I knew that it was happening, but didn't pay attention to the room being closed for a few weeks over the winter months. Last week I found myself passing through the Louvre museum's "Bronze Room" to find the newly unveiled painted ceiling by the American artist Cy Twombly. This is a large, major work. (400 square meters) It is a fun addition for the museum. Though I'm never sure if the money paid for a modern work belongs at the Louvre. This winter there were strikes at the National Museum of Modern Art, the Pompidou Center. I'm sure that the Pompidou could use the financing this grand Twombly cost the state. This Cy Twombly work is titled "The Ceiling". The painting is a lovely deep blue with odd disk shapes and names of ancient Greek sculptors. (In the very next room there is a painted ceiling by the artist Georges Braque in the 1950s). There are two other recent contemporary works to be found in the Louvre. One by the French artist Francois Morellet is called "L'esprit d'escalier". This doesn't look like much in the stairway of the Louvre compared to the Twombly or to the work by German artist Anselm Kiefer. The Kiefer is a large installation sitting in the stairwell that links the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian antiquities at the museum. Check out the article in the New York Times about the
Kiefer work.
Twombly said he was inspired by the blues of early Italian Renaissance artist Giotto, "I was just thinking of the blue with the disks on it, it's totally abstract... I put all the great Greek sculptors' names on the top. It's that simple."
