The Bourse de Commerce, located in the first arrondissement of Paris, is a building rich with history, having served many purposes, including being the center for the Paris stock exchange. Now, it has transformed into a contemporary art museum that is home to François Pinault’s diverse art collection. Tadao Ando, the Japanese architect who managed the reconstruction of all of Pinault’s museums, is known for his focus on simple geometric shapes. His purpose in building and installing the controversial cylindrical edifice that houses artwork inside the Bourse de Commerce was to “create a more subtle dialogue between new and old,” (Tadao Ando).
The circular architecture and organization of exhibits at the Bourse de Commerce made my experience of the artwork feel much more structured and rehearsed than during my usual free-flowing museum explorations. Upon entry, I immediately noticed that the path laid out ahead of me was a strict one: I would continuously be walking in circles to view galleries whose collective architecture was circular and whose art was at times arranged in circles. Even the cylindrical structure that creates a circular passage between the historical edifice and the cylinder itself had circles carved into it; the building also featured a double staircase that wound up in…circles! Taking into consideration the fact that a circle has no clear beginning or end, one can understand why I at times experienced confusion as I was walking from exhibit to exhibit and ending up exactly where I started; I repeatedly thought that I had missed something, which I definitely may have done. It was therefore a great help to me that the exhibits themselves were structured in such a way that they had what a circle lacks: beginning and ending points. Security guards were posted at certain points throughout the building, ensuring that people would not enter on the “ending” side of the exhibits and directing them to the “beginning.” Nevertheless, I would be curious to see how my experience of the artwork would have changed had I started where Pinault, or his workers, wanted me to end. In this critical review of the Bourse de Commerce and the Pinault Collection, I will discuss how the layout of the exhibits, as well as the exhibits themselves influenced my experience of the displayed contemporary works.
In the passageway between the historical edifice and the modern cylinder, one could find various sculptural artworks set up against the walls; these included works by Bertrand Lavier, known for painting directly on a wide assortment of objects including musical instruments. These pieces were obviously arranged in a circle and did not have a dedicated starting point. The fact that the layout allowed for an unstructured exploration of the works made me spend much less time or none at all with ones that did not attract me; it is true that I still had to go in a circle, but I did not experience a connectivity between the pieces in terms of “start” and “end,” which pushed me more towards finding ones I connected with individually rather than as part of a sequence.
Just across the passageway, I entered the cylindrical gallery to find Charles Ray’s The New Beetle, a small sculpture of a little boy playing with a toy car, Unbaled Truck, a reconstructed painted pickup truck, and Return to the One, a sculpture of a man sitting on a white platform. The bland nature of the interior of the cylinder allowed me to hyperfocus on these pieces rather than on the historical significance of their location. One truly enters a meditative space upon setting foot in this “building within a building.” The manner in which its color, that of concrete, clashes with the white of the historic building reminds one that what is presented in the Bourse de Commerce is indeed, as Tadao Ando puts it, “the new.” Nonetheless, the fact that Tadao’s structure is circular (like the Bourse de Commerce itself) provides a sense of continuity, of moving from past into present; this truly gives a clear sense of the “subtle dialogue between old and new ” that Tadao spoke of in his mission statement. This dialogue was exacerbated by the presence of the historic murals beneath the upper dome, which were only partly restored, as one could see clearly the areas where the paint had faded over time; I personally interpreted this as a metaphor for the older more worn out edifice and the newly constructed cylindrical gallery; the building itself, like the mural, was only partly restored.
The rest of the Charles Ray exhibit, located on the second floor, was structured as follows: spectators were required to begin in Gallery 4 before moving into Gallery 7, 6, and 5. The sculptures in each gallery were organized around a different theme. Gallery 4’s main sculpture was Boy with Frog, which is an altered and recreated version of “a famous type of Greek statuary representing the nude Olympian god preparing to kill a lizard,” (Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection). This sculpture is meant to alter its space by becoming a bridge between the classic and the contemporary, which is achieved through the re-envisioning of an ancient Greek statue; in Charles Ray’s work, the Olympian god about to slay a creature transforms into a child who becomes fascinated by one. Gallery 7 featured sculptures “concerned with the human figure,” (Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection). The one that stood out the most to me was the proportionally bizarre stainless steel Young Man, who seemed to be too small in size despite having the perfect features and remaining proportions of a grown man. Another famous piece was Sleeping Woman, a sculpture of a homeless African American woman sleeping on a bench. Since Charles Ray always bases his sculptures off of real people, one questions the ethical debate regarding this work, which was inspired by a photograph of a homeless woman that was captured without her knowledge. Nevertheless, the piece is impressive and demands attention with its exquisite level of detail and bright stainless steel material. The pieces shown in Gallery 6 dealt with the concept of space. A standout piece was one of a mannequin-like woman dressed fashionably with short hair almost 1920s in style. I interpreted the choice of having the sculpture be much larger than life size as commenting on how women whose appearance embodies widely embraced beauty standards attract the most attention, almost becoming a goal for other women to attain. Finally, Gallery 5 featured reinterpretations of famous religious sculptures. The most memorable among them was a large sculpture of Christ hanging from the wall without a cross and with minimal wounds on his body. The removal of the cross creates the impression that he is floating through space, perhaps ascending. Nevertheless, his proximity to the ground makes Christ as a figure seem more approachable; the large size of the sculpture itself, however, balances out this effect. I find that the Charles Ray exhibit was the most interesting due to its pre-planned structure. I felt clearly that I was moving through different themes as I walked from gallery to gallery, and this aided in my understanding and interpretation of Ray’s works.
