Oh, and a few Frenchmen too. From AP, with thanks to Fjordman:
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - March 6, 2007 - - France's storied Louvre museum, home to priceless art works like the Mona Lisa, said Tuesday it will open a new Louvre in this Persian Gulf boomtown, prompting outcries from some who accuse the museum of shilling France's patrimony for $1.3 billion in oil money.The 30-year agreement, signed by French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and the head of Abu Dhabi's tourism authority, Sheik Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, opens the way for the Louvre Abu Dhabi to display thousands of works from some of France's best museums, such as the Louvre, the Georges Pompidou Center, the Musee d'Orsay and Versailles.
The works will be housed in a huge flying saucer-shaped museum designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, which will be erected on the Abu Dhabi waterfront, opening sometime after 2012.
Abu Dhabi's rulers are positioning the Louvre as the centerpiece of a cultural district expected to attract millions of well-heeled tourists and diversify its oil-dominated economy.
Donnedieu de Vabres said the venture represents the globalization of French culture, the first step in a long-term cooperation with the wealthy Persian Gulf region. He promised that the Paris Louvre would not sell any of its 35,000-piece collection, nor would the deal weaken France's cultural policy or its museums.
"We're not selling the French legacy and heritage. We want this culture to radiate to parts of the world that value it," the culture minister said. "We're proud that Abu Dhabi wants to bring the Louvre here. We're not here to transform culture into a consumer product."
But prominent figures in the French art world have accused their government of exploiting art for trade and diplomacy and said lending art will overburden French museums. Led by the art historian and critic Didier Rykner, opponents of the Abu Dhabi scheme collected 4,700 signatures to protest it.
"We have lost a battle, but the combat continues," Rykner wrote this week on his Web site "La Tribune de l'Art," paraphrasing Charles de Gaulle's famous remark after Nazi Germany defeated France in 1940....
For its part, France has solid reasons for bringing a Louvre branch to Abu Dhabi, Donnedieu de Vabres said. He said the museum will help reinvigorate France's postcolonial stature in the Arab world, noting the negotiations with Abu Dhabi's royal family had already improved bilateral ties.
Donnedieu de Vabres said French President Jacques Chirac sent a message saying the museum is a symbol of a "world which considers the clash of civilizations the most dangerous trap of our time."...
The Louvre Abu Dhabi will have to breach significant cultural barriers before it opens, since representations of the human figure - even when clothed - can be a religious taboo in the Muslim world. One Arab reporter asked during a news conference Tuesday whether the museum would protect its visitors against "pornography."
Museum officials did not address the issue of nudity in works. But art selection will be done by a committee including Abu Dhabi's rulers, who understand the sensitivities in this city, one of the more liberal bastions in the conservative Gulf.
"He promised that the Paris Louvre would not sell any of its 35,000-piece collection, nor would the deal weaken France's cultural policy or its museums."
...He need not worry about selling the irreplaceable pieces of art...They will be worthless after they are blown up....
....THe Muslims have demonstrated a severe dislike for cassette tapes, books for children,and cartoons....I can see their eyes widening at the prospect of actual pieces of art on Muslim land....
...The French must have overlooked the acts of vandalism in all parts of the world the Muslims have performed on religious relics,museums,libraries,and centers for cultural history....
....The pieces of are had better be fakes and reproductions....
Bringing culture to the Gulf? That's a hot one. Might as well bring culture to a pack of jackals for all the good this will do.
That museum had better be bulletproof, fireproof and bombproof because the French are really taking a risk on losing some fine art there. How many people do they expect will see all that art anyway? Women will probably be banned right off the bat and the men will avoid any unIslamic art for fear of polluting their eyeballs.
Angry muslims? No way! This French liberal plot will bring no good to UAE and will end in forcing the good submissives to act against it as nothing but another prime infidel target to desecrate, denigrate, and ultimately be bannished from the "great and civilized society"
I'm thinking..how about those giant Buddhist statues in Afghanistan.
I think more heads than ears will be cutoff over this French kiss.
