents,” is a
wonderland of colorful, tactile works by artists from around the
world. Here we get a second chance (after the Pompidou Center's
recent “Africa Remix” exhibition) to see El Anatsui’s
beautiful monumental wall hanging, whose soft-looking, sensual surfaces
belie the material it is made of: bottle caps. This room is dominated
by Cai Guo-Qiang’s gigantic bamboo-and-wood airplane embedded
with sharp objects confiscated at an airport. Also on show here
is Gutai artist Atsuko Tanaka’s “Electric Dress,”
made of colored incandescent and neon light bulbs, which she wore
during a happening in Osaka in 1957.
This is just
a taste of what is on show (some 500 works). Other rooms focus on
design, with one devoted to inflatable furniture and structures,
and another to the work of Philippe Starck.
While the Centre
Pompidou isn’t offering the latest works from iconoclastic
artists here (luckily, we have the Palais de Tokyo for that), it
does provide an illuminating overview of what has been happening
in the art world over the past 50 years, with works by artists who
have stood the test of time. This is an exhibition worth returning
to a few times.
Heidi
Ellison
Centre
Pompidou: Place Georges Pompidou, 75004 Paris. Tel.: 01
44 78 12 33. Open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. (until 11 p.m. on Thursday and
Friday). Closed Tuesday. Métro: Rambuteau. Admission: €10.
www.centrepompidou.fr/
© 2007
Paris Update
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