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Revive, Reclaim and Rebuild

The Carters take on the Louvre

by Camille Parker, '18

Major:  Communication

American pop-culture phenomenon Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Hip-Hop icon Sean "Jay-Z" Carter and their all-star team of creatives, recently released the visual for their newest collaboration titled "Ape Shit." The new music video, the first from their “Everything Is Love” joint album, is proving to be yet another layered and complex artifact from the anthology of the family Carter (the pair are married with three children). But this video is different from others. 

 

Set inside the Louvre museum, the Ape Shit video challenges a silent, enduring, yet unsettling message, as told through the overwhelming absence of black faces in the art housed in the Louvre. A possible message that speaks to a centuries-old sanitization of black contribution and the sometimes-intentional erasure of black representation; actions that both suggest and reinforce the narrative that people of the African diaspora are mere tangential footnotes of human anthropology, expressed through art- the best of which are displayed at the world’s largest art museum- the Louvre.

 

Through an examination of the Ape Shit video, the theory of agenda setting will be applied. By examining the juxtaposition of iconic European and African art next to, arguably, two of the most famous Black musicians in the world, this essay will attempt to decode the true agenda of the Carter's: revive, reclaim and rebuild.

 

The events that led up to the release of this video may very-well be sixty-eight years in the making. Over a half-century ago, in a small modest apartment nestled along the streets of St. Germain, an eclectic neighborhood of Paris, France (situated less than two miles from the iconic Louvre museum), was once the home of American novelist and essayist James Baldwin.

 

Immortalized in recent years by many for his deeply honest and sometimes sobering works such as; Notes of A Native Son, The Fire Next Time and Go Tell it on the Mountain, the New York City born Baldwin had an enduring love for Paris: its people, its culture and its famous art. Baldwin's sometimes brash delivery and panache for preaching truth to power made him famous but it is his art that made him legend.  

 

Baldwin spent a great deal of his adult life in Paris and later settled in a provincial region of southern France. Baldwin, by his own account, saw Paris as a sort of exile. And exile that provided him the luxury of a mostly peaceful existence. One where he could regularly expel the oxygen from his lungs without the fear of racist, homophobic and xenophobic threats of violence descending upon his black, queer, intellectual and American body. But this peace came at a cost.

 

In many ways, Baldwin was invisible in Paris. He would be tolerated but not celebrated. Even in death, his works would see the some of the posthumous veneration extended to many literary greats, but he would not be revered in the same way William Faulkner, Henry James, Jack London and other contemporaries are.

 

Over thirty years have passed since the death of Baldwin and while he knew nothing of the Carters (neither were working artists at the time of his 1987 death) the spirit of Baldwin and other forgotten and otherwise underrated Black artists, relegated as ‘niche’ artists, only appealing to other blacks, would be given their due; celebrated by their own in arguably the most distinguished house of art in the world.

 

For the purpose of this essay, the artifacts that will be discussed in the Ape Shit video will be limited to; the coronation of Napoleon, the great sphinx of Tanis and the Mona Lisa

 

Beyoncé uses the coronation of Napoleon as a backdrop for the revival of black feminine unity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Commissioned by former Emperor of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, The Consecration of Emperor Napoleon I and Coronation of Empress Josephine in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris on 2 December 1804, is one of the largest oil on canvas paintings on display at the Louvre. The painting which spans twenty feet in length and thirty-two feet in height was completed in 1808 by Jacques-Louis David. Bonaparte was known for the meticulous management (and sometimes the manufacturing) of his own image. So, when David was commissioned to paint the occasion of Bonaparte’s consecration and the coronation of wife Josephine de Beauharnais, it was natural that the emperor would take some creative license on the project.

 

What makes the performance sequence of Beyoncé and her eight perfectly synchronized dancers so eyebrow-raising, isn’t their movements, it is rather, the ironic meaning of the painting behind him. What many don’t know about this particular painting is that depicts Bonaparte crowning himself emperor and subsequently crowning his wife Josephine as Empress. Traditionally, the coronation was an act to be executed by the pope. Bonaparte crowning himself emperor is not only a symbolic demonstration of his growing power as emperor but also his defiance of the papacy’s ability to control him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This background creates a beautiful canvas for the silent message that Beyoncé and her dancers may possibly be sending. The dancers, all female and each of varying hues of brown, dance with their hands interlocking with the dancer beside them, creates a single body of movement (Byrd, 2018.) Beyoncé herself is barely discernable from the others in this shot, with the exception of tartan pants in a brown hue (the other dances where similar costuming but without the plaid detail.) This could be interpreted as Beyoncé announcing her power- one derived from the strength of the black women that surround her. Rather than a pope crowning Beyoncé as pop empress, it is a unified collective body of black women who support the pop phenom and simultaneously empower themselves.

 

Beyoncé and Jay-Z reclaim the identity of the black pharaoh through the Sphinx of Tanis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tale of the Sphinx of Tanis is a long and complex one. For the sake of this paper, it is most important to understand the meaning of the Sphinx itself. An explanation from the Louvre’s website reads “the appropriate Egyptian appellation for a statue or image of this kind was shesep-ankh ("living image"). The creature was a symbolic representation of the close relationship between the sun god (the lion's body) and the king (the human head), and was the "living image of the king", demonstrating his strength and his close association with Ra. The Sphinx was always positioned either as (recumbent) guardian and protector of places where gods appeared - such as the horizon, and temple entrances - or as (upright) defender of Egypt against hostile forces, whom he trampled underfoot (Louvre, 2018).

