Below the stairs...

The street, with some imposing stairs, which you find on one of the sides of the “Palais de Tokyo” (see previous post here) is named “Rue de la Manutention”. As “manutention” may be translated into “handling”, this indicates that we are in a previously industrial area. Since the 17^th century we could find a soap factory here, which later was replaced by some military installations … until the creation of the “Palais de Tokyo” in 1937. Several architects were involved then in the project (but names like Le Corbusier, Mallet-Stevens… were not retained). The “Palais de Tokyo” opened in 1937 for the “International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life”. *

Here we can get an impression of what the area looked like in the middle of and by the end of the 19^th century.

But now I wish to concentrate on what you find today along the street, “Rue de la Manutention”.

The back side of the Palais is full of stairs, not only real ones.

The wall towards the higher "Avenue de Wilson" are since 2016 covered by illustrations by street artist Pablo Tomek.

Along the building, there is a “garden”, which you actually can enter. It was obviously originally created in 2002 with some artistic ambitions - one actually left different pieces of this garden to be developed by different, nominated, people. 16 years later I have the impression that some of these persons possibly have lost part of their original ambition, but, it’s of course also late in the season.

However, there are some flowers…

… some fruits and vegetables.

One has prepared to welcome some bird families…

… and, especially, as now all over Paris, there are some bee hives … and a lot of happy bees.

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*/ By the way, it seems that the “Tulips” by Jeff Koons on which I talked in this post, finally (… and if I may say so, fortunately) will be placed elsewhere than in front to the Palais de Tokyo, probably somewhere in the park behind the Petit Palais.   

Palais de Tokyo

This is obviously the first time I have made a post about the "Palais de Tokyo". It’s a spectacular building from 1937, near the Trocadéro and the Eiffel Tower, but the outside has been in a bad shape, dirty and tagged until rather recently - now finally relatively clean.

The “Palais de Tokyo” was built for the 1937 “International Exhibition of Arts and Technology” (I referred to it in some previous posts (see for example here). It was originally named “Palais des Musées d’Art Moderne”, but derives its present name from the street along the Seine River, which used to be Avenue de Tokyo (but now is Avenue de New-York).

The building has housed a number of establishments, but today one of the wings is occupied by the “Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris” and the other wing by a French State site for temporary exhibitions of contemporary art - referred to as “Palais de Tokyo”. 

Difficult to get a good total view of the “Palais” – distance, trees…

Google Earth is of a big help.

The reliefs on the southern facade are by Alfred Janniot (1889-1969). They represent the "Legend of the Earth” and the “Legend of the Sea”. (My photos are of difficult colours… partly in sun, partly in shadow.)

Four ladies have been cleaned from tagging, hopefully for a while.  

(The stones you see in the pond are supposed to represent traces of the sea that covered Paris some 45 million years ago. It’s a temporary installation by the Brazilian artist Rodrigo Braga.) 

As with all City of Paris museums, there is no entrance fee to the “Musée d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris” – except for temporary exhibitions. Apart from the present Bernard Buffet exposition you can admire art works by Picasso, Braque, de Vlaminck, Dufy, Marie Laurencin, Bourgeois, Bonnard, Lhote, Gris, Zadkine, Duchamp, Picabia, Sonja and Robert Delaunay, Léger, Modigliani, de Chirico, van Dongen, Arp, Utrillo, Valadon, Dérain, Chagall, Soutine, Foujita, Calder, Giacometti, Man Ray, Ernst, Wifredo Lam, Dubuffet, Soulages, de Staël, Yves Klein, Tinguely, Buren, Rauschenberg, Vasarely, Haring and many others – for free. All may not be exhibited at the same time.

Entering the other wing, the state owned one, means paying an entrance fee. At the moment there is a very specific (and peculiar) exhibition, “Carte Blanche to Tino Sehgal”. You will actually go through a number of almost empty white rooms (and one black room) and meet a number of people of different generations who will talk with you about “progress” and other philosophical matters – the central focus is supposed to be on “social interaction”.  

You will of course find libraries and bars in both wings (even outside weather permitting).