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La Pinacoteque is a funky little space, which sometimes houses art.
It is located in the heart of Paris: its real estate brushes elbows with Fauchon, the very expensive purveyor of fine food, and la Madeleine, the imposing church located in the 8th arrondissement, which was designed in its present form as a temple to the glory of Napoleon’s army.
I discovered la Pinacoteque through a ParisMatch article a few years ago. I was intrigued and when I visited Paris I visited the gallery and came across the amazing Soutine. Since then I have paid it homage annually.
I may have to reconsider my choices after this year’s exercise in lazy kitsch. I love kitsch as much as I love kischka, not too much, but I do not denigrate it: I come from kitsch so I tend to let it be.
Here are the facts and you, my readers, the judges, bear a wary eye, as Shakespeare said somewhere:
This summer, Parisians and tourists can visit la Pinacoteque, preferably after they have ingested a flute of pink champagne at the nearby Fauchon and see something that neither Napoleon’s Obelisque (original art from Egypt), nor Le Louvre (whose full wings are dedicated to all aspects of Egyptian art) can offer: Xerox-made posters depicting Egyptian art, original frescas from various villas from Pompeii and Herculaneum depicting sometime ducks on a pond, sometimes Romans with a crocodile at their feet, and de rigueur, clips from the famous Hollywood 1963 embarrassment Cleopatra. Why this particular type of kischka? Because Giovanni Gentili the curator of the so-called Myth of Cleopatra must be fun dinner company.
Lazy curator? Lazy administration? Is the artsy audience really ready for the Twitter equivalent of an art exhibition? I have no answers. Personally I am fond of Liz Taylor, three re-runs of an old interview of hers with Larry King helped me through my second child’s delivery, and to see her as part of the Myth of Cleopatra brought in some celluloid warmth to a potpourri of whatever objects the curator was able to get on loan from various Italian museums and some American Midwest collector.
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BY DANA NEACSU: The Myth of the Cultured
