A Spontaneous Art Visit

I am not used to visiting an art show two hours after I have read about it. I usually read about it or spot a poster and then choose a convenient date to attend. I had gotten used to the anticipation and I build up to the trip.




The truth is I do not live close enough to a museum to take for granted art shows. In Monaco, where you can find two expertly curated art exhibits a summer, I save the art for last, in order to savor two outings over the course of a two week stay.



But in Paris, I have learned that once you read about an art event in LeMonde (luckily not too outdated an issue), you can hop in a taxi and be there in a few minutes. I verified multiple times that the exhibit at the Grand Palais was open till midnight on Sundays. I was amazed I could actually partake in a post-dinner art activity!



When you enter the Grand Palais, you are met with a literally monumental surprise: the mother of all installations! Anish Kapoor has squeezed, (or at least appears to have squeezed), a huge pneumatic sculpture, the size of a whale, in the grand glassed dome exhibit hall of the XIXth century.

This art installation is interactive. It invites the visitor into the entrails of the purple whale. Once inside, you get the feeling of being in a convex circus tent or swallowed by a huge volleyball. The difference is that you can visualize three large orifices that give the pneumatic sculpture an organic feel.



When you exit the sculpture, you are then able to see it squeezed in the glass case of the Grand Palais, like a space ship with circular shapes.



Anish Kapoor redefines sculpture. Takes it to a metaphysical dimension.