Inside the Inside-out building

We made it to the Pompidou Centre for the evening, and were immensely disappointed. There is great modern art out there, but the Pompidou doesn't seem to have much of it. Instead, there is a tremendous quantity of art whose sole power derives from its ability to make the viewer's stomach churn, which is really the cheapest trick in the book. Few of the pieces seemed to have anything to actually say of any real significance. What is the message of a video of a naked woman hula-hooping with barbed wire? Or a large, grainy photo of a naked woman holding a dead goose by its feet?

The section on good commercial design was interesting, though very, very small. Again, there is a tremendous amount of good design out there, but very little had made it into the Pompidou.