iCentre Pompidou · Beaubourg
La mer est ton miroir
Maritime imagery in 20th- and 21st-century art through works by Robert Delaunay, Man Ray, Peter Doig and others, exploring the sea as an enduring source of artistic inspiration. At Abbaye Saint-Germain, Auxerre.
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In the Romanesque chapter house, three new stained-glass windows glow yellow, orange and red. Nicolas Floc'h took the colours from river water: the Yonne where it passes the abbey, the Seine below Paris, and the Seine again below Rouen. Burgundy has no coast, so he followed the river out and brought the sea back in glass.
Around them, about twenty works from the Centre Pompidou's collection fill the abbey from the cellar to the chapter house: paintings, videos, installations and design objects by Robert Delaunay, Man Ray, Shimabuku, Hicham Berrada and others. You come across a lone canoeist drifting past a prison island, Gilles Aillaud's penguins and a 1928 close-up of an octopus. The title is a line from Baudelaire's L'Homme et la mer.
It's a small show in Auxerre, not Paris, and closes on 1 November. Entry is free, subject to space, daily 10am to 6pm with a lunch break until 2pm, at 2 bis place Saint-Germain. A guided tour runs on 21 October at 3pm.
Look for
Nicolas Floc'h's stained-glass windows
Look up in the Romanesque chapter house at three windows shading from yellow to red, coloured from water sampled in the Yonne at Auxerre and the Seine downstream.
Peter Doig's Canoe-Island (2000)
A screenprint of a lone bearded man in a canoe, adrift on a wide ocean under a psychedelic sunset, with the ruins of an abandoned prison behind him.
Jean Painlevé's La pieuvre (1928)
A small, tightly framed black-and-white close-up of an octopus by the photographer and filmmaker who specialised in underwater animals.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Rainy Days
Skip if
You want a big survey: it's about twenty works spread through the abbey.
With kids
During the autumn holidays (20 to 23 October) the abbey runs children's sessions: a tour following Octo the octopus, a sea-monster visit, a film and a sculpture workshop. Book on 03 86 18 02 90.
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Image credits
9
- La mer est ton miroirCourtesy of Centre Pompidou
- Mungo Thomson: Monument© Mungo Thomson. Courtesy l'artiste, galerie frank elbaz, and Karma.
- Yu Nishimura: Towards a SeaCourtesy of Lafayette Anticipations - Fondation Galeries Lafayette
- Hélène Fauquet: VivresseCourtesy of Lafayette Anticipations - Fondation Galeries Lafayette
- Centre PompidouAlf van Beem / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- Lafayette Anticipations - Fondation Galeries LafayettePhilouSunshine, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- Fondation Henri Cartier-BressonVVVCFFrance, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Musée des Arts et MétiersMarianne Casamance, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Bourse de Commerce - Pinault CollectionChabe01, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0