Last Thursday I stopped into the Georges Pompidou Centre for a couple of exhibitions I’ve been meaning to catch. The first was “L’Atelier d’Alberto Giacometti” which was brilliant. A retrospective of his art, with hundreds of works (the publicity says over 600) taking over Gallery 3. His heads and lithe, long, thin, gaunt bodies are the sculptures that are instantly recognisable. The style, sculpture in the form of an impressionist painting, brush strokes of plaster with a rough finish are original and breathtaking in their simplicity. They remind me of trees, and contented Buddhas in their poses and some even appear to resemble the shape and detail of gaudy christian crosses. I was lucky. Our neighbour has been trying to get into the exhibition for some time, but the queues are always out the door, down the stairs and around the corner. Thursday at 11am, I walked straight in. He was not impressed, the quote this morning was “some of us have to work… “

The other exhibition I stopped into see, that I’ve been meaning to see for some time, was the “Photographies, Nouvelles Acquisitions 2003 – 2007” exhibition that exhibits 80 or so of the 1750 prints added to the Musee national d’art moderne collection over the last 5 years. There were some very interesting pieces, like the prints from the Atlas Group (Walid Raad) depicting scenes from his homeland Lebanon, as well as a series by the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson which for some reason reminded me a lot of the work done by a friend of ours from Glasgow, Amanda Thomson. They also had some prints from Dora Maar, Picaso’s muse and partner, I never even knew she was a photographer, and some great works by Patrick Faigenbaum, Zwelethu Mthelwa and Isabelle Waternaux. I really enjoyed it.

It was wet and miserable, same as today, what better way to spend an afternoon but in an art gallery, and not just any art gallery…