iCentre Pompidou · Beaubourg
Vies minuscules
Around thirty artists from Kupka to Jumana Manna, drawn from the Centre Pompidou's collections, fill the Pantheon's nave with quiet, intimate and anonymous lives - a counterpoint to the monument's great men. Free entry, part of the Constellation programme.
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Seven children's faces from old school photographs are arranged like an altar over Christmas wrapping paper, with seven bulbs burning above them. Christian Boltanski meant it as a monument to the disappeared. Here it stands in the Panthéon, under the motto "Aux grands hommes, la patrie reconnaissante".
About thirty artists from the Pompidou's collection, from Kupka to Jumana Manna, each get one pale module in the nave, with no set route. You wander between them and the works talk back to the building: Mohamed Bourouissa's young Philadelphia riders face the horsemen of Sicard's National Convention monument. Victor Hugo is buried downstairs; up here, a family sits round a lemon tart that didn't work out.
Sortiraparis says take it slowly, ideally in the late afternoon when the light drifts into the nave. Expect video, photographs and installations rather than paintings, and the dome panorama is closed for renovation. Tickets are €16 (€13 reduced), 10am to 6pm daily (from noon on Mondays), with guided visits on Sundays at 11am and 2pm.
Look for
Christian Boltanski's Monument (1986)
Look for seven children's faces taken from school photographs, set out like an altar above Christmas wrapping paper with seven electric bulbs lit over them.
Jumana Manna's Bicep (2015)
A giant plaster muscle lies on salvaged wheeled scaffolding with no plinth, huge from outside and hollow and fragile within.
Marwan Rechmaoui's Veni Vidi Vici (2013)
992 blank white marble blocks, about 800 kg in all, recall a Lebanese pass where conquerors from the pharaohs to Napoleon carved their names, left uncarved for whoever comes next.
Adrianna Wallis's lost letters
Boxes of undeliverable love letters, family news and confessions that La Poste has sent her, one carton every three months since 2017, instead of pulping them.
Joël Bartoloméo's La tarte au citron (1993)
With the camera set on the table, the artist films his partner Lili and their two children gathered round a lemon tart that went wrong.
Good for
- Going Solo
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want paintings: most of the thirty artists show video, photographs or installations.
Also at Centre Pompidou
On now nearby
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Image credits
9
- Vies minusculesCourtesy 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