A few years ago in my other life as an English teacher I met a girl from Metz in France. She told me that Metz has a Centre Pompidou, an outpost of the famous Parisian Centre Pompidou, Europe’s most important collection of Modern and Contemporary Art. So of course I went home and googled it and immediately added it to my museum bucket list. Last April I was finally able to tick it off the list.
Its concept is very interesting. It is being described as a “cultural decentralisation project”. The Centre in Metz is modelled on its sister institution in Paris, yet “independent in its scientific and cultural choices”. Basically it decides its own exhibition programme for which it can draw on the collections as well as the support and know-how of the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
The museum is situated in the district beyond the (historically interesting) Metz railway station, in a former industrial area. Despite its ancient history of a strategic fortified city, an amazing Gothic cathedral that boasts the largest area of stained glass windows in the world (including some by Marc Chagall) and another church that is decked out in stained glass designed by French modernist Jean Cocteau, Metz has always been slightly off the beaten (tourist) track. In my opinion - as an aficionado of small iconic museums - the Centre Pompidou should make Metz a travel destination for any lover of modern and contemporary art.
Astonishing visitors with its iconic architecture, the centre is beautifully positioned in the midst of two gardens. The fantastic open space outside its main entrance connects it to the station and has the same dimensions as the forecourt of its big sister, the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
That is not the only thing the two centres have in common. Both were designed by a team of architects that won a design competition. In Paris it was a team including Renzo Piano who took on the task of building the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1971; in 2003 in Metz it was the submission of the established collaborators Shigeru Ban from Japan and Frenchman Jean de Gastine that was chosen as the winning entry.
Like the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Centre is worth a visit purely for its architectural significance. Look at the photo at the top of the page - what does the building’s form remind you of? If you said a ‘Chinese hat’ you have recognised the inspiration of the architects.
It is not just the appearance, but the whole architectural concept of the centre that is remarkable. The roughly hexagonal building has been given a special twist by having three 80 metre long tubes stacked on top of each other. Each of these tubular galleries faces a different direction with the huge windows at their ends framing sweeping views of Metz. The roofing structure is made entirely of wood, 10 miles of spruce and larch to be precise, supported by a central spire reaching 77 metres in height. This gives the Centre a chance to accommodate even very large scale artworks. When lit up at night, the undulating fibreglass roof gives up the view of the wooden frame - resembling wickerwork - underneath.
The museum does not have a permanent collection but puts on between 4 to 6 exhibitions each year. During my visit in April 2019 I was able to visit two shows which are still running at the time of publication of this post.
The one on the ground floor is titled ‘The Adventure of Colour’ and will end on July 22nd. The catalogue says that it ‘tells the story of colour in modern and contemporary art through a selection of flagship works from the Centre Pompidou collection.’ It is spread over 4 differently sized and shaped spaces in the 'Grand Nef' (or Main Nave), a versatile gallery at ground level.
The first space is called ‘Cutting into Colour’ and showcases Henri Matisse’s Jazz portfolio, which forms part of his oeuvre of cut-outs. Matisse invented this technique of “drawing with scissors” at the end of his life when he could no longer paint. Alongside his pieces there are also works from several artists like Raymond Hains and Bridget Railey, who took their inspiration from Matisse’s famous, instantly recognisable organic shapes in bold colours.
‘The Monochrome Adventure’ is in the adjoining space and has as its centre piece a reproduction of Yves Klein’s ‘Pigment purs’ in Yves Klein blue. Many other artists took their cue from Klein and some of my favourites here were the pieces by Claude Rutault in his installation titled “d’ou je viens…” simple geometric forms in green, hung on a wall painted in the same colour as the canvases.
Joseph Kosuth’s piece ‘On Colour (Yellow)’, a neon work which transformed a comment of the philosopher Wittgenstein into ‘illuminated language’, is part of the third section called ‘Living Colour’. Here there are also wonderful black and white Minimalist paintings by Francois Morellet and the works of Ellsworth Kelly who produces hard-edged, quasi sculptural pieces by overlaying monochrome canvases with plain white ones.
“Jamais deux fois la meme” by conceptual artist Daniel Buren dominates the 4th section called ‘Colour as Thought’. His red and white piece covers one entire wall of this space. Buren's work functions on the principle of pasting pre-fabricated white and coloured vertical strips onto varying surfaces. Here he covered a gallery wall but usually his work gets displayed on more unconventional surfaces like doorways and billboards. With this he challenges the notion of “where art can be seen”.
The protagonist of the exhibition ‘Inhabiting Time”, which is currently showing in the tubular gallery on the first level is Lee Ufan. He is a Korean born artist who now works in Japan and France. He goes one step further than Buren. For him it is not about where we see art but what we see when we look at it. He turned Minimalist Frank Stella’s dictum ‘What you see is what you see” on its head by telling us “What you see is what you don’t see”.
Ufan is the main thinker behind the Japanese avant-garde movement Mono Ha (The School of Things). Mono Ha artists like Ufan focus on the relationships between natural and industrial materials. Their work is minimalist and it is about the materials used and the space these materials occupy. The viewer is encouraged to interact as much with the ‘negative space’ surrounding the art work as with the work itself.
Ufan wants you to contemplate what you are really seeing when you look at his work. Walking through this exhibition becomes a meditative path. You follow the artist’s thoughts and he reveals his emotions to you. You don’t just look at the pieces, you look at the space they inhabit and think about the place they emerged from.
Ufan says, don’t trust your perception. There is a sculpture, for example, that consists of a measuring tape made of rubber that gets stretched across the floor and is held down by natural rocks. This distorts the tape's reading and thereby challenges its fundamental 'raison d'etre'.
Some of his paintings in the 'Dialogue' series contain just one enormous brush stroke. Ufan says colour is not important, but the brushstroke is. I was able to watch him paint in a video at the exhibition. In fact, it is more of a meditation than an artistic activity. He starts with breathing exercises and you can see the total focus that is employed to apply the paint onto the canvas with one precise and simple stroke. It is about the body and the gesture, more so than the canvas.
Ufan does not frame his paintings and at the entrance to the exhibition there is even one single-brushstroke-work which he painted directly onto the wall. It will vanish when the exhibition closes.
For to Ufan art is not about material value, but about the dialogue with the viewer and its relationship with time. Ufan rejects materialism and consumerism - he says he produces 'the least possible'. He takes the abstraction that nature itself provides, for example stones, and he uses those 'not made' resources without altering them to produce his works of art. It is the context he puts them in that gives them their meaning. And like that he makes us see what we don't see.
If you want to know more about Lee Ufan, read how he produces his works
or read this very interesting interview with him
or visit the website of his museum in Japan
You can find out more about the Centre Pompidou Metz and current and future exhibition dates here
If you want to further explore the architecture of the Centre please do so via this link.
As always I encourage you to click through the gallery below to enjoy the photos in a bigger view and get more information from the captions