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Fall arrived in Paris a week ago. Months of sunny weather gave way to cloud, rain, and wind. Our umbrellas have come out of their hiding places in the van, and we have dug out our raincoats. That said, as former Vancouverites, this is hardly anything we’re not used to. In fact, we both sort of prefer things a bit cooler, so we’re quite happy with the change. When we first arrived in Holland back in August we had a couple of weeks of cool, cloudy weather and everyone kept apologizing to us for it, but we kept telling them it was okay. It still is.
On Thursday, October 20, Terre spent the day with our hostess, Danielle Lavollée and Danielle’s class. I hit the train and headed for the Louvre. In 2000, we had only 45 minutes at the end of a day at Versailles to try to “power walk” the Louvre, and Terre had seen it in 2003 with her mom and didn’t particularly want to go back. I decided to take advantage of things and go on my own.
But a most curious thing happened to me as I wandered around the halls of what was once the winter palace of the Bourbon kings of France.
I got mad. In fact, I got enraged. I finally had to leave.
Earlier on this trip, I read Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel. He talked about governments as “kleptocracies,” governments by those who steal from the rest of us to make themselves rich. And at the Louvre, I was surrounded by the evidence of that. Here in these cavernous hallways suitable for playing games of indoor lacrosse, jai-lai, or stadium football, hung the work of hired lackey “artists” who gave their masters what they wanted, usually something to show to the world just how pious and holy they were, as if by hanging a big enough painting on the wall showing them praying, they could fool God and slip into heaven.
These are the same people who kept Europe in a constant state of warfare for centuries, usually fighting over who would get to own which patch of land and the slaves--they called them "serfs" but they were slaves--that went with it. They “foraged” in the countryside for their supplies (a polite way of saying they stole everything they needed from the peasants. The ones they didn’t slaughter outright starved). Oppression does not begin to describe the world of life in feudal Europe.
When the French people finally decided they’d had enough, bless them, and threw the bastards out, the rest of the monarchs of Europe, afraid the revolution would give their own slaves bad ideas, attacked France to try to destroy the revolution. And it took less than fifteen years before the French found themselves with a new Emperor, Napolean, who went from being the savior of the revolution to the would-be conqueror of Europe. By 1814, Napolean was defeated and the Bourbons were back on the throne, the revolution in the trash.
France is now working on its fifth republic. No country has worked harder at democracy, it seems to me. They keep coming back to it, determined to get it right.
But, as I walked through the Louvre, I didn’t see great art. I saw evidence of great corruption. I saw the kleptocrats in action. It made me long for the work of a few good old-fashioned starving artists like Van Gogh who never sold a single painting in his lifetime. He painted because he had to paint. He made art because that is what came out of him.
I can’t say I hate all medieval art. I love the Girl with a Pearl Earring and much of the work by other Flemish masters. In fact, much of the work that is not built around overly pious religious themes can move me. And even well-done religious works can get to me. I can hardly look at Michaelangelo’s Pieta in St. Peter’s Basilica without crying, touched not by the religious theme but by a mother's grief. Likewise, Michaelangelo's David is magnificent and seems to capture David just at the moment when he is saying to himself, "Wow, this guy really is big."
It was just the evidence of so much wealth concentrated in one place in the hands of one family that made me want to puke.
The following day, we went to the Musee d’Orsay together: 19th and early 20th century. There I stood in front of this Van Gogh with tears in my eyes. I marveled at several Monets. Yesterday, we went to Picasso’s house, and I laughed and laughed and laughed; Pablo had such a great way of looking at the world. To him, the world was a big joke, and he shared that joke with all of us.
On a tour of Notre Dame on the weekend, our tour guide—a lovely woman of about 80—argued that Louis XVI didn’t deserve to lose his head, that he was trying to bring in reforms.
No he wasn’t. He was trying to change things just enough to shut people up.
I don’t believe in capital punishment—ever. But I sure understand the anger of the French people in 1794. Louis deserved to be thrown out. He deserved to lose everything. He and Marie Antoinette needed to learn what it was like to have no bread and be told to “eat cake.”
I hate the damn Louvre and I will never return. It makes me sick. The place is an abomination. The art is largely the work of sycophants and phonies.
We can do better. France can do better. Tear the damn thing down. Better yet, break it up into low cost housing units. Do the same with Versailles. I love the thought of some welfare mom from Algeria raising her kids in Marie Antoinette’s bedroom. That will make the Austrian bitch squirm, even down there in hell.
I Hate the Louvre
Posted on: The Coast Road Travel Blog
Oct 22, 2005