Art has a playful encounter with the past

The only way to know the City of Light — Paris has often been called that by poets — is to walk through it. In just three days, my shoes have given way, trudging through the Left Bank and the Marais, the increasingly trendy area for new and spunky galleries. I wanted to get a feel of what was happening in the world of contemporary art in Paris.

Paris has long been seen as a mecca for artists, until New York, London and other cities took up the flame and the Parisian art scene became staid and predictable. But something seems to be brewing here. Not only have a whole new slew of galleries, helmed by young gallerists, mushroomed, there is far more experimentation. The past also looms less large. Pop Surrealism seems to be the flavour of the season. Characters from comic books, children’s books and pop culture are ubiquitous. The influence of Japanese cartoons known as manga is quite evident.

Even the sentinels of historical cultural institutions haven’t been immune to it. Not even those in charge of the Chateau of Versailles. Currently on at this august institution is an exhibition by the celebrated Japanese artist Takashi Murakami who draws his inspiration from both manga and popular culture.

Nothing could be more surreally pop than Murakami at Versailles. In his little note for his exhibition of 22 works, 11 of them specially created, Murakami writes: “I am the Cheshire Cat who greets Alice in Wonderland and chatters on as she wanders around the chateau. With my playful smile, I invite you all to the Wonderland of Versailles”.

And so the brightly coloured, wildly imaginative and hybrid dramatis personae of the artist’s fantasy world inhabit the rooms where the kings held their receptions or received their honoured guests. You even find them in the legendary Hall of Mirrors.

In their quest for something new or revolutionary, a few cultural institutions have begun to create scenarios of “clashes” between heritage buildings and the contemporary world. The Chateau de Versailles started this “dialogue” two years ago with the American artist Jeff Koons, whose bright red lobsters and mammoth steel animal sculptures made their home in the former residence of the French kings.

Piggybacking on history has often been a successful device used by writers — and increasingly artists — to layer their work and give it some resonance. But mere juxtaposition with the past can be trickier for artists. They risk getting too literal, being overwhelmed or shown up by the masterpieces of the past. But when it works, the results can be quite fascinating.

Murakami does more than just a jugalbandi with the past. He is slyly irreverent, especially his sculpture titled The Emperor’s New Clothes. Murakami’s fibreglass emperor wears a fur-trimmed cape and nothing else. Except for some rather flimsy underwear that seems to have fallen down a bit. And on his pompous head lies a cartoony little crown of red velvet and diamonds.

The Japanese artist’ s coup de grace is the context: he has placed his emperor in The Coronation Room. In one of the huge paintings in this room, Napoleon is about to crown himself.

Hopefully, some enterprising curator will get an Indian artist to have a playful encounter with the past. Perhaps, we have made a beginning with Sudharshan Shetty’s delightfully subversive and witty exhibition titled This Too shall Pass, currently on at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai.

— The writer is a journalist based in Delhi