beauty call

Louvre, Abu Dhabi

The recent licensing agreement struck by the management of the Louvre has many people in the art world pissed off.  Harsh criticism has been dealt to the Louvre’s director, Henri Loyette, for selling not only the museum’s name, but portions of its collection and the services of its management team for a cool $1.2 billion dollars to the creators of the Louvre, Abu Dhabi.

Detractors argue that the cultural significance of an artistic institution shouldn’t be for sale, that you can’t just plop “Louvre” on top of a museum halfway around the world without diluting the soul of THE Louvre.  It makes sense.  Damn the man!  Save the Empire!

But here’s what I’m screaming:

THESE ENVIRONS ARE POLAR OPPOSITES.

Think back, waaaay back if you can, to 1976… to the cusp of Post Modernism.  This is when Brian O’ Doherty published his now-seminal critical essay, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space. In the essay, O’ Doherty lays out what everyone in the art community was thinking at the time: the de-facto convention of showing art in a white cube was a problem, because the context of “the gallery” was subsuming the content of “the art” inside.  He argues that the white box is really just a construct of greedy, capitalistic gallery owners to preserve the value of the art on display from the fluctuating political and social context to which the art (and its worth) would be subject if outside influences were allowed to infiltrate the gallery.  So, what would O’ Doherty have to say about the $1.2 billion dollar white cube that is the Louvre Abu Dhabi?

The twofold purpose of the new museum is to showcase Middle Eastern art and to set up an artistic dialogue between West and East.  To their credit, the architects at Jean Nouvel did design the outer dome to mimic the traditional Islamic cupola and did arrange the inner white cubes according to traditional Arabic city patterns.  But when you take a look at the the art and architecture of the Louvre in France…

and compare the relationship to that of the art and architecture of the Louvre, Abu Dhabi…

there’s a disconnect.  It’s hard to believe that the current architectural and aesthetic style of the museum is really the richest environment in which to celebrate Middle Eastern art or to create a dialogue between West and East.  It seems way too sterile, too vacuous, to properly acknowledge the rich artistic and intellectual history of the region.  Methinks we have a classic case of context over content. Do ye agree?