Picasso, Mondrian, Rothko Oh My!

Today I got up extra early to take a shower before classes started at 9:15am.  Fortunately, there were only two classes and I was done by noon.  When class ended I took a walk around the block to a nearby crêperie I hadn't tried yet.  It might've been the best crêpe I've had yet.  They made the pancake part fresh in front of me and then stuffed it full of cheese, mushrooms, tomatoes, and onions.  Delicious.


After a short lunch break we headed to the Centre Pompidou, otherwise known as the modern and contemporary arts museum in Paris.  The building was designed to be more or less inside-out, with the escalators, pipes, and ducts all wrapping around the outside of the building.  It's very modern.

Inside the building the museum takes up the fourth and fifth floors.  We had a guide who showed us around to give us a basic understanding of modern art.  We started with a painting from Georges Braque from 1905,

then moved on to see a wide variety of Kandinskys, Picassos, and various other pieces by artists that I didn't recognize.  The following is my favorite Picasso from the museum, titled "L'Aubade" or "The Dawn."

I was also excited to see Andy Warhol's pop art depiction of Liz Taylor:

And Rothko's very famous and very modern "Untitled": 

I saw plenty of other interesting and thought provoking pieces, including an extremely disturbing exhibit by a Russian artist showing the regression of society into animals.  I couldn't make myself take pictures of it because it was so disturbing, but I doubt I'll forget it soon.  The artist was completely naked and wearing a choke collar like the kind put on a large pit bull.  In all the pictures he's behaving the same way an aggressive dog would, tugging at the leash, baring his teeth, trying to leap from a moving car....it was freakishly violent (the museum even had a warning in the doorway) but also very thought-provoking.


After leaving the museum I went back to the Latin Quarter with two of the girls in my group.  Along the way we stopped at a bakery to pick up snacks for later and baguettes for dinner.  I spent the evening working on homework, making and eating dinner, and helping a few other people with papers that are due at midnight tonight.  For awhile I thought about going out for a drink, but since I'm already exhausted and class starts at 8:30am tomorrow, I figured that wouldn't be my best idea.