Street Art: 12th Arr.

 

We had just left an immersive exhibit on Alfons Mucha when we saw these windows up the side of a building in the 12th Arr. Even if they ditched their other lovers, I don't give these two much of a chance at romance. Since it's day in her apartment, and night in his, how will they ever overcome the space-time continuum?

The Mucha exhibition was neat, mostly wall-sized projections of posters and details from his Slavic epic, choreographed to transition more or less seamlessly. Still, for all the thought that went into the curation and narrative display of the artwork, almost none seemed to go into moving visitors through the exhibit. Basically they clogged into tiny doorways, and some lay on the ground to fully take in the wall-sized art in the too-small rooms (to be fair, they were provided pillows for this purpose).

This is the same problem that occurs at the Louvre in front of the colossally overrated (and tiny) Mona Lisa, despite any attempts to mitigate overcrowding through staggered ticket sales. The sorry thing is, Walt Disney solved this issue before his death in 1966. The story goes that Disneyland's much-delayed Haunted Mansion was initially designed to be a walk-through attraction (a "museum of the weird," in fact). But it soon became clear that if the set-piece displays were interesting enough, visitors wouldn't move through at a pace that would be feasible for the park's volume--basically, people would hang around gawking at the best gags, to the detriment of the experience for everyone. After considering several alternative to crowd control and rethinking the nature of the attraction itself, the Imagineers developed the "doom buggies" that briskly transport visitors from set-piece to set-piece, giving them a glimpse of each without bogging down the whole enterprise (or letting them linger long enough to get a good look at how each illusion is created).

Of course, this would be a dumb solution for the Louvre, whose business model seems to thrive on the hype generated by its crown jewel. Throngs clogging around one painting in its entire collection is not a problem to be managed--it's the entire point of the Louvre experience, essential to its mystique.

Which is ironic, since the amusement appeal of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, with its animatronic ghosts and spirits, comes from spoofing on the idea that visitors will catch a brief glimpse the ineffable as they are whisked through the ride. Whereas the Louvre's masterpieces actually represent greater truths insofar as their creators, in addition to being outstanding craftsmen, had a gift of seeing more deeply and clearly than the rest of us.

So might not a passing glimpse of the Mona Lisa give visitors a more powerful experience with the ineffable than mobbing their way to the front with selfie sticks? Maybe. Unless surviving the degredation ritual of the mass selfie with a pop culture icon is the point. In which case, the public and the Louvre deserve each other.

Case in point: stand in front of this crappy costume shop werewolf long enough, and it's just a crappy costume shop werewolf.