The Pompidou Woman …. a hot August weekend …. and that arts centre

Someone will know the exact name of this piece, along with the artist, but for now I will call it the Pompidou Woman.

The Pompidou Woman, 1981

I came across her with our Elizabeth in the summer of 1981 on a short holiday in Paris.

It was really just a long weekend and as such we made no plans and just wandered across the city.

But given the aimlessness of the adventure, we did manage to encounter the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, heaps of parks and plenty of interesting cafes.

And amongst the chance discoveries was the Centre Pompidou, which my Wikipedia tells me “is located in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris. It houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information (BPI; Public Information Library), a vast public library, and the Musée National d'Art Moderne, the largest museum for modern art in Europe. The Place Georges Pompidou is an open plaza in front of the museum”.*

I am guessing it was that open space which caught our attention with lots of people, sitting around watching the buskers and street performers. 

Dance the day away, 1981

The inside outside building, 1981

You can’t miss the building with its “inside outside” appearance, which shows off all the structural pipe system  which were colour-coded: green pipes for plumbing, blue ducts  for climate control, electrical wires encased in yellow, and circulation elements and devices for safety like fire extinguishers in red.

And from that outside we were drawn in.

I remember it was vey crowded and very busy and like most tourists we just followed the flow, ending up with my Pompidou Woman. 

I took lots of pictures, but few have survived the passage of 44 years, and those that I have were colour slides which have not fared well in our cellar for four decades.

The Gard du Nord welcomes happy and careful tourists, 1981

So, the photo of that woman has gone fuzzy, lacks definition and had already begun to fade, but there is enough to offer up something of her presence.

Looking at the rest of the collection, they have also suffered, but I like the one at the Gard du Nord, if only because it was our introduction to Paris.

I had travelled down from Manchester to London, spent the night in the family house in Well Hall in Eltham and then my sister and I started the big adventure, via Dover, hovercraft and slow train to the City of Light.

I should write more about the history of the Pompidou Centre, suffice to say that it was started in 1971, completed six years later and cost 993 million French francs.

And that is it, except to say suggestions for the correct name of the Pompidou Woman, should be sent via snail post on the back of a 1981 programme of exhibits at the Centre Pompidou.

Location; Paris in 1981

Pictures; Paris 1981 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Centre Pompidou, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_Pompidou