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There's something both pompous and endearing about an exhibition that tries to sum up all of last century's art in a single space, as does the Pompidou Centre's Big Bang: Destruction and Creation in the Twentieth Century.
Covering 45,000sqft, the show ranges from Sex and War to Archaism and Subversion. The notes for a room devoted to art in white reads: 'Both empty and full, both a fundamental starting point and a space for the sublime, white indicates a threshold, a limit, a beginning, or an end.'
Then comes a room devoted to marriage. 'Sublime, touching or subversive, the figure of the bride conveys sentimental, political and sometimes mythical connotations.'
There's a lot to be said for the Pompidou Centre's attempt to help us understand the cultural phenomena of the 20th century thematically rather than chronologically. Relying mainly on its permanent collection, it has put on a show as entertaining and breathtaking as it is ambitious.
The exhibition starts with Destruction. The first image is Duueh, Daniel Richter's painting of human forms in freefall. This is followed by representations of the disenchanted or disfigured body: a triptych from Francis Bacon, a Pablo Picasso of women on a beach and Willem de Kooning's The Clamdigger.