Free Museum Day: Louvre & Centre Pompidou

Today was our last chance to check out the Paris museums for free (first Sunday of every month).  Our plan of attack was to spend a few hours in the Louvre in the morning then go home, take a break, and tackle the Pompidou Center in the evening.  Despite the long line to get in via the Louvre's Pyramid entrance, the Porte des Lions entrance did not let us down and we were in without any line at all, other than waiting for the five people who walked in ahead of us to take their stuff off the security x-ray belt.  We then zoomed past the Italian Renaissance paintings to the pyramid area.

From there we explored some of the galleries we didn't see on our previous visits.  Scantily clad people seemed to be the order of the day.

Grande Odalisque by Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres

Venus de Milo

Remember this guy from our walk along the Promenade Plantée?

I tried to hold back from taking too many photos of specific pieces of art.  Instead I tried to capture an overall impression of the museum galleries. 

Italian renaissance paintings

large-format French paintings

Northern Europe late gothic sculpture

Italian sculpture

Greek antiquities

View down into the central sculpture court

Something people always say is "Remember to look UP when you're in the Louvre".  So I made sure to do that from time to time as well...

We appreciate the Louvre because its layout allows you to go from room to room without having to backtrack (very much) through rooms you've already seen.  It's actually a pretty good museum design, even though the building wasn't originally intended to be a museum.

In direct contrast was the Pompidou Center (to me, anyway). The escalator runs along just one side of the building.  This is the main pathway to get to all the floors.  On a crowded day like today, there are considerable traffic issues when there are a lot of people coming down and someone who is going up (on the outside lane) needs to cross over into the museum space.

But then again, the plexiglass walls of the escalator do give a great view towards the northwest of Paris.

My other main complaint was that there wasn't really a good "flow" from one exhibit room to the next...we found ourselves walking back through rooms we had already seen to get to new areas.  It's almost as if the designers focused more on how the building would look from the outside than how it would work as a museum.  Anyway, the classic modern "greats" were very well-represented, including Braque, Miró, Dalí , Kandinsky, Matisse, and Picasso.

Top right: Henri Matisse Pink and White Head, bottom right: Pablo Picasso Portrait of Young Girl

Dado's La Grande Ferme deserves a closer look.

The more recent modern art was a mixed bag...some of it I really liked, like Chuck Close's portrait of  Arme Glimcher (Arme).

Other pieces that I found interesting were this (perhaps?) couch, this reworked chain-link fence, this out-of-focus-on-purpose painting, and this...well, whatever this is.

Clockwise from left: V. Panton Siége, Demakersvan Panneau Lace Fence, M. Fornes *Y/Struc/Surf., B. Frize Oma

 
Here are three works by Yves Klein.  Amazingly, his monochromatic paintings have sold for multi-millions.  This gives me a serious case of "Uhhh...I can do that".

Don't be deceived, Mimmo Paladino's Elmo has nothing to do with the popular Sesame Street character.

Some of the art just seemed very pretentious.  Definitely do not touch the oversize croquet pegs leaning against the wall.  Stay behind the black line on the floor, please.

André Cadere Six Round Wooden Sticks

If you hadn't guessed, Modern art isn't really my cup of tea.  But usually I can understand why it is art.  There were a couple of cases where I honestly felt like the artist was "putting one over" on the art dealers, curators, general populace, etc.

Allan McCollum's Plaster Surrogates 1985

This looks like something you might see at a Home Depot or Mr. Bricolage:

Marthe Wéry Peinture Venise 82

And this one just looks like a kindergarten geography/craft lesson gone awry: 

Thomas Hirschhorn Outgrowth 2005

I'm sure it all comes down to personal preference...art is very subjective.  For me, it's enough to call it art if it looks like the artist at least put a little creative effort into the work.  Painting/arranging boards, hanging blacked-out picture frames, and papier mâché-ing a bunch of globes seems to me a bit like phoning it in.

But...one of the very nice things about the Pompidou Center is the view from the roof terrace.  It was early evening and a little overcast but we could still make out Sacré Coeur.

We could also see the colorful figurines in the Stravinsky Fountain down below.

We thoroughly enjoyed our last free museum day, it is wonderful that the city of Paris opens its museums to the public once a month like this.  A fun fact that I've recently learned from a tour guide is that if you looked at every piece of artwork in the Louvre for 3 seconds it would take 3 months solid to see it all.  I am sure we only scratched the surface, and probably missed many great artworks, but for now it will have to do.