literally another aussie in london

Literally an aussie in Paris: all blacks @ the pompidou

I had a surreal moment at the centre of pompousness, centre pompidou.

I was going through a exposition of Jacques Villegle, and i caught up to a tour group.

That in itself was not surreal, but at the tail end of the group was a man in an all blacks coat talking in fluent french about the composition of the works.

He didn’t look violent, his neck wasn’t thick, he was speaking french, he didnt seem to have any scars from previous brawls, and he never once said in french or english “make the man some eggs woman” or anything like it.

He didn’t seem like any New Zealand rugby fan i had ever seen before.

Unfortunately there were no positive reinforcements for straight sport loving Australian men in the centre, as i couldn’t find a way to talk about futurists and Collingwood in the same sentence.

I did quite enjoy ol’ jacques art though, not so much the posters, which looked cool, but got a bit boring half way through.

But i loved the alphabet system he came up with.

I thought you could do great graffiti work with it, put something up, and by the time people decipher what you have wrote, all it says is lick my jingle jangle balls.

There was also a futurist section, which had some amazing moments in it, and was also the first time i stared at an empty point on the wall for 30 seconds to see if i could get anyone else to look at it.

No one did.

Eventually i made my way down to the new art, first was a big red reflective thing, then there was shit, and more shit forever.

But then i saw a piece that made it all worthwhile, a whole cabinet of world war one gas masks.

How could anyone not like old gas masks in a cabinet?

The next section was mininmilism, which has never been my thing in pictures, and then i saw three white canvases in a row on the wall.

Fuck me son, get some ideas, staple a rubber chicken on the wall at least.

The good thing about art you hate though, like sportsmen you hate, is they encourage you to unburden vitriolic bile onto them, and then you leave and get steak and frites (pronounced frights).

December 15, 2008 - Posted by Jrod | paris | art, kiwis, paris