If contemporary art has always fascinated you but you've never really understood it, this is the tour for you.
2h - 50€/person skip-the-line ticket included
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From WED to MON |  |
2h |  |
Per person: 55€ skip-the-line ticket included |
In the heart of Paris, among the ancient buildings of the capital, stands an imposing iron and glass building, surrounded by colored pipes, elevators and escalators. We are talking about the National Center of Art and Culture Georges Pompidou. The "industrial" construction of the architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, symbol of high-tech architecture, inaugurated in 1977, strongly shocked the Parisian public opinion and is today one of the emblems of the French capital.
We will discover together the many reasons for this building and all that it contains: an immense public library, an institute for the research of acoustics and music, the Stravinsky fountain, numerous cinemas, a photo gallery, several exhibition spaces, the atelier of the sculptor Costantin Brancusi, the curious square and, finally, the one that most interests us, the largest contemporary and modern art gallery in Europe. To know it we will go to the top of the building where we will enjoy a breathtaking view of the city and from up there, among the Parisian rooftops, we will start to discover the great historical avant-gardes of the twentieth century. We will begin with Derain and Matisse to understand the explosion of colors of Fauvism. Picasso and Braque will teach us how to express emotions with common objects and introduce us to their "cubed" world. Up, towards northern Europe, greeted by Mondrian and van Doesburg we will enter a geometric universe of orthogonal and square. Furthermore, the German Bauhaus school by Walter Gropius and his teachers: Kandinsky's abstractionism, the rhythms of Paul Klee. From Germany to Switzerland, where Dadaism was born in 1916 at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich: the short films by Richter and Hausmann, the provocations by Otto Dix. Can a urinal become a sculpture? Yes, if behind the operation there is the name of that genius of Marcel Duchamp! Hosted in the "Pope" atelier, André Breton, among curious objects and soft lights, we will lose almost every contact with reality and immerse ourselves in a "surreal" atmosphere. Marxism, psychoanalysis and Russian ballet will help us to shed light on the surrealist poetics and the practices of the movement. Why does Dalí have so much time with William Tell? And why does Magritte wrap the women in her paintings? What meaning is hidden behind Giacometti's sculptures? We will leave Europe for a moment to go to the United States to get lost in Jackson Pollock's drip paintings and in Rothko's great color schemes.
The second part of the tour is dedicated to contemporary creation from 1960 to the present day. In the hall of New Realism we will struggle a little to believe that the objects on the walls and on the floor do not come from a landfill ... But it is the 60s, the consumer society has swept the world with new and often useless products that become soon garbage and this garbage must be dealt with, we can explain it in Europe Spoerri, Dechamps, César, Arman and Rotella. On the other side of the globe similar trends move the Pop Art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. But the 60s are not just consumerism, they are also years of protest, against war, rules, hierarchies, racial and social discrimination, they are also the development of the feminist movement: Niki de Saint Phalle will tell us his about. The critique of this very crooked world extends to art itself and to artists. So, Piero Manzoni puts his feces in the box, Lucio Fontana cuts his own canvases, Klein exposes the void to an exhibition, that is, nothing. Here is contemporary art! Do you think you have seen them all? Nothing could be more wrong, this is just the beginning. From the '70s onwards, art comes out of the picture and becomes "other", performance and participation take place. To understand something, follow us downstairs for a fun and informative walk through the extravagance of today's artists. An amazing journey that changes every time, following the always new set-ups of this particular museum that wants to be a "factory" of culture, of art and that, therefore, never ceases to produce novelty and change face.
"I could do that too!", You will often exclaim during the tour, it is not true, at least not always. Together we will learn to distinguish when you could do it and when not!
Highlights
- The history of the Pompidou Center
- The architecture of the building
- The modern and contemporary permanent art collection
Meeting point
Place Georges Pompidou, next to the big contemporary sculpture outside the main entrance
WHAT'S INCLUDED
- Guided private tour with an expert official guide
- Entrance ticket to the museum (skip-the-line)
ACCESSIBILITY
- This tour is also accessible by wheelchair
PRICING VARIATIONS
- Free admission ticket to museum for under 26s of the European Union and for all under 18s (on presentation of identity document at the entrance)
- Those entitled to a free or reduced ticket price for the museum (handicapped and accompanying persons, etc.) must specify this at the time of booking.
