An exhibition entitled «Time Quickly» was inaugurated at the Georges Pompidou Museum on January 13th 2000. This exhibition has been devoted to time above all, measured, existing, working, free, memorised and irreversible time, starting with darkness and the moon and ending with day light and the sun.
Visitors are invited to follow a well-determined itinerary through tunnels and rooms filled with TV screens and under light beams. Many scientific instruments are being shown in this exhibition such as sundials, hourglasses, clocks, watches, calendars and so on.
Giuseppe Penone, Christian Boltanski, Philip Guston, Robert Mapplethorpe, Michael Snow and Philippe Thomas are among the most interesting contemporary artists represented in this major exhibition which also includes 15th, 16th or 17th Century paintings, portraits or symbolic still lifes, notably by 17th Century Antwerp master Cornelis Norbertus Gisbrechts.
Certain art critics regretted the inclusion of works by old masters in this exhibition held in a Modern Art Museum as well as the limited presence of some important artists such as Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Picasso or Cindy Sherman.
However there has been a marked presence of contemporary artists, notably Nam June Pak with his famous installation showing lunar phases in a series of TV screens or those of Dennis Oppenheim entitled «Attempt to Raise the Bell», of Rebecca Horn called «pendulum» and Bruce Nauman's «Live and Die».
Andreas Gursky's photographs are the focus points of the «Working Time» room while those by Massimo Vitali illustrate «Free Time». Music has been playing a major role in this event which also covers other sectors such as literature and movies while visitors can discover how time was really defined during the first half of the 18th Century.
It all started when the British Parliament offered an incredible £ 20, 000 award (well over US $ 1 million of today) to any scientist who would solve the problem of calculating the exact longitude following the sinking of for Navy ships off the Scilly Isles which caused the death of some 2,000 seamen on October 22nd 1707.
During these days only chance or intuition enabled sea captains to reach their destination safely, as they had no precise instrument at their disposal to measure their exact location.
Many scientists were stirred by the Parliament's offer and embarked in a race to produce a miracle instrument but it was John Harrison, a former carpenter who had turned into a clock-maker, who eventually managed to build a strange brass instrument with strange springs and four dials showing days, hours, minutes and seconds. It was like a science fiction piece, now shown in Greenwich, the copy of which is being exhibited in the Georges Pompidou Museum, which became the starting point of our modern world when Harrison managed to tame that elusive second in 1735 after five years of intense researching.
He had built a clock freed from any friction with adjustable springs and assembled in various metals so as to overcome the problems of instability and differences of temperatures while sailing. Harrison however had to wait during over 30 years to receive his award following the stiff opposition of scientists who could not bear the idea of seeing a self-taught clock-maker succeed where they had failed.
In the opinion of art critics such exhibition would have been held more appropriately in the City Of Sciences Exhibition Hall of La Villette, just off Paris.
An exhibition entitled «Time Quickly» was inaugurated at the Georges Pompidou Museum on January 13th 2000. This exhibition has been devoted to time above all, measured, existing, working, free, memorised and irreversible time, starting with darkness and the moon and ending with day light and the sun.
Visitors are invited to follow a well-determined itinerary through tunnels and rooms filled with TV screens and under light beams. Many scientific instruments are being shown in this exhibition such as sundials, hourglasses, clocks, watches, calendars and so on.
Giuseppe Penone, Christian Boltanski, Philip Guston, Robert Mapplethorpe, Michael Snow and Philippe Thomas are among the most interesting contemporary artists represented in this major exhibition which also includes 15th, 16th or 17th Century paintings, portraits or symbolic still lifes, notably by 17th Century Antwerp master Cornelis Norbertus Gisbrechts.
Certain art critics regretted the inclusion of works by old masters in this exhibition held in a Modern Art Museum as well as the limited presence of some important artists such as Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Picasso or Cindy Sherman.
However there has been a marked presence of contemporary artists, notably Nam June Pak with his famous installation showing lunar phases in a series of TV screens or those of Dennis Oppenheim entitled «Attempt to Raise the Bell», of Rebecca Horn called «pendulum» and Bruce Nauman's «Live and Die».
Andreas Gursky's photographs are the focus points of the «Working Time» room while those by Massimo Vitali illustrate «Free Time». Music has been playing a major role in this event which also covers other sectors such as literature and movies while visitors can discover how time was really defined during the first half of the 18th Century.
It all started when the British Parliament offered an incredible £ 20, 000 award (well over US $ 1 million of today) to any scientist who would solve the problem of calculating the exact longitude following the sinking of for Navy ships off the Scilly Isles which caused the death of some 2,000 seamen on October 22nd 1707.
During these days only chance or intuition enabled sea captains to reach their destination safely, as they had no precise instrument at their disposal to measure their exact location.
Many scientists were stirred by the Parliament's offer and embarked in a race to produce a miracle instrument but it was John Harrison, a former carpenter who had turned into a clock-maker, who eventually managed to build a strange brass instrument with strange springs and four dials showing days, hours, minutes and seconds. It was like a science fiction piece, now shown in Greenwich, the copy of which is being exhibited in the Georges Pompidou Museum, which became the starting point of our modern world when Harrison managed to tame that elusive second in 1735 after five years of intense researching.
He had built a clock freed from any friction with adjustable springs and assembled in various metals so as to overcome the problems of instability and differences of temperatures while sailing. Harrison however had to wait during over 30 years to receive his award following the stiff opposition of scientists who could not bear the idea of seeing a self-taught clock-maker succeed where they had failed.
In the opinion of art critics such exhibition would have been held more appropriately in the City Of Sciences Exhibition Hall of La Villette, just off Paris.
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