Museums & Markets {of Paris}: Design

Showing posts with label Design. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

The Beaubourg-Effect at le Centre Pompidou

In the past, "the building chosen to stand for the institutionalized museum is itself representative of a particular building type familiar to all of us who have visited the world's great museums," as described by Rosalind E. Krauss in Postmodernism's Museum Without Walls.

Le Centre Pompidou, inaugurated on January 31st, 1977 as a cultural center, sought to change that notion.

Founded upon the concept of transparency as a means to create a democratic living space for the arts and the public, it appears to be inside out with structural aspects colorfully exposed. Clearly this speaks to Stephanie Moser's reference in The Devil is the Detail: Museum Displays and the Creation of Knowledge: "'design plays a crucial role--not just in presenting content, but in actually creating it, (Serrell 2006:33)." Especially being that each color has a specific function: red=visitor circulation, yellow=electrical, blue=air, green=water.

As such, seeing the building for the first time is quite a shock. But it's nothing compared to walking inside. The main hall is open yet overwhelming with the opportunities to access a public library (Bpi), a center for industrial design (Cci), a contemporary music center (IRCAM), an auditorium, theater and cinema spaces as well as shops, cafés, a self-service post office and the acclaimed Restaurant le Georges.

There's "a heightened sense of individual free choice--a major theme of the building as a whole," similar to the MoMA museum in New York as Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach explained in The Museum of Modern Art as Late Capitalist Ritual: An Iconographic Analysis. Except, of course, that each facility has a separate entrance, fee, and security checks.

It's somewhat of a contradictory space, as Jean Baudrillard criticized in The Beaubourg-Effect: Implosion and Detterence; "a fluid communicative exterior--cool and modern--and an interior uptight with old values."

I won't say I agree completely, at least not as harsh of an extent, but I do see where he's coming from. Although intended to be revolutionary, the museum has mostly become what we expect museums to be: displayed art in an organized matter (sometimes by artist if they or their benefactor is wealthy enough) that is meant to be seen not touched.

As Emma Baker said in The museum in a postmodern era: the Musée d'Orsay case study: "...the building itself conceived as a kind of box divided by movable partitions for the sake of flexibility. The Pompidou Centre originally exemplified this type of museum, but its immense open spaces were converted into conventionally solid and permanent galleries during the 1980s."

Particular artists currently featured there are challenging this shift with interactive and/or multimedia displays of familiar objects in typical settings. An artistic feature which I don't doubt maintains the uniqueness of le Centre Pompidou in the eyes and experience of the average visitor.

And yet, to quote Andrea Fraser's article, Isn't this a wonderful place? (A tour of the Guggenheim Bilbao): "Like the philanthropic act of donation through which so many objects find their way into museum collections and on which so many museums themselves depend, the aesthetic and its institutions are both the product and the manifestation of a distance from economic necessity of economic power that is 'first and foremost a power to keep economic necessity at arm's length.'"

Le musée et exhibitions à le Centre Pompidou

Où? Place Georges Pompidou, 75004 Paris

Quand? Daily except Tuesdays, 11am-9pm

Comment? Metro Rambuteau, Hôtel de Ville, Châtelet-Les Halles, RER Châtelet-Les Ailles, Bus 21, 29, 38, 47, 58, 69, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, 81, 85, 96

Monday, September 24, 2012

Musée Carnavalet

This past Sunday, my best friend and I accidentally stumbled upon le Musée Carnavalet. Admittingly, we hadn't meant to pay the museum a visit, but after wandering through the exhibits for a while and then being unable to find our way out (thus wandering through the exhibits a while longer), I'm pretty sure we covered the entirety of Paris' history...

Stunning, isn't it all? I should get lost more often. Paris is apparently the most perfect place for it.

Musée Carnavalet

Où? 23 rue de Sévigné, 75003 Paris

Quand? Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-6pm

Comment? Metro Saint-Paul, Rambuteau, Chemin Vert; Bus 29, 69, 76, 96

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Behind the scenes at MAM

In my last post I spoke of the MAM's new logo and my first visit to its permanent exhibitions. What I failed to mention, however, is that I also had a unique opportunity to go behind the scenes of the museum. It was fascinating to see the invisible hands and the hard work that gets put into even the "simplest" of exhibits. We had the chance to meet the curators behind the upcoming exhibitions and listen as they spoke about the artist and their work. Amazing, right?

It was. Modern and contemporary art museums like this one are exceptionally mobile and the ideology and intention behind each work and each exhibit can easily be lost in that movement. Although I believe they are still more visible than those at other art museums, they're difficult to grasp for the untrained eye and uninformed mind. Discovering Bertille Bak's inspiration for her work (marginal communities) and the role these people play in creating her exhibits was incredible. She literally spent months living amongst nomadic Romanians. Then, to learn the great historical influences in Slovakian artist, Roman Ondák's works! My gosh. I would have no idea otherwise, let alone such a thorough understanding. As I recently read in Museum Materialities:

"...most often it [the object-information package] does so almost entirely through textually-provided meaning, and threatens to foreclose a more basic, but no less potent, bodily and emotional response to the material itself (c.f. Greenblatt's view of what museums have lost in evolving from temples of wonder to temples of resonance, 1991).

Next week, when I go to the opening, a night when the museum will surely be all decked out in their entertaining best, I'll have that privileged background to lead me through the halls of the MAM. What an honor.

Friday, September 21, 2012

(The new) Musée d'Art Modern de la Ville de Paris

Yesterday, I visited the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, otherwise known as the MAM. They've recently launched a new logo to unify the variety of ever-changing modern and contemporary art exhibitions. It's design is representative of the museum's three levels, active state of being, and ability to evoke shock and surprise.

Being as it was my first time, I was certainly taken aback by its contents. I'm especially looking forward to the opening night of the Bertille Bak's "Circuits" video installations and Roman Ondák's solo show! Until then, here's a look at the permanent exhibitions and the Generation Design exhibit in conjunction with ELLE Décoration: