Trip to the Pompoidou

I’d never been much of an art museum person.  To be honest, I don’t think I’d visited one until Paris so art history was something that was relatively new to me.  We covered everything from the Renaissance era to Post-Impressionism so I was able to gain a nice overview of art in general.  Now I’m able to appreciate art for what it is but if there was one thing that kind of put me off was how strict it can be.  One had to truly stick to the guidelines set by the Academy in order for their work to be accepted by the Academy and be admitted into the Salon.  I always thought art was a form of expression but clearly there were some limitations to that back in the day.  You were only allowed to express yourself so long as you abided by the guidelines of the time.  I also understand though, that its those restrictions that shaped some of the major art movements and contemporary art today.  The point I’m getting at is that even though I’ve learned to appreciate all art types, I think its at the Pompidou that I found myself really intrigued by art.  I loved that pieces there were’t necessarily what others wanted.  They’re more of what the artist wanted to express to the world at a certain point of their life without having to attain anyone’s approval.  It’s art because they found meaning in it.  You can’t always make that connection with a piece.  Everyone connects differently with different types of art but when you do find one you connect with, I feel like it really gets ya.  That’s what I felt with many pieces at the Pompidou.  

One of those pieces being Chopin’s Waterloo by Armand.  It immediately caught my attention because of the piano (I’ve always been musically inclined and I’ve been playing since I was 6).  Except it wasn’t like you would usually expect to see a piano.  It was completely destroyed and all of the pieces were placed on a board.  I found it intriguing because the piano is one of the instruments that usually symbolizes peace and harmony but the condition of the piano made it seem like anything but.  Later I found out that Arman explains his aggressivity towards musical instruments in terms of a negative personal experience.  He publicly destroyed the piano with a sledgehammer and then fixed the wrecked components on the panel for an exhibition.  But to him the action of destroying the piano was secondary.  It was the result he was interested in.  According to Arman, the formal structure of the objects destroyed in the rages determines the aesthetic of the work and endows it with either a Baroque or a Cubist character depending on whether curves or straight lines are predominant.