The Louvre had already joined in on the overflowing-with-tongues joint asscrack of Beyoncé and Jay-Z after giving them a bathetic assignation/nod on their Instagram account in the wake of the “Apeshit” video, the song for which is largely the only one of note on the blatant cash cow creation that is Everything Is Love. And yet, evidently, it wasn’t enough for the museum to grant “hip hop’s” power couple unfettered access to one of the most hallowed spaces in the art world and promote them on their social media. Oh no, now they have to go and create an entire tour devoted to the duo/music video because that’s where we’re at in terms of getting people interested in art, which can never be alluring for the sake of art alone. There has to be a pop culture angle. Though, once upon a time, you could say that art itself was pop culture–in an epoch called “more intelligence per capita.”
Not anymore. It takes the clout of two people who can now only talk about their superiority based on wealth (it’s all very Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV when you think about it) to incite already unneeded additional interest at one of the biggest tourist shit shows on the planet. Throw in this undeniably appealing tour to the lowest common denominator of person and you’ve got a recipe for wanting to vomit if and when you ever make it to see the Mona Lisa.
But, of course, before then, you’ll have to pass the already overexposed Winged Victory of Samothrace, which people–women–will inevitably try to writhe in front of à la Beyoncé. So don’t even try to just stand there “taking it in.” That headless bia is going to be very busy getting her body whored out not only for the “regulars” but for this new ninety minute tour where she will serve as the starting/meeting point. At some juncture, you’ll also make it to the less loved Sully wing, where the Great Sphinx of Tanis resides, and in Beyoncé’s mind, somehow serves as a foil for her own “pharaoh,” Jay-Z, despite the fact that Jay-Z looks like a Super Mario Bros. villain on a jet ski and most pharaohs probably would not.
And, to be extra on the nose with “poeticness,” the tour won’t “predictably” conclude with a salut to Mona Lisa, but instead to Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s “Portrait d’une négresse,” which, frankly, doesn’t get the justice of half as much face time as Mona Lisa’s multifaceted in gender potential mug. Nonetheless, Bey and Jay were praised for how innovative it was to include the only work in the museum not featuring a black person (specifically female) tending to a white one, in keeping with that whole collective worshipfulness toward the two for making white spaces black again–or for the first time.
No word yet on the cost of the tour, but it will certainly pale in comparison to the reported $17,500 it takes to rent the joint out for a day to shoot a music video. Which, perhaps Madonna ought to do if she wants to create more controversy in her perceived dynamic with Beyoncé and Jay-Z. In any event, the Louvre has bowed down (as Beyoncé has famously commanded all of us to do), surrendered “elegance” so that we can have the “Apeshit” tour–because it’s important to subvert the past as opposed to merely building on it like Anne Taintor did.
