Inauguration of the Centre Pompidou

Chefs- d ́ouvre? (Masterpieces?), a singular reflection on the concept of art masterpieces, inaugurates the amazing building created by architects Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines. “Our intention has been to show that the concept of masterpiece is a relative notion,” the institution’s director, Laurent Le Bon, highlighted, and he added that he wished to delve into and question the “mystery of creation” in these great works. In its inaugural show, the Centre Pompidou-Metz is featuring 780 artworks – 700 of them borrowed from the Pompidou-Paris besides books and magazines from the Kandinsky Fund, which form a fifty-five-meter long library located in Gallery 3. In this way it takes the utmost advantage of the opportunities offered by the spectacular building, whose undulated wooden roof supports a translucent textile membrane that combines beauty and effectiveness. Picasso, Modigliani, Chagall, Giacometti, Pollock...all the masters of modern and contemporary art are present. Sculpture, painting, photography, drawing, design, no discipline has been neglected in this ambitious artistic manifestation in which the visitor does not attend an exhibition but a succession of exhibitions that explore masterpieces.

In the grand nave on the ground floor, Chefs-d’oeuvre dans l’histoire (Masterpieces Throughout History) proposes a chronological itinerary in which a surprising and enormous mirror placed on the ceiling reflects the 17 exhibition halls where the evolution over time of the concept of masterpiece a term dating back to 13th century France, where artists had to produce a masterpiece in order to become masters is portrayed with the aim of inducing the public to reflect on its nature. La tristesse du roi, 1952, a monumental collage by Matisse, which opens the show; Miró’s three Bleu pieces, restored and reunited especially for the Metz; Prométhée enchaîné, 1762, a masterly marble piece by Nicolas Sébastien Adam, or Balzac’s robe de chambre executed in gesso by Rodin and presented at the exhibit as the first “ready-made” in history, are some of the sumptuous and unexpected works that visitors may encounter. Histoires de chefs-d’oeuvre (Stories Behind Masterpieces), in Gallery 1, alternates works in different supports and re-discovers movements which were little known in the 20th century, as well as currents such as Fauvism or Cubism. Stories about an artist, about a creative process, sculptures and paintings, fragments of films by Alfred Hitchcock or Quentin Tarantino, works ranging from Ben to Carl André, from Julio González to Bruce Nauman, interlace in this space comprised of intimate exhibition halls offering vast perspectives and amazing visual rebounds. Two works stand out and ‘explode’ within this ensemble: Martial Raysse’s La Plage, 1962, a genuine installation totally immersed in the days of Pop Art and New Realism, and Louise Bourgeois’s Precious Liquids, 1992, a surprising, intimate and disturbingly strange work.

The exhibition continues in Gallery 2 with Rêves de chefs- d’oeuvre (Dreams of Masterpieces),which features a double itinerary: in the first place the visitor dicovers emblematic 20th-century artworks presented chronologically, by artists as renowned as Giacometti, Yves Klein, Pablo Picasso, Vassily Kandisnky or Fernand Léger. This is followed by a space where tribute is paid to the modern and contemporary exhibition venues built in France since 1937, which includes around thir- ty models of these architectural enterprises, such as the Quai Branly Museum, Paris, designed by Jean Nouvel; the Pyramide du Louvre, by Ming Pei, the Louis Vuitton Foundation, whose structure was designed by Frank Gehry, and so on. A selection of “the best of the Pompidou-Paris,” Le Bon remarked.

In Gallery 3 – the final stage of the exhibition Chefs-d’oeu- vre à l’infini (Masterpieces Ad Infinitum), questions the persistence of the notion of masterpiece throughout the 20th century. Faced with new mediums, such as film and numeric images, artists have approached masterpieces in a different way.

Some of them have integrated the notion of copy and repro- duction in their artistic processes and have incited to reconsider the foundation of a masterpiece: its uniqueness. What is the future of a masterpiece? Without pretending to offer a single answer, this last section invites us to question ourselves about the value we assign to the artworks of our time. Art, architec- ture and urban planning intermingle, and through an optical effect they situate the spectator in a huge vantage point from where the Metz Cathedral can be seen to shrink into the dis- tance as one draws closer, an allegory for an unattainable mas- terpiece, the definition of which eludes us and resists the most contradictory interpretations.