Well now we know the french plan to keep the art from burning when muslims have their, Islamic krystalnacht.
nudity in french art? i am sure abu dhabi will allow all nudity in art in their museums as long as they are appropiatly covered up in modest head to toe cloaks.
Muslims have been working on culture in Islamic countries...but it usually takes form in petri dishes...
"But art selection will be done by a committee including Abu Dhabi's rulers, who understand the sensitivities in this city, one of the more liberal bastions in the conservative Gulf."
This particular toilet will have a Tidy Bowl (R) sanitizer.
Ah, no nudity; no Jewish art, either. Nothing gay; nothing suggestive. Lots of landscapes and horse statues, probably.
I sure hope they just send copies because you know, one day, some enraged (pace D'Souza) Moslem will take matters into his own hands.
Flying saucer shaped? Sounds utterly crass and repulsive; cheesy and vulgar. Oh, but that certainly defines most of Moslem architecture.
'He said the museum will help reinvigorate France's postcolonial stature in the Arab world"
.. Frances postcolonial stature thus far has consisted of murdered French politicians,murdered French citizens,destroyed French businesses, kidnapped French journalists,murdered French soldiers, confiscation of French held properties.....hmmmm , I can see the French have a long way to to restore something....lots of room for something better....
...The French must have forgotten about being Booted out of Algeria and other areas that France had interests in....Forgotten about the rapes of French military officers, the executions of French soldiers, the imprisonment and mistreatment of French citizens and soldiers.....
....But France loves Muslims....or so it seems...
Abu Dhabi's rulers should be wary, Iran has already threated to erase them and everything they have....I think Abu Dhabi's rulers should be preparing for the arrival of something other than art works....
New Louvre Plans Anger Muslims?
Shouldnt that read
Modern World Angers Muslims
?
Insane!
If you love art, please go and see these artworks NOW!
And please take photographs as well.
We will need to see what we've lost when these artworks have been blown up.
What the hell are the French thinking?
When a Muslim speaks about nudity and pornography, he is speaking of women who are not covered in the traditional Muslim clothing. I have heard these creatures speak of women wearing short skirts and sleeveless blouses as being naked. It will be interesting to see if the French have the courage to place the kind of artworks in this museum that might draw Islamic fire (figurative and literal).
"this museum that might draw Islamic fire "
...the new museum just might be the first building that attracts lead like magnets approaching steel....
The French somehow lost the ability to think some 70 years ago, regained it briefly in the 1960's and then lost it again.
This is like the French version of George Bush's delusion to bring of democracy and liberty to Iraq. A complete waste of money and effort. In this case at least less lives will be lost. The phrase "pearls before swine" comes to mind.
Nothing with a Biblical theme. No Leah and Rachel. No parting of the Red Sea. No Tablets on Mount Sinai. No Moses leading the Hebrews toward the Promised Land. No Pisgah Sight of Palestine. No Leah, no Rachel. No Ruth amid the alien corn. No Daniel in the Lion's Den. No Mene, Mene Tekel Upharsin. No John the Baptist. No Annunciation. (Take that, Fra Angelico). No Mary and Martha, and their respective babies communicating. No Mary at all, and no Joseph. No manger in Bethlehem. No Wise Men, or that Star to guide them. No Loaves and Fishes. No Christ in the Temple. No Sermon on the Mount. No Last Supper (definitely No Last Supper). No Stations of the Cross. No Cross. No Crucixion (hey, it never happened, though the perfidious Jews claim it did). No Deposition. No Tomb and no Rising From the Tomb. Nothing at all.
No portraits. No Titian. No Velazques. Not the Monna Lisa, of course (would the French.... No, of course not! Well, not unless the price was right, say $5 billion for a one-month show?). Nothing at all with the human form divine.
No sculpture. Muhammad wouldn't enter a house that had statues within. Should the Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil, be ignored or emulated?
What can, oh what can we see?
Still lives. Or as the French put it a bit more grimly, Natures mortes. Lemons on a plate, or possibly peaches, and the paring-knife temptingly placed next to it. A slab of meat, perhaps -- but not the Other White Meat, please. That leaves out the still lives of the jamon-loving Spanish, their works now on display at the Guggenheim.
