The "Pompidou" exhibition is one piece from each year from 1906 (selected as the year that the Fauves burst into public view - I guess the first major movement in modern art of the 20th century) to 1977 (the year that the Pompidou itself was established). It was super crowded so I engaged with the exhibition mostly on the level of paying attention to the curatorial decisions that have been made to select these representative-but-not pieces (one of the exhibition notes makes the point that the chronological ordering evades the temptation to tell a story through 'isms') while trying to be open to any individual pieces that might jump out at me.
The ones that I took particular note of: Frantisek Kupka - "Vertical Planes I" (1912); Alberto Magnelli - "Lyrical Explosion No 8" (1918); Robert Delaunay - "The Eiffel Tower" (1926 - these are striking whenever one comes across them in their boldness); Seraphine Louis - "Tree of Paradise" (1929); Pierre Bonnard - "Nude by the Bath Tub" (1931 ... and Bonnard has made me pay attention a few times now I think); Otto Freundlich - "My Sky is Red" (1933); Pablo Gargallo - "The Prophet" (1933-36); Kandinsky - "Thirty" (1937 - an exercise almost in monochrome, black on very pale blue: "The 'content' of painting is painting"); Edith Piaf's "La vie en rose" in lieu of a work from 1945 given the significance of the year in the world's history (a song which has picked up some proper emotional associations for me in the past few years); Henry Valensi - "Symphony in Pink" (1946 - musical painting); Matisse - "Large Red Interior" (1948); Nicolas de Stael - "Composition" (1949); Giacometti - "Woman of Venice V" (1956 - pulled me up and made me reflect again on the poignancy of his figures); Simon Hantai - "Memory of the Future" (1957); Victor Vasarely - "Arny (Shadow)" (1967-68). As the length of that list probably makes clear, it was a very good exhibition despite the crowds.
And the "Dialogue" one collects work from five contemporary Japanese artists all of whom work in wood. Best were Yoshimasa Tsuchiya's warmly glowing animals (the mythical and larger scale ones especially memorable) with their crystal eyes and Yoshihiro Suda's extremely realistic plant sculptures, installed in unlikely spots around the gallery space so as to appear to be growing from walls, spaces and so on.
The ones that I took particular note of: Frantisek Kupka - "Vertical Planes I" (1912); Alberto Magnelli - "Lyrical Explosion No 8" (1918); Robert Delaunay - "The Eiffel Tower" (1926 - these are striking whenever one comes across them in their boldness); Seraphine Louis - "Tree of Paradise" (1929); Pierre Bonnard - "Nude by the Bath Tub" (1931 ... and Bonnard has made me pay attention a few times now I think); Otto Freundlich - "My Sky is Red" (1933); Pablo Gargallo - "The Prophet" (1933-36); Kandinsky - "Thirty" (1937 - an exercise almost in monochrome, black on very pale blue: "The 'content' of painting is painting"); Edith Piaf's "La vie en rose" in lieu of a work from 1945 given the significance of the year in the world's history (a song which has picked up some proper emotional associations for me in the past few years); Henry Valensi - "Symphony in Pink" (1946 - musical painting); Matisse - "Large Red Interior" (1948); Nicolas de Stael - "Composition" (1949); Giacometti - "Woman of Venice V" (1956 - pulled me up and made me reflect again on the poignancy of his figures); Simon Hantai - "Memory of the Future" (1957); Victor Vasarely - "Arny (Shadow)" (1967-68). As the length of that list probably makes clear, it was a very good exhibition despite the crowds.
And the "Dialogue" one collects work from five contemporary Japanese artists all of whom work in wood. Best were Yoshimasa Tsuchiya's warmly glowing animals (the mythical and larger scale ones especially memorable) with their crystal eyes and Yoshihiro Suda's extremely realistic plant sculptures, installed in unlikely spots around the gallery space so as to appear to be growing from walls, spaces and so on.
