Articles

Affichage des articles du février 27, 2016

THE ROOTS OF HIS WORK.....CHAPTER 2

Image
We have been to the Piscine in Roubaix quite a few times. This time though a couple of years had flown by since my last visit. It’s one of the townships in the north, devastated by unemployment and since that the Piscine was opened in 2000 has supposedly put « Roubaix » on the map. I’m not so sure. The swimming pool was constructed between 1927 and 1932. It closed as a swimming pool in 1985, and was remodeled as a museum by the architect Jean-Paul Philippon. A modern entrance, special exhibition space and garden were constructed within the roof-less shell of an adjoining textile factory. When I get to the museum which is about a 10 minutes walk from the central station, the building always looks very gloomy to me, even if described as modern. One thing is sure that visitors come from all over Europe. As the second part of the Chagall was nearing its end, there were perhaps even more people than usual. To the extent that when I had been in there for over an hour and thought a litt