 

Further inspection of this sphinx exposes a darker history of the artifact and its history. Like thousands of other African statues and artifacts, the noses have been defaced and, in most cases, totally destroyed. While there is no confirmation, it is widely believed that this defacing of royal artifacts was done to erase any obvious indication that these figures were of African descent. The typical African nose (especially those of sub-Saharan origin) is often low bridged, with wide flaring nostrils- a feature distinguishable from most other ethnicities. However, during European expeditions to Egypt, the pieces were defaced, and growing misinformed propaganda took hold, asserting that the African rulers were not even African but of middle eastern, Greek and even European heritage. This history makes the performance of Beyoncé and Jay-Z together, in front of the Sphinx seem to be quite intentional.

 

Placing the couple in front of the Sphinx, in a way, makes them the protectors of the sacred nature of the Sphinx and what it represents. In very brief cut-away shots, you can see a group of obviously black men, shirtless, baring their varied hues of brown skin, dancing in rejoice around a relic of their ancestors. This performance could be seen as Carter’s reframing the agenda that the artifact is somehow a racially ambiguous figure of a dead past, by showing it as the anchor of this very real and moving piece of art, being performed by descendants of the work’s subject and original home- Africa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important. Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to them from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it’s true for everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace. They have to disturb the peace. Otherwise, chaos.”

 

- James Baldwin

 

 

 

Beyoncé and Jay-Z reposition the gaze of affinity onto black romance by using the Mona Lisa as a permissive watchful eye

 

Arguably Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous work, The Mona Lisa plays an interesting role in the Ape Shit video. This is the only work of art in the entire video that the Carters actually look at, possibly signifying their own affinity for the work. Heralded as the most popular painting in the Louvre, the Mona Lisa, in the video, is shown true to scale and rarely on her own. In two separate scenes, the Carters may possibly make their biggest statement of all. In the opening scene of the video we see Beyoncé dressed in an all pink pantsuit standing next to her husband who is sporting an equally fashionable suit in a bright blue hue; between them the iconic Mona Lisa. At first glance, it seems the shot is just another great fashion moment, but upon further observation, the scene may actually be a comment on gender identity. While Beyoncé and Jay-Z wear decidedly gender- normative colors, the Mona Lisa is between them wearing all black. This seems to act as a balance between the hyper-feminism of Beyoncé and the overt masculinity of Jay-Z further reinforced by their clothing.

 

At many points in the video Mona Lisa does play second fiddle, even appearing diminished and ornamental next to the Carters. But it is in the last forty seconds that we see a new focus emerge. In one of the final shots, a picturesque vision of two young black figures is unveiled. The two, male and female sit in front of the Mona Lisa. The man seated in a chair looks towards the camera with a relaxed facial expression, while his female partner combs through his tightly coiled hair using a pick comb with a small clenched fist figure at its tip- similar to the Black power symbol of the 1970s. The center- staging of a grooming ritual that is so universal to primates and in turn homo-sapiens, is an expression of familiarity, affinity, and connectedness- much like the emotions often ascribed to the gaze of Mona Lisa herself.

 

By centering the pair directly in front of the Mona Lisa, placing them as the clear focus, audiences digest their interpretations of the figures through their own lenses; in all their simplicity, in all their forwardness, and in many ways- in all their blackness. Gazing upon the couple in the same way that one would the virgin Madonna, cupid or the countless other representations of Roman of Greek bodies made of marble or stone, black flesh, moving and being, in real time, becomes equal in grandeur and reverence to the shrines of the past showcased throughout the Louvre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps there is no agenda, perhaps this is all simply the engineered artistic expression of two mega-celebrities. Arguably, a similar assumption could be made for the works of Jacques- Louis David, the sculptors of ancient Egypt and Leonardo da Vinci. The beautiful thing about art, at any point in history, is that its meanings are often shrouded in mystery only to be dissected and exposed by an inquisitive many; often disconnected from the creator of the work. But in these halls, of this great museum, even if only for a brief moment, blackness not only had a rightful and meaningful place, it was center stage. The presence of these two larger-than-life icons of popular culture is new, refreshing and frankly, long overdue.  Seemingly unphased by respectability politics, self-censorship, or any attempt to reduce, or erase their American-ness, urbanity, Hip-Hop roots and unabashed blackness, Beyoncé and Jay-Z did what James Baldwin and countless other black artists never had the chance to do; walk the halls of the highest respected house of art in the modern world and make it their stage and tell their story- on their terms.

 

References

 

Benite, Z. (2011). Modernity: The Sphinx and the Historian. The American Historical Review, 116(3), 638-652. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.mutex.gmu.edu/stable/23308218

 

Byrd, R. (2018, June 19). Beyoncé and Jay-Z's "Ape Shit" Video Shows Black Bodies in Art - and in Control. Retrieved from https://www.racked.com/2018/6/18/17476770/beyonce-jay-z-apeshit-everything-is-love-art-meaning-louvre

 

Cameos. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Art/Additional_art.htm

 

Dwyer, P. (2015). 'Citizen Emperor': Political Ritual, Popular Sovereignty and the Coronation of Napoleon I. History, 100(339), 40-57. doi:10.1111/1468-229X.12089

 

LeBeau, A. (n.d.). An art history expert breaks down Beyoncé and JAY-Z's "APESHIT" video. Retrieved from http://www.thefader.com/2018/06/18/beyonce-jay-z-apeshit-art-history-expert-louvre-mona-lisa

 

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438099

 

Thomas, T. K. (2010). Egyptian Art of Late Antiquity. A Companion to Ancient Egypt, 1032-1063. doi:10.1002/9781444320053.ch45

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