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| The Lille Palace of Fine Arts at night. Hot! |
To me, there is nothing that resembles a brothel more than a museum.
Michel Leiris, L’âge
d’homme, 1939
The ‘Capital of Flanders’, Lille, is officially the capital
of the Hauts-de-France region, prefecture of the Nord departement, and main
city of the Métropole Européenne de Lille. During its long history it was besieged
by the Kingdom of France, the Burgundian State, the Holy Roman Empire of
Germany, the Spanish Netherlands, by the Germans during the Franco-Austrian
War, and in 1914 and 1940.
Famous Lillois are Louis Pasteur, Emile Bernard, Paul Gachet
(Van Gogh’s doctor), Charles de Gaulle.
The reader will be delighted to learn that, for the past 77 years
or so, the city of Lille has not been under siege. That is, except for its Palace
of Fine Arts: right at this very moment, it is being held hostage.
My last visit dates from so far back, that I seem to have only
agreeable memories: a ‘typical’ French Art museum (one of the largest in
France), and historically one of the first to receive works seized from churches
and from territories occupied by the Napoleonic armies. An opulent collection
therefore, and supplemented over the generations by art originating from the
region. The collections comprise antiquities, middle ages and renaissance, 17th-,
18th-, 19th- and 20th-century paintings,
sculptures, prints and drawings.
However, the unsuspecting visitor cannot enjoy all of that,
as the museum is currently undergoing a thorough refurbishment. Extremely
annoying, disappointing, depressing even - but not why I described the museum
as being under siege.
It is a well-known fact that the French (and francophone
Belgians) have a predilection, nay passion, for what they call bande dessinée:
comic books. Once an entertainment for kids, they have elevated it to ‘Seventh Art’
(or Ninth, I forget), somewhere after cross-stitch and before pornography. As
infantilization knows no borders, the anglo-saxon world likewise nowadays reads
‘graphic novels’. So far so good. To each his/her/its own.
As the Palace of Fine Arts of Lille is being renovated, what
have the good museum people decided? They have commissioned an overhaul of the
remaining exhibits by a celebrated French comic book artist (whose name I shall
not allow to defile these pages – google it, if you must). They propose a “visit
to the museum through the prism of his universe, inhabited by illusions,
effects in perspective or trompe-l’oeil.” He “invents settings that will
surprise the visitor throughout the halls.” “His guiding principle? Thinking outside
the box!”
As to inside of the museum box, anything is allowed,
except thinking. Or looking at paintings. In a hall with 17th-century
paintings (Rubens, Van Dijck…), the center of the floor is taken up by a Punch-and-Judy
theater in which a miniature mime/ballet dancer is projected, ‘dancing with the
paintings’. Some ten persons are in the room, all of them agape at the box. I
try to sneak a peek at a painting hanging behind the congregation, and am met
with disapproving glares.
In the next hall, the Graphic Novelist has covered the
entire floor with a black and white drawing of his. Its white glare niftily competes
with the baroque altar pieces on the walls.
A hall dedicated to landscape paintings is treated thus: the
paintings are hung contiguously – frames touching - and so that the horizon in
each painting ‘continues’ through to the next. That is not all: for the more obtuse
visitor, a bright blue thread is actually stretched over the grouped paintings,
at the height where the horizon is located. What an enlightening way to enjoy
your van Ruisdael, Corot and Sisley!
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| Contiguous hanging |
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| The blue line is a real thread, not photoshopped |
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| There's the horizon, stupid! |
Same contiguous set-up for the portraits, all periods and
styles mixed. In the center of the room, a large circular construction bearing a
series of mirrors in gilded frames, reflecting the increasingly startled
visitor. And in each corner of the hall a soundbox emitting loudly whispered incantations.
It must have a deeper meaning, but for the life of me… My intellect is lacking.
The hall dedicated to still-life painting is announced from
afar by means of an installation of plastic fruits and veggies that are
arranged as if flowing, cornucopia-wise, from a real 17th-century still-life.
The creative intellect of this Ninth Artist!
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| Outside the box |
The best is yet to come. In a gallery facing the atrium, are
hung seven ‘abstract’ paintings by modern artists of repute: Frantisek Kupka,
Maurice Estève, Jean-Michel Atlan, Serge Poliakoff, Maria-Helena Vieira da
Silva, Martin Barre and Auguste Herbin. Each of the seven paintings is treated
as a cut-out, i.e. the Comical Hostage Taker has ‘continued’ the paintings, as
he imagines, beyond their edges, covering the entire wall with his artistic multi-colored
doodles. Yet why did he stop there? Why not draw some on the paintings? Thinking
out of the box?
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| The love of modern painting |
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| In the middle, Serge Poliakoff and his Duckies |
As if all this wasn’t enough of a display of epic ignorance
and hot-blooded hatred of painting, the museum itself pays its own dues to the utter
desolation of art. Smack-bang in the middle of the floor of the huge two-storied
atrium, they have erected a kind of large tent. Inside, hundreds of museum
visitors can gape at an ever so artistic giant projection of the paintings of
Goya. This is advertised as the ‘Goya Experience’. Walt Disney has entered the museum
building.
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| The Goya Horror Show |
In keeping with the latest trend in museology, this ‘intervention’
by the Comic Terrorist on duty, is part of the ‘Open Museum’ program, event # 7
to be precise. How many events will it take before the Lille Palace of Fine
Arts, finally and permanently degrades to the ‘Lil’ Palace of Provincial Arts and
Stuff’? Whose intervention is next? Lille Olympique’s goalkeeper? The winner of
La France a un incroyable talent? Miss Nord-Pas-de-Calais 2022?
All over the world, curators/directors of art museums are
feverishly looking for means to attract even bigger and more diverse audiences.
To make their collections more ‘relevant’, because, as is well known, works of
art and paintings by themselves are irrelevant. To this end, they commission ‘celebrities’
to rearrange their collections. Artists in residence, some who have never seen
the inside of a museum (no hyperbole), cannot wait to invade the museum as if
it were their God-given stage. Sponsors decide which works undergo restoration.
And all this in the belief that they are magnanimously connecting the Public
with Art. For art is hoity-toity and needs bringing down a peg or two, and the
public is stupid and gullible. So turn the museum into a fairground, cash in, and
cut the arts down to size. Three birds, one stone. This is not a new phenomenon,
but the Lille Palace of Fine Arts takes the prize, for now.
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| 19th-century painting: on lilac walls |
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