Montmartre & Pompidou

Yesterday and today have been my “days off” (even though I gave a tour last night). So Megan and I decided that we were going to sleep in and go exploring (in that order).

First on the list: Montmartre and Sacre-Coeur. A little history for you: Montmartre (Mount of the Martyr) is where St. Denis (the patron saint of France) was decapitated by the Romans. Legend has it that after they chopped off his head, he picked it up, washed the dirt off, and then walked 7 miles to his final resting place (and where the Church of St. Denis is now located).

Montmartre has always been the “artist” district of Paris. Picasso, Van Gogh, Renior, Toulouse-Lautrec have all lived here at some point in time. In 1871, the Paris Commune started in this area.

Now, Paris isn’t really known for its hills, but Montmartre is the highest place in town. Megan and I took the metro to “Abbesses” which is supposedly the deepest metro station in Paris. We saw this little jewel of information in the guide book and just kinda laughed... until we started climbing the stairs. “Abbesses” is now known at the “Abyss” – we just kept climbing and climbing... I began to think of Franz’s advice for life, “When possible, take the stairs.” Thank you for that nugget of wisdom... but that didn’t keep my legs from burning.

We reached the top... and had more hills to climb. But the when we finally got to Sacre-Coeur, the view was spectacular. You can see the entire city laid out before you. And the church itself (built in the late 1800’s) is incredible.

I’m upset that we couldn’t take pictures inside the church itself, because it was spectacular. I’m really glad that the architects didn’t try to make it look old or Gothic because, in my opinion, it just makes the church seem fake – like its trying to be something that its not. Sacre-Coeur is very original and unique which is why its so wonderful.

Unfortunately, both Megan and I had to be back at the shop, so we couldn’t spend as much time there as we wanted, but I really want to go back and explore the area a little bit more. We didn’t see the Moulin Rouge or anything (the red-light district is in that area as well), so we might come back at sunset sometime.

So today, Megan, her friend Laura, and I went to the Pompidou Center – Paris’s modern art museum. Now... modern art – everyone knows its strange, but I think we were still a little bit shocked at just how weird it actually was (but I’ll get to that in a minute).

The building itself is really cool – its built so that all its functional parts are on the outside of the building... meaning that the stairs, escalator, structural supports, heating ducks etc. are all on the outside.

So... we finally get to the exhibit and its called “Traces du Sacre.” Ok... interesting. Could be cool. We walk in and the first thing we hear is a hysterical “Joker-esque” (from Batman) type laugh. You look around and there painting by Goya and Munch with captions about how their art was influenced by Nietzsche who wrote “God is dead.” The basic purpose of the entire exhibit was how art has been affected by the disappearance of religion in the world, and how artists seek to fill that void. At this point in time, I felt like all the joy had been sucked out of me. The rest of the exhibit (and it was like a maze... you couldn’t get out without going forward so we literally had to walk through the entire thing) went through the history of this theme from romanticism to replacing God with science and drugs. Lets discuss the highlights:

• There was a series of 3 canvases that (unlike most of the paintings) were in bright purples, blues, yellows, and pinks. When you first look at it, you might think its just some cute little abstract art. But no – some “supreme being” came to this artist in a dream and told her to paint these. She needs to reconcile the masculine (yellow) and the feminine (blue) in both the physical (the letter “w”) and spiritual (the letter “u”) realm. Crazy.
• And my personal favorite: a little bit of performance art. (Warning: this part is explicit and GROSS.) So this woman stood naked in the middle of an art gallery and took off all her clothes. First, she ate a spoonful of honey and drank a bottle of wine. Then, she took a razor blade a cut a 5 pointed star into her stomach. Next, she beat herself until she couldn’t feel anything. After that, she lay down on a block of ice for 30 minutes. A heater was pointed at her stomach to make the cuts bleed more. Finally, the audience got up and stopped her from doing anything else crazy. (I did not watch the video... I read the caption on the side which was just as creepy.)

All in all, I did not like this exhibit. It creeped me out and made me want to cry.

The rest of the museum was not as scary though. We took pictures of all the works of art that involved bicycles (naturally). Although in the modern art museum, the laws of gravity do not apply to bikes.This airplane was made out of scissors that had been confiscated from an airport in Australia. This is a painting about a murder... the mirror is there to make you contemplate whether you would rather be the murdered person or the murderer. I don’t really get the reason behind the big red rhino, but whatever.Minimalism is for the stupid and lazy. This is not art. And then they had more “conventional” modern artists... Jackson Pollock, Matisse, and my favorite – Kandinsky. And finally, my closing thoughts as we were leaving were, “What was up with all the furniture?” Is this where IKEA comes to get ideas, or is this where old models of IKEA furniture come to die?” So there you go.