Looking for Love in Lens

I didn't really intend to look for love. I was visiting the Louvre-Lens museum on a drab day in winter, and it turned out that that largest part of the collection was unexpectedly closed. The Louvre-Lens gallery comprises two wings – the “permanent” collection and temporary shows, with a central entrance, café and shop. The permanent collection is not really permanaent, but changed every year; it comprises a rotating selection of some 200 pieces from the main Louvre collection. However, unknown to us, and not mentioned on the Louvre-Lens website, the permanent collection is closed for three days each year while they change the collection, and hence was closed the day we visited. No problem with that, but since it is an annual event, and the website lists daily activities, you would think it reasonable for the website to state that the galleries are closed. After all, this is the collection for which the Louvre-Lens is best known

Still, there was the temporary exhibition, entitled “Amour”. That’s a big subject, and I can’t say this exhibition exhausts the topic. Perhaps it’s a bit churlish to be negative about such a lovely subject, but this show was very selective, with a lot of gaps. The implied definition of “love” was certainly limited, and yet remarkably there were things on display that should not have been there.

The show was divided into seven “chapters”, and their titles gives you some idea of the problems raised by this selection. I have given the Louvre-Lens translations of each of the chapters together with the original French term:

1. Seduction (French séduction) - a very disappointing room. It contained some images about abduction (a.k.a. rape), but I don’t think that theme was examined in any detail. There was one rather disturbing image of a naked woman in the foreground, while some violent abduction was taking place in the background; yet for the most part, abduction was seen almost as something to be accepted. The show curator, Zeev Gourarier, states cheerfully on the audio guide that the Roman mosaic with the rape of Europa shows Europa sitting on the bull very cheerfully, not in the least worried about being abducted – after all, it is Zeus doing the abducting, so why worry? After all, as the guide states, “For a long time … the consent of one partner was not necessarily required for the other to experience pleasure. It features a number of kidnappings and abductions”. Well, that’s alright, then; things were different in those days.
2. Worship (French adoration)
3. Passion (French passion)
4. The Relationship (French relation): from the French Louvre-Lens website it would seem this refers to the progress of a love affair - not something I would call in English a relationship; hence a strange one, this, including the idea that in the Renaissance, people would exchange portraits as a prelude to love. Fascinating, but nothing to do with relationships). This section also included the “fete galante”, which is a fascinating topic, but not connected with relationships. It would appear from reading the French
5. Pleasure (French plaisir)– which included the fascinating revelation of the invention of corridors as a way of enabling intimacy.
6. Romanticism (French romantisme) which included the odd term "Fusion" – by which is meant kissing and cuddling, in other words an opportunity to show many sculptures of embracing couples.
7. Freedom (French liberté), which was visualised by the work of just one artist, Niki de Saint Phalle, and some hundreds of record covers. This was the least satisfying room.  There was mention of “free love”, which was never questioned. Niki de Saint Phalle was described as being abused as a child; so perhaps freedom for her was being liberated from others? Her rather trite, sentimental, cartoon-like drawings did not tell us. She seemed to be nostalgically remembering love, not finding either free love or freedom. Why were there no other artists from the last 100 years represented? Did nobody have anything to say about love in that time?

A few other points:

• Where was their definition of love? There was one painting with Socrates depicted, but no definition of the different types of love common in Ancient Greece, for example.
• Many of the items on display had no descriptive text, so it was anyone’s guess why they had been selected.
• By far the bulk of the coverage was heterosexual love between white adults.
• For such a grand topic, there was very little to challenge the viewer.
• It wasn’t all bad. Many of the images were wonderful, and some of the captions provided some fascinating insights, for example A tapestry from around 1500 of men and women dancing together pointed out that such an image was highly radical and unprecedented.

What should not have been there? Well, there was a room with some porcelain "entremets", which were described as object to be placed on a table during a meal. Such objects are about as connected with love as my toenails.  Equally, I think it is stretching things to imagine Bernini’s Blessed Ludovico Albertoni is an expression of love. Passion, yes, but not love. In fact, the show seemed more a hotchpotch of images and films about several unconnected topics rather than having any clear central theme of love. By way of example, in every room you could hear Marlene Dietrich singing “Falling in Love Again” from the film The Blue Angel. I feel very sorry for Emil Jannings, but what happened to him had no connection with love. I’m afraid to say this was an exhibition where the title was guaranteed to get the crowds in, but the thinking behind it was simply not apparent – there was less exploration of what love might involve than the history of Eroticism I reviewed some time ago. So, some lovely things to look at, but I’m no wiser about what love is.