Le Centre Pompidou, or, things I did not have the capacity to understand at 12.

I went down to the Centre today with a bunch of girls from my classes today before our dégustation de vin et fromage (wine and cheese tasting) which, as a sidenote, was very, very cool. It was all in French, which at this point is to be expected - I'm noticing that the French, including my teachers, can all definintely speak English, but really, really would rather not. Whenever we tell various administrators that we speak french (as not all the students at the University of Chicago Center do - the other programs have classes taught in English) the French tend to immediately breathe a sigh of relief and launch off. So it was definitely nice to have the wine and cheese tasting done the "right" way, in the sommelier's native language. The guy who did it was very nice, though also quite distainful of our complete lack of knowledge. After he carefully explained everything, however, I feel an urge to become a total wine snob while I'm here. It really is a lot of fun to know something about the different varieties and such.

Also, Christine will be happy to know that I have decided that I was entirely wrong about goat cheese. That stuff is excellent.

Anyway, Le Centre Pompidou.

I don't remember very much, honestly, from the first time I went to Paris, with the family in 2000 or so, when I was 12. This is odd, because I usually have a creepily clear memory, but I think the truth is that much of Paris didn't make a particularly huge impact on my 12 year old self. I remember enjoying it very much; I loved the pastries, and I remember certain things I adored - Chartres, in particular, but I also remember just going to a lot of art museums and not really getting it. I remember particularly disliking Le Centre Pompidou, the modern art museum. This is because I was stupid and 12. The museum is awesome. The French really know how to write painting descriptions; the museum was incredibly informative, and actually managed to make me appreciate modern art, which I very rarely do.

I am overly pleased with how this picture came out, which is why I'm posting it. Le Centre Pompidou is a really cool building just in general, with lots of exposed steel, exterior escalators, and great views of Paris from the top floor. As an added bonus, we now have student cards which blatantly lie and say we're art history students at Université Paris VII, so we get into all art museums, essentially, for free. There is no piece of paper I love more than that ID card.




The view from the top floor.













I'm not usually a fan of modern art, as I said, and this painting is the kind of thing I would usually brush off as weird. However, the useful little blurb next to the painting tells me that all of the tiny scribbles (which you can only barely see in this photo) that form the background of this painting are in fact the words of various philosophical texts painstakingly written out in layers over many, many months. The patterns and imperfections formed by the overlapping words were what he considered his favorite thing about the painting. Thought that was kind of awesome. The name of the painting is escaping me at the moment, but the artist is a contemporary of Jackson Pollack's; I'll have to look it up.

Anyway, it's 10:46 here, and I have to be up at 6:00 to head to Poitiers for the day, which should be pretty awesome. Au revoir!