Lots of flowers. Tulips in vases. Chrysanthemums. Even sunflowers, weary of time. And of course roses, roses, roses all the way, from Glasgow and Gothenburg to the originals in far-off, Muslim Gulistan.
Bottles by Morandi, and epigones of Morandi. Bottles, and vases, and frying pans. Whatever you want, that gives off a glint, that reflects the light in ways that deserve to be captured, and are captured.
Landscapes. No Rembrandt with his Jewish brides and self-portraits, no Hals with his jolly burgherish tipplers, no Vermeer with those women in their interiors. A view of Delft, perhaps. A view of this or that mountain or lake. A seascape by Turner, as long as no figures are visible anywhere. Oh, yes, landscapes as long as they are stripped of all signs of living beings, real or mythological: no shepherds, no nymphs, no Pan or pan-pipes, no Diana chasseresse, no mad pursuits or struggles to escape, no hint of lust or love or life, no farmer at his plow, no noblewoman with her lapdog, no warrior on his reared stallion, no landed gentry with his hunting dogs. No dejeuner sur l'herbe, no amorous swinging of lovers or clowns in a mythologized landscape. No nothing but rocks, and trees, and stones, and lifeless things.
And pure geometry or spots or lines of color -- those are allowed. The rectilinear Mondrian. Possibly Kandinsky (let's find out about his background and his history). Barnett Newman and Rothko (oh, oops, sorry, we can't have them, but for other, biographical reasons). Frank Stella. Any old color-fieldist you want. And all kinds of the most up-to-date nonsense, as long as there is no sign of life, nothing to worry or offend the mutawwa that can emerge from any Muslim museum-visitor, who may suddenly find he has to destroy that picture in front of him as an offense against Allah.
And since the very idea of Western art is one that should sicken a true Muslim, no matter how sanitizied and whittled down to nothing that will offend -- which is to say, nothing at all -the security costs are going to be very high. It will be quite an experience, keeping watch on those primitives come to view, and to attempt to understand, the products of a Superior Civlization, that of the West, as collected and organized, within that Western Superior Civlization, the art curators and museum designers of the Perfected Civilization (that of France, as Chamfort called it) that thinks itself so high-and-mighty, but is managing to grub-grub-grub with the best of the despised Americans.
to the French president I would say:
monsieur, vous avez appris pas une chose simple au sujet de l'Islam...
...sir , you have not learned a single thing about Islam....
By the time the "art expert" holies get through issuing a few fatwas about which art forms are OK to be viewed by a good Muslim this museum's main display will consist of dust and cobwebs for lack of visitors.
The amount of money France got for this deal was huge.
I hope they are somewhat sensible about what goes there.
I haven't forgotten what happened to the museums in Bagdad, of course that was the Americans' fault.
From the article above:
"We're not selling the French legacy and heritage. We want this culture to radiate to parts of the world that value it," the (French) culture minister said.
Since when does any muslim country value any culture except for their own death porn??
Yeah, there's no way in hell these artworks will last very long sitting in a museum in the heart of this muslim litter box we call the middle east.
Just another example of the PC, guilt-trodden West selling out their own culture.
Nice imagery Hugh. Lifeless indeed, and that is what they seek.
This is an interesting, but dangerous experiment, like so many the French have been known to engage in. Will it end up in failure? The record of the French shows it is likely.
There are about 10 million muslims in France. During the 30 or so times I have been to the Louvre, I don't believe I've ever seen a single one there, including in the islamic art section.
Muslims tend not to visit museums.
I think that the Muslim ruler all agree to allow all the nudeity art works,anti-religish artwork and homosexual artwork to show they people how DECADENT
the western culture is and no harm will come to the artworks on display there. A real artist would have no needed to insult any religious belief at all it he or she have real artist talents.
"Muslims tend not to visit museums. "
...sure they do,, when they are looting and blowing it up.....
The two most common two-word combinations in the English language must be: angry muslim(s) and angers muslims.
