L'arte moderne

I spent the next days in Paris trying to see as many sights as possible. And also trying as many pastries as possible. The first day my brain had a ridiculous thought after number trois, which was “isn’t that enough for today?”
Silly brain.


Best pastry ever: a pistachio-raspberry eclair!

I spent a long time at the Museum of Modern Art – Centre Pompidou.



The first exhibit, paintings by Lucian Freud (grandson of the famous Sigmund), was not amazing. Freud is “interested in”, the blurb said (“obsessed with”, I would say), painting flesh (colour nuances etc.). Specifically his own. Call me unappreciative, but there are only so many nude pictures of the same man that I can handle.
Freud did, however, have something interesting to say about travel. I’m still chewing on it but I think I agree. “My idea of travel is downward travel. Getting to know where you are, better, and exploring feelings that you can know more deeply. I always think that ‘knowing something by heart’ gives you a depth of possibility which has more potential than seeing new sights, however marvellous and exciting they are.”

The next exhibit was really interesting. “Dreamlands” was an investigation into resorts, theme parks and “destinations” in the age of mass culture and mass leisure. You don’t have to go to Venice to experience the idea of Venice, for example; you can go to the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas and have a meal in a piazza, see canals, take a ride on a gondola, etc. And yet if you go to the actual Venice, there's another danger. Regarding travel, according to the curator: “The actual geography of the visited country has become secondary, its architecture no more than a backdrop for the reconstitution of the exotic. Once a promise of novelty and disorientation, travel, through its representations, is today contributing to the the banalisation of a world made of shared but superficial references.”

Which is why I feel ridiculous every time I take pictures of icons or buy a souvenir fridge magnet. But to counter that, I’m working hard to have an authentic experience in each of the places I visit....because if there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s meaninglessness.