Louvre Islamic Collection: Overwhelming
Among the highlights of my recent trip to paris was a trip to the Louvre’s new Islamic galleries, about which various publications have already raved. The collection was vast, ingeniously added into an already crowded set of half-underground galleries and covered the wide range of decorative and functional arts.
having in recent years visited the Met’s new galleries, which are described geographically rather than religiously (Arab countries, Iran and Turkey?) as well as the Islamic art gallery in Doha, I found it difficult to avoid making comparisons. The big takeaway – the Louvre’s collection was full of materials from Iran, be it some impressive and extensive ceramics, inlays, wood carvings, drawings, Iranian produced good dominated. In fact, it was not until the end of the exhibit and the Turkish tile collection, that the great heft of Turkish art was reveled. This may reflect in part the roughly chronological nature of the collection, or perhaps more extensive french archeological work there. Regardless, being so familiar with the North African and Syrian work, it was definitely a change of pace. One criticism – the very vastness of the collection did seem at times to be an encyclopaedic one, with one noting the absence of top notch carpets. the quality of ceramics and some other finds including replicas of the Umayyad Mosque’s mosaics made up for it. The historian in me loved the moving maps showing the expansion of arab lands, the rivalling dynasties, but some of this context could have been extended to the gallery.
By contrast the Met’s collection seemed much more focused on being evocative of the experiences and vignettes.
We rounded out the Islamic portion of the weekend with a trip to the Institut du Monde Arab, for a special exhibit on 1001 nights. As well as collecting a wide range of versions of the text itself, in arabic, french, and other languages, the exhibit collected together a lot of examples of cities depicted in the stories (notably Baghdad and Cairo) and perhaps tied into the museum’s goal – many many collections, movies and pictures showing the inspiration the stories had on European audiences – this section was orientalist to be sure – but quite a collection.
Otherwise it felt like a trip to see some old friends (though more monuments and streets than actual people due to schedules) – including Ste Chapelle, Musee Cluny (with a great games exhibit), Notre Dame, some other favourite haunts on the left bank, The impressionists at the top of the Orsay and the tombs at St Denis both of which have been spruced up (the latter more extensively). In fact St Denis felt downright empty perhaps because it was not a market day or because everyone was preparing for the France -Wales game. All in all wonderful short trip.
I’m always reminded by how easy it is to get to paris, and how I should go more often – though other trips get in the way. Its always nice to have revisiting trips as well as those to new places.
Travels with Rachel 