"A real artist would have no needed to insult any religious belief at all it he or she have real artist talents."
The problem arises when Islamic clerics and the religious police decide that this is not art and is in fact defiling life as Muslims know it and therefore it must be destroyed....
This is how the Muslims has treated many other museums in MUslim held territories..The Muslims the proceed to destroy all statues and works of art, burn the paintings, and loot the treasured pieces of ancient jewelry and other valuables...
The Muslims have established this pattern of behavior,, I do not expect them to change...
AuntBea, how much money did the French get paid for doing this?
"One Arab reporter asked during a news conference Tuesday whether the museum would protect its visitors against "pornography.""
I guess pornography is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I find beheadings, female genital mutilation, women in burkas, forced marriage, pedophilia and all things pertaining to the death cult of islam pornographic.
The French must be crazy to even consider doing this. They should send copies of the artworks, because for sure some of them will be destroyed.
The 30-year agreement, signed by French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and the head of Abu Dhabi's tourism authority, Sheik Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, opens the way for the Louvre Abu Dhabi to display thousands of works from some of France's best museums, such as the Louvre, the Georges Pompidou Center, the Musee d'Orsay and Versailles.
Man, talk about craven. First they sold Europe into perfidy for oil favors, but to sell out the gems of Western Civilization? Whoa. That's beyond the pale.
I think Hugh exaggerates the aversion to portraits in the Muslim world: I remember seeing the interior of a barber's shop in Gaza, in a news item, that was plastered with dozens of portraits of suicide bombers. Even the Saudi royal family don't mind having their faces reproduced on calenders and the like and blown up placard portraits are often seen being carried on demonstrations in the middle east. The Iranians must be sick of the sight of reproductions of Khomeini's physog.
Muslims have been working on culture in Islamic countries...but it usually takes form in petri dishes...
Posted by: exsgtbrown
You're being overly kind here. Their culture is being worked on in the toilet. Oh, I forgot they didn't have any until they came in contact with Modernity.
Bush brings Democracy to the ME and the French are bringing the Art. Isn't it special?
What the hell are the French thinking?
Posted by: Voltaire
Problem is: they're NOT.
PS:
If everyone thought through all of the facts with uncompromising logic then we'd all stand united
against this islamic scourge. We would stand by
our borders - weapons at the ready.. taking our
turns.. kind of like the Swiss still do. All of their
armed forces take their guns back home when
they are off duty.
All of this islam crap is beginning to remind me of "Planet of the Apes". They think they know better, they think they are better. Yet all they are is tumb and brutal and unimaginative.
" guess pornography is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I find beheadings, female genital mutilation, women in burkas, forced marriage, pedophilia and all things pertaining to the death cult of islam pornographic."
...maybe the museum could designate an area dedicated to exibit photos of the above listed items and call it "The Modern Islamic Lifestyle Exibit."
If the French have decided to throw away the results of centuries of French aggression, let us first talk about those who have first call to it. A lot of what is in the Louvre is the result of repeated French invasions of neighbouring countries - Italy, Germany, the Low Countries, Spain. (Contrary to ignorant American ideas, most of French history consists of brutal outbound military aggression. An old Spanish joke has it that Spain would have had a wonderful history if el buen Dios had seen fit to place France somewhere near Australia.) So instead of sending the surplus to Vulgaria-in-Araby, if they really no longer want to keep it, how about returning it to those they originally stole it from? We Italians would be quite happy to have the Monna Lisa back, for instance - and no longer to have to deal with the shameless falsification of history that makes it a symbol of French culture.
99% of the artist have no real talent. Look at the Sweden artist who put than cross with christ om it in a jar of urine and all the art lover thought it was than a greast masterpiece. It this happen 400 year ago he or she would have being burned at the strake by emrage christian for insulting they religion.
"It this happen 400 year ago he or she would have being burned at the strake by emrage christian for insulting they religion"
....perhaps, but Christianity is a tolerant religion and has evolved and grown with the passage of times...
....In Islam today, if even drop the QUR'AN,,,it is off with your head.....Islam is not a tolerant and has not advanced in 1400 years.....