Fascinating exhibition at the Centre Pompidou
The EXHIBITION “Prehistory, a modern enigma”
- WE LIKE: a very ambitious and original exhibition
- AGE: for everyone, from 7 years old
- DATE: until September 16, 2019
- PLACE: Centre Pompidou (Paris 4th)
Un musée d’art moderne et contemporain présente une exposition intitulée « Préhistoire, une énigme moderne » !
- The Pompidou Centre makes prehistory modern. He decided to bring together prehistoric artists with those called modern or contemporary such as Cézanne, Klein, Picasso or Louise Bourgeois.
- The aim of this exhibition is to question the fascination that the prehistoric era exerts on modern and contemporary art.
- This subject has so far remained relatively unprecedented. There was an exhibition at the MoMA in New York in 1937 and then at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1948.
- The tour is chronological and the exhibition brings together more than 300 works. It begins with prehistoric works such as the Mammoth de la Madeleine and presents modern and contemporary works specially created for the occasion.
- One enters the exhibition as if in a cave, entering the dark. At the beginning, we come across the skull of a Cro-Magnon man and then we admire the famous Venus of Lespugue. It is a 25,000-year-old venus, a small statuette of less than 15 centimetres, carved from the ivory of a mammoth tusk. She has a small, tiny, faceless head and disproportionate shapes. This Venus fascinated the greatest artists, including Picasso who had a replica of it molded in his studio. He was clearly inspired by it for his painting painted in 1936 “The Reclining Nude Woman”.
- The exhibition shows how modern articles such as Fontana, Dubuffet, Picasso, Yves Klein and many others are interested in the codes of the Palaeolithic and the parietal traces.
- Finally, the exhibition recalls the role of films in the popular dissemination of prehistory with “War of Fire”, “The Lost World”, “King Kong”, “A Space Odyssey”, “Jurassic Park”.
- “Prehistory, a modern enigma” is a very beautiful exhibition that succeeds in making astonishing and unprecedented comparisons. It leads us to look at the greatest masterpieces of modern and contemporary art from a resolutely new angle.
- The exhibition was produced in partnership with the National Museum of Natural History – Musée de l’Homme, the National Archaeology Museum – National Estate of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the National Museum of Prehistory.
« Préhistoire une énigme moderne » s’adresse aussi au jeune public
- Throughout the exhibition, workshops are scheduled for young people.
- The “One hand, ten tools” workshop invites children aged 2 to 5, as a family, to create a repertoire of shapes using various tools and to assemble them, then to discover the exhibition and emblematic works
- The workshop “The trace and the imprint” offers 6-10 year olds with their families, the opportunity to experiment with the impacts of the gesture according to the nature of the tools and supports, then to visit the exhibition
- Until 2 September, the Children’s Gallery is transformed into a prehistoric territory “The end of the Paleolithic”. It becomes the place for various experiments and offers young people, from the age of 4, workshops around architecture, adornment, music, dance and painting, to ” [prendre] become aware of our ability to evolve by starting from nothing”.
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