Way better than Antony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth: the summertime crowds at the Louvre. (Photos by Sebastian Puig.)
Once upon a time, in our youth, we were asked to write for a companion guide to a famous novel by Dan Brown. We visited many locations in the book and wrote with some authority (being versed in art conservation matters) about the restoration of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper in Milan. But we wrote from a distance about the Caravaggio holdings at the Louvre.
Our challenge was to figure out which painting in the Grand Gallerie could have been yanked off the wall during a key murder scene. We went for the fabulous Death of the Virgin (and luckily, so did the movie-makers, who turned the novel into a Tom Hanks romp, complete with straightened hair). But having just been to Paris to visit said gallery in person, we think that we may have made a mistake…
…because Death of the Virgin is a tad large for one person to hoist.
In the meantime, we passed the madness that surrounds THE Italian painting of all time: La Mona Lisa. It seems to be behind more layers of glass, Plexiglas, barbed wire and concrete than on our last visit (not exactly an intimate experience with Leonardo). But the Louvre does allow photography, giving each visitor the briefest instant to record the sublime experience digitally. It reminded us of the Pope’s 2005 funeral, when the peak moment for those lucky enough to wave goodbye to JP2 consisted of a split-second CLICK photo op.
I think I may have someone’s elbow permanently wedged up my nose. Send help.
Seriously.
Who cares about the rest of the gallery when there’s a Mona Lisa to be photographed?
As close as we got.
Anyway, back to the Baroque paintings…we regretted not having chosen Caravaggio’s much more modestly scaled The Fortune Teller as the key work in the opening scene of that Code book.
Oh well! A la prochaine fois!
Meanwhile…at the Palais Royal…
Daniel Buren’s subtle echo of the colonnade of the Palais Royale is getting a colorful facelift. While the water elements get upgraded and the artist’s stripey, black-and-white columns get scrubbed, the public can peek through technicolor panes of glass as the work carries on in the “cour d’honneur” courtyard. How nice when a contemporary art installation is classified as a “monument historique!” (Our own favorite moment for the columned courtyard? The final-reel shootout between bad guy Walter Matthau and good guys Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant in Stanley Donan’s thriller Charade, 1961. “I had to kill them, Mrs. Lampert!“)
Palais Royal in orange…
…in blue…
…and red.
putain de merde! that is insane. the last time I saw it, it was just in a fridge-sized box.
Louvre curator in a 2005 BBC article on the new hang: “The painting abolishes the distance between the model and the viewer by getting rid of a foreground, which created a barrier in pictures of the time.”
I just wanted to let you know about a new forum for artists as well as musicians, fashion designers, and filmmakers, http://www.PutItOn.com. As an artist I think that the mission is really great. The site gives you a free gigabyte of space for portfolio, there is no commission taken for sales, audio and visual works can been streamed in their entirety, you can create live personal broadcasts for your followers, and anything you write will be translated into 10 languages. So check it out!