Paris -3rd arrondissement-The new Centre Beaubourg

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Introduction

The new centre

Modern Art collection

Contemporary collection
Brancusi atelier Place Igor Stravinsky

By creating a vast esplanade in front of Centre Pompidou, thearchitects had the clear intention to integrate the Centre into the city. The piazza became the kingdom of street performers: fire-eaters, jugglers, musicians, cartoonists, and narrators entertain the by passers and plunge the Centre Pompidou in a playful atmosphere. Very lively spot, Beaubourg exploits this situation and built the esplanade in slight declivity towards the entrance of the Centre.
It’s for the first time that all forms of modern culture are reunited in the same spot and extraordinarily accessible.
By entering the Centre, millions of people enter a museum of modern art for the first time (and even any sort of museum). No more heavy concepts of classical exhibition places, psychological blockages against culture with a big “C”. It’s one of the miracles of Centre Pompidou.

Since it’s opening in 1977 the Centre had an immense success. About 8 million a year visitors came to discover this new Mecca dedicated to modern and contemporary culture. In an atypical architecture, I concede, but prodigiously interesting. It is now one of the most visited sites in France (beats the Louvre), one of the most visited cultural places in the world.
As you all know, the Centre was closed for almost three years.
The building yard was enormous: the external architecture was redone but not modified, still looking as a big refinery. But the interior spaces have been completely changed. The principal beneficiary is the MNAM (Musee National d'Art Moderne), now on two levels and more than 14,000 square meters which enables it to expose more than 1400 works (instead of 800 before) With its new displays of paintings and sculptures, judicious restorations, spectacular acquisitions, the Centre Pompidou can be considered today as one of the first museums in the world in his category: modern and contemporary art.
With its reopening the Centre loses nothing of its welcoming quality, the museum is (like before) divided between level 4 and 5. From 1900 to 1960 on level 5, from 1960 until today on level 4. It gained 4,500 square meters superficies. On level 5, nine hundred works retrace and tell art history of the first half of the 20th century, from fauvism to American abstract expressionism, insisting on the strong points of the collection: the ensemble of cubist sculptures, works of the great gurus of art, very well represented: Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, Miro, Ernst, Giacometti, etc... or insisting on the important schools and movements like surrealism, abstraction, informal art.
Level 4 houses the contemporary. Opening with a work of Jean Tinguely, grand ensembles illustrate artistic life from 1960 until today. Pop art with Roy Liechtenstein, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, new realism of Arman, Cesar, Nikki de Saint-Phalle, op art and cinetism with Albers, Agam, Vasarely and not to forget the Arte Povera and conceptual art ending with the new tendency to figurative painting.
The collections of the museum are composed by 44,000 works of which 1400 will be exposed .The works will be replaced every 18 months for the moderns, every year for the contemporary.
At level six the new cafeteria was designed by Costes, now a trendy meeting place.
Cost of this formidable lifting: 576 millions FF of which 40 come from private maecenas (Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint-Laurent, Pernod Ricard and others). It's the indispensable price of a reorganisation when the MOMA of New York and the TATE Gallery of London are reorganising and increasing their surfaces. Beaubourg, by excellence the passage between the 20th and 21st century, couldn't stay and watch.
Next post a more detailed visit of the Art Museum with a lot of pictures.

Bibliography:

Vie et histoire des arrondissements de Paris, ed.Hervas (1985-1988--Nouvelle Histoire de Paris, ed.Hachette--Le Pieton de Paris, by L.P.Fargue, ed.Gallimard -Paris, 2000 d'histoire, by J.Favier, ed.Fayard 199--Paris 19eme siecle, l'immeuble et la rue, by F.Loyer, ed.Hazan, 1994-Routard 99 (Ed.Hachette), Beaubourg, l’esprit du lieu, by Philippe Bidaine (Ed.Scala , Paris)

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