|
|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
Pei's Pyramid
| Article
# : |
17810 |
|
|
Section : |
THE ARTS
|
| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1990 |
1,657 Words |
| Author
: |
Curtis Cate
Historian and biographer Curtis Cate was greatly aided in the
preparation of this article by Liane Villemont and Jacques
Deschamps of l'Institut national de l'audiovisuel. |
In France, as the old saying has it, plus ca change, et plus c'est la meme chose. The fierce debates aroused by President Francois Mitterrand's bold decision to have the vast forecourt of the Louvre embellished by a seventy-foot-high pyramid made of metal wiring and glass are only the latest episode in a long series of intellectual battles between the ancients and the moderns.
These battles really began in the early seventeenth century with a furious controversy among Parisians as to whether sonnets should be composed in Alexandrine or octosyllabic verses, and was perpetuated by Victor Hugo and the Romantics with the uproar over his convention defying play, Hernani; by the admirers of Richard Wagner against the outraged whistlers and cat-calling enemies of Tannhauser (1861); and which rose to a new crescendo toward the end of the last century with the erection of that metallic "monstrosity," the Eiffel Tower.
The latest uproar, aroused by the French president's decision to have the last for ecourtes of the Louvre enlivened by the erection of a "transparent" pyramid, should be of particular interest to sociologists for reasons that have little to do with aesthetics or the "science" of museumology. In the first place, Francois Mitterrand's achievement offers a classic example of how, in a country priding itself on its republican principles and addiction to democracy, a decision of this kind can be imposed by quasi-monarchical fiat; secondly, it offers a no less classic example of how a clever politician, by appealing to avant-garde snobbery as well as to venerable tradition, can manipulate public opinion and get it to approve the intimate "cohabitation" and "marriage" of sharply contrasted--not to say,
... (1965 of 10472 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|
