Day 27     Friday, September 26, 2025

I had most of this post written and somehow lost it! So I had to start all over again. Lesson learned, remember to save a draft often!!

Today we drove a half hour to Metz.  First stop is the Centre Pompidou-Metz, a branch of the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, that displays contemporary art and hosts temporary exhibitions, events, films and presentations.  The dark lattice work supporting the roof is made of huge wooden beams.

I didn’t get the artists name but can you see the two figures sleeping on one of the couches?

Maurizio Cattelan is a self-taught artist from Italy known for creating sculptures, and installations that are humorous, satirical and unconventional. Wanting to explore the power of images, Cattelan frequently appropriates uncomfortable imagery in his art.

This domestic cat skeleton seems frozen with fear and its gigantic scale reminds us of the dinosaur skeletons we have seen in Natural History Museums.  Be warned, some of the images of Cattelan’s work are disturbing.  I did not include some of the works because they were so upsetting to view.

I walk around the corner, saw this and gasped. Kaput is a display of five stuffed horses with their heads in the wall to reveal the absurdity of hunting trophies.  The traditional head trophy is reversed with the entire body suspended and powerless. I do not have the words to describe how I felt when I saw this installation.

Cattelan often uses figures in his works. This person startled me, at first I thought it was a real person sleeping. ‘Father’ These bare feet stand for the whole body, a reminder of the human body and its finiteness..they become a symbol of vulnerability. This tiny elevator makes a sound, and opens and closes its doors, just as in real life. It is perfectly functional and totally unusable. One can imagine a tiny world coming to life somewhere behind these walls.

More stuffed animals, these two labradors and the tiny chick represent a reflection on power dynamics and the fragility of life.

Artist Cyprien Gaillard’s five bags contain the tons of locks removed from the Pont des Arts where tourists once declared their undying love by attaching a lock to the bridge and throwing the key in to the Seine River. He displays them in construction bags, like unearthed artifacts, the rusty ruins of a bygone ritual.

In a long white building called The Paper Tube studio there is a Marina Abramović installation called “Counting The Rice. We are invited to patiently sort grains of rice and lentils – a simple meditative gesture that calls for attention and self-awareness.  Through this repetitive task everyone can experience art as a tool for concentration, introspection and transformation.”

We begin counting the rice.

As I am counting the grains of rice and placing them in piles of 25 I have a strange experience.  I start to think of all the soldiers who died in the First World War and each grain of rice began to represent the dead body of a soldier. When I found some grains of rice that were broken I thought of the soldiers who were “blown to bits” by the intense mortar shelling during the battles. There bodies were often never found. I felt the need to identify each pile of ‘bodies’ and place a lentil at the top of each pile as a marker or headstone of sorts. I fought back tears, as my tally marks of ‘bodies’ turned into crosses.

Bob did not have the same experience as I did.  He is soon reading a book on his phone.

These two large textile pieces were quite interesting.  The artist, Sidival Fila, cut, overlayed and recomposed the original tapestry.  

A close up of the piece on the left.The next exhibition is Copyists.  One hundred artist were invited to choose their favourite piece of art in the Louvre and use it as inspiration for their version of the work. Humberto Campana used charcoal to make this black charred version of the Victoire de Samothrace. This is a cry of alarm in the face of ecological and political crisis. Miquel Barcelo’s copy of Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa.

Dhewadi Hadjab’s copy of the Death of Marat becomes the death of a transgendered friend of the artist.

More of Maurizio Cattelan’s work. ‘Comedian’ is a fresh banana duct taped to a wall exactly 1.6 metres above the floor. The work includes a certificate of authenticity, along with detailed instructions for its proper display, for its owner to use when displaying the work. The banana and the duct tape can be replaced as needed. The Comedian sold for 6.2 million dollars!  The purchaser later ate the banana on stage!

Cattelan’s ‘Shadow’ is a work representing Cattelan’s mother who died when the artist was young.  

‘Sunday” invites the viewer to reflect on the economic inequality and the link between power and access to weapons.  Cattelan riddled 24 carat gold plated stainless steel panels with hundreds of bullet holes.

The photographer at Studio Shehrazade in Lebanon wrote…”These negatives were scratched because of a jealous husband from the Baqari family, who never let his wife go out by herself. He was upset to leam that she had come to be photographed in my studio without telling him. He came asking for the negatives. I refused to give them to him, because they were on a 35 mm roll. In the end we agreed that I would scratch the negatives of his wife with a pin, and I did so in front of him. Years later, after she had set herself on fire to escape her misery, he came back, asking for enlargements of those photographs, or other photographs she might have taken without his knowledge.”

Chen Zhen invites viewers to sit at this table with 29 chairs gathered from five continents and different social classes, however they are embedded in the table and suspended from the floor…inaccessible.

Bob like this chess “Good versus Evil” One side includes Martin Luther King Jr, the Virgin Mary and Snow White.  The other side is Adolf Hitler, Cruella de Vil and Rasputin!

After leaving the Art Gallery we walk under these bright blue street decorations on our way to the Metz’s Notre Dame Cathedral.

I wonder who would be interested in renting this storefront building?

These cakes look delicious, but they are quite expensive. €37 is $60.50 Canadian!

Metz’s Notre Dame Cathedral was begun in the early 14th century. This Cathedral has the third highest nave in France (41.41 meters or 135.9 ft), after the cathedrals of Amiens and Beauvais, both of which we visited earlier this month!        

A few photos of the impressive interior. We have seen so many cathedrals but somehow we keep being drawn into seeing more. They are so different from one another and we never know what we will be seeing when we walk through the cathedral doors.

These stained glass windows were designed by Marc Chagall.

The cathedral’s Rose Window is very impressive.

More modern stained glass windows by Jacques Villon completed in 1957.

Next stop is the Musée de La Cour d’Or.  It is a maze of rooms that covers 6,000 m² of exhibition space and 2,000 years of history in the city of Metz. This incredible onyx vase is a cremation urn from the 1st century B.C.

There is so much to see….

including this glass vase with a human face…

ancient locks,..

human skeletons…

and a couple taking wedding photos!

Both Bob and I took a photo of this Madonna and Child.  Something about it spoke to both of us.

These painted ceiling panels were discovered when a house was being renovated. They are from trees that were chopped down in 1218-1219.  This was determined by the thickness of the tree rings. They are the oldest preserved painted ceilings in Metz.

The rooms on the museum follow the chronological history of the city of Metz. It was interesting, but a lot to take in.  Finally we are in the last room.

The entrance to the museum is located in what used to be a library. This is a photo of the room when it was a library, and…

this is how it looks today.