Exhibition in Paris: Luxembourg hosts the “Mirror of the World”
![One of the Renaissance vermeil items that uses, oh my horror, an exotic seashell.](https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/3roMJTgSq2pB6uV9323KZT.jpg?op=ocroped&val=2001,2000,1000,1000,0,0&sum=11Wq54bRU2M)
One of the Renaissance vermeil items that uses, oh my horror, an exotic seashell.
DR, Kunstsammlungen, Dresden 2022..
If Hell is paved with good intentions, is Heaven based on bad thoughts? This is the question that invites us to ask today, at the Luxembourg Museum in Paris, the exhibition “Mirror of the world”. There are a hundred “masterpieces” from the Dresden Art Cabinet there. A skull selection provided by Claudia Brink. generally small in size (the place is a pocket handkerchief), the objects come from fourteen of the fifteen institutions from the collections brought together from the 1560s by the electors, then kings of Saxony. Some of these places are well known, such as the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister or this Grünes Gewölbe (the Green Vault) piously reconstructed a few years ago after the bombings of 1945 and half a century of indifference on the part of the DDR communists. . Others remain little visited by tourists. I will cite the Rüstkammer, which preserves armor and other military remains.
“Can we still exhibit ivory pieces without encouraging illegal trade? »
One could have imagined an anthology, brought by the Germans on a gleaming plateau. It is not so. If the event is called “Mirror of the world”, it is to show the appropriation that Little Saxony has made of the rest of the Earth. Collecting objects from everywhere constitutes, as we know today, a colonialist act. Europe intended to consolidate its intellectual and artistic superiority in this way. Whatever she could have done, and even the opposite, she always acted badly. Helped in the “journal” of the exhibition by the indescribable Bénédicte Savoy, who everywhere plays the signet rings with the sad face, Claudia Brink intends to dismantle the abject mechanisms of this displayed or concealed racism. In other words, it is an act of contrition, necessary before any repentance. The hundred works presented are not offered for the enjoyment of visitors. They are witnesses for the prosecution of our ancestral ignominy. So imagine what it is for ivory objects, one of the princes of Saxony having loved to turn the latter! It’s quite simple. As one of the buttons affixed to the walls to give “The point of view of museums” says: “Can we still exhibit ivory pieces without encouraging illegal trade? »
![Bezoar coated with gold filigree from the 16th century.](https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/6fP8ODUaqVxBKQQk8M0jC1.jpg?op=ocroped&val=1200,1200,1000,1000,0,0&sum=9W32QcL2bPM)
Bezoar coated with gold filigree from the 16th century.
Carlo Böttger, Kunstsammlungen, Dresden 2022.
Under these conditions, the short course does not offer anything enticing. Rarely boring, the scenography is dull. A few contemporary interventions still eat up space. But we must speak of migrants as of cultural appropriation! In short. It’s the dry biscuit, intended to stick in your throat. We understand that the few people visiting “Miroir du Monde” (the commercial failure is obvious, there is justice all the same!) go and put whipped cream on their taste buds when they leave. Angelina has set up a tea room in the courtyard. And yet, by taking the trouble, the eye will discover wonders in Luxembourg. They range from Renaissance gilt silverware, such as was made throughout mainland Germany in the late 16th century, to porcelain from Meissen, the prestigious factory located near Dresden. In particular, there is a white macaw (a kind of parrot) more than a meter high designed by the model maker Johann Joachim Kändler for the famous “menagerie” of Augustus the Strong in the 18th century. A tour de force when you know how much porcelain is reduced during cooking!
![An Indian mother-of-pearl dish, circa 1600.](https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/97NHnQhmq3aB3wZpY8K--A.jpg?op=ocroped&val=1200,1200,1000,1000,0,0&sum=zNo14I9KoZY)
An Indian mother-of-pearl dish, circa 1600.
Kunstsammlungen, Dresden 2022.
But this gaze towards beauty here becomes oblique, because culpable. It is that of the bad student. We are not here to admire, but to undergo denunciation. Not far from the bird is thus a pair of busts. A Chinese and a Chinese. Please note how caricatural their features are. A typical manifestation of our feeling of Western superiority. This is where the commissioner seems to me to illustrate both his lack of culture and his conformism in relation to current “ideas”. It suffices indeed to look at the ceramic productions of the Celestial Empire since the Tang dynasty, which collapsed in the tenth century. Foreigners see themselves shown in the most outrageous way. Ditto for the Portuguese figured by the Japanese on their lacquered screens. The Other appears in all civilizations as monstrous. Let us point out in this connection that neither the Chinese nor the Japanese (nor either the Russians or the present-day Turks from the Ottoman Empire) are currently performing the slightest act of repentance. On the contrary…
![The Chinese represented in Meissen. A racist cartoon?](https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/5IoF2mbB4CeBksRPHNYcVd.jpg?op=ocroped&val=1600,1600,1000,1000,0,0&sum=0fbr83j246E)
The Chinese represented in Meissen. A racist cartoon?
Kunstsammlungen, Dresden 2022.
In fact, we must not delude ourselves. The current taste for self-flagellation remains typically Western. We are in a period of doubt. Fear of having done wrong, or fear of decline in a certain right. It suddenly becomes permissible to wonder if “Mirror of the world”, a very distorting mirror, does not participate in the work of undermining the museum. This type of institution conforms to the dictates issued by the humanities faculties of the universities. Mentally fragile, rarely very brave, the museum follows fashions like a little dog. Right now he is scared. The objects he exhibits have become dangerous. Perhaps he will have to shoot many of them in the reserves. We never know. In the meantime, it is a matter of contextualizing everything. In other words to defuse bombs. This is the work to which Claudia Brink devotes herself, at the risk of taking away all pleasure from an audience. At risk? Not really ! To experience pleasure is, in my opinion, nowadays to make a pact with Evil. How can we laugh, enjoy and smile in the face of the misfortunes of the world? Impossible, especially for intellectuals. They know perfectly well where the Good is, which the alienated crowds can no longer distinguish.
![The decor created in Paris. Difficult to do more dull.](https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/4k4F10exatE9amNWoohSfB.jpg?op=ocroped&val=1200,1200,1000,1000,0,0&sum=Cpjr9ARKE14)
The decor created in Paris. Difficult to do more dull.
The gallery of art
Under these conditions, you have to really like German goldsmithery, very old objects from Africa or Rococo porcelain to go to Luxembourg. Otherwise, the mind may cringe. There are times when the enraged visitor feels the urge to spank the Commissioner badly. A desire quickly repressed, naturally. First of all, she is not present. Then, the thing might make him happy. Repent, repent. What better atonement than corporal punishment, I ask you?
Practice
“Mirror of the world, masterpieces from the Dresden Art Cabinet”, Luxembourg Museum, 19, rue de Vaugirard, Paris, until January 15. Such. 00331 40 13 62 00, website www.museeduluxembourg.fr Open every day from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday until 10 p.m. Booking is not really necessary.
![An object assembled by Elias Geyer, with another guilty shell.](https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/8iCjvLKaqSWB3l_mf6kU9I.jpg?op=ocroped&val=1200,1200,1000,1000,0,0&sum=eWG-yThjjkE)
An object assembled by Elias Geyer, with another guilty shell.
Kunstsammlungen, Dresden 2022.
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– Luxembourg hosts the “Mirror of the World”
The museums of Dresden have furnished one hundred “masterpieces”. It is the triumph of anti-colonialist thought. Above all, don’t have fun!