A final moment at the Pompidou Center
The Center Pompidou In Paris Closed September 22nd for a five-year renovation. Before construction began, the museum invited artist Cai Guo Qiang to give its facade a final gesture. His public artwork, “The Last Carnival,” unfolded as if in daylight Fireworks Event that transformed the building's exposed structure into a temporary canvas.
From the plaza in Beaubourg, the familiar tangle of wires, glass and steel served as both backdrop and participant. Smoke curled around the colored pipes. Powdered pigments hung in the air. The museum, which had always revealed its inner workings – its escalators, its vents, its public spine – briefly became a surface on which to paint with fire. Check out designboom's coverage of where to find the temporary and permanent exhibitions while the Center Pompidou is closed Here.
Cai Guo-Qiang's explosive artwork
Cai Guo QiangThe fireworks display was designed to respond to the geometry of the building Center Pompidou instead of in the open air. The horizontal grids and cantilevered walkways shaped the rhythm of the explosions, with each explosion timed to the industrial rhythm of the structure. Instead of distant volleys, the fireworks trails seemed to breathe through the building's framework, tracing its contours in light and smoke.
Seen from the forecourt, the architecture and atmosphere came together. The clouds of color softened the hard edges of the steel frame. Changing hues of red, gold and purple streamed through the transparent façade, momentarily changing the way daylight fell on the square.
Image © Center Pompidou / Pierre Malherbet
The role of technology
For this project, Cai worked with his custom artificial intelligence model, cAI™, to generate the visual sequences. The software generated layered compositions, which the artist translated into hand-applied gunpowder charges. This dialogue between digital code and physical combustion gave the fireworks a calm structure – an invisible logic that guides the choreography of light and form across the Pompidou's surface.
Curator Jérôme Neutres described the event as the first time the museum's facade became “a monumental painting.” The description seemed appropriate to me. The building, long a symbol of transparency and mechanical order, became for a moment an instrument of transformation, its familiar outlines enlivened by color and movement.
Image © Center Pompidou / Pierre Malherbet
Image © Center Pompidou / Pierre Malherbet