St. Patrick’s Day at the Centre Georges Pompidou… #18 – Accomplished!
Saturday was St. Patrick’s Day, and to celebrate I decked myself out in green and headed to Paris with two other assistants to spend a very amusing afternoon at the Georges Pompidou Center.
For those of you who are not francophiles, the Georges Pompidou Center is Paris’ museum of modern art, named for Georges Pompidou, former French prime minister and president. It’s a very unique building, and looks like this:
If you’ve never seen the building, you’ve probably seen the fountains, which have been in loads of films (including Sabrina with Harrison Ford).
Once you’ve got your tickets for the museum, you actually take escalators that are inside the tubes (on the outside of the building) to go up into the galleries. The tubes are transparent and the views of Paris from the main museum floor are, like so many views in Paris, amazing.
I’d visited the Georges Pompidou Center once years before (the summer I studied in Paris) but I’d forgotten how much fun it is! We spent all afternoon wandering through the main galleries, admiring some of the art, laughing at others… That’s the great thing about modern art – there is always something interesting to look at!
I wish I could remember the title, but it involved France and femininity.
You've got to wonder how some things ever made it into the museum.
Uniquely fun
The Georges Pompidou Center is a truly multimedia collection of art as well… In many of the rooms, there are various sized movies projected onto the walls (everything from abstract shapes to seemingly hallucinogenic-inspired shorts to one very bizarre small projection of a man pulling his own mouth open wide with his hands…)
Like this, but a real man, really stretching his mouth open. That was it.
Part of the retro room
There are also tiny rooms solely dedicated to film as art, one room filled with colorful retro furniture, and still another room with a rainbow-colored glass wall… well, I really can’t describe it, you just have to see it…
My favorite room was without a doubt this cave-room, totally painted in black and white stripes (from floor to ceiling) that you could actually go into and pose and take pictures that looked like you were in a cartoon-y, claymation world… We took several.
One of my favorites of the cave pics
The entire afternoon was made even more enjoyable because Becca and I were dressed to the nines for Saint Patrick’s Day – She in a bright green dress and shamrock bling-earrings, and I in my bobbly shamrock headband! We positively affected at least 15 Parisian lives that day, really! You see, for the most part, the French don’t do ridiculous things for any holiday, so we were somewhat of an oddity, but an enjoyable one! Several told us that our outfits made them smile, one girl took pictures of us, lots of people even wished us a happy St. Patrick’s day!
After having visited all 3 of Paris’ big art museums over the past few months (Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, and Georges Pompidou), I’ve got to say that if you’re looking for a good time, The Georges Pompidou Center is probably your best bet, in my opinion.
Really eye-catching and interesting...
...but on closer inspection, also a little disturbing.
Life imitating art.
