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Paris
- The invitation carries the date of 13 March 1905. A conference-performance
is being held in the Guimet Museum on Brahmanic dance and all Paris
high society has been invited to see Madame Mac Leod perform.
The
room is decorated with garlands of flowers, petals are strewn all over
the floor, statues and artefacts fill the room along with books and
curtains. A photo of the time shows, standing in the background, a bronze
statue of Shiva Nataraja, the lord of dance to whose impetuous rhythm
the world is cyclically reconstituted, a masterpiece of 11th-cent. Indian
art. In the foreground, dressed in a gown that falls down to her ankles,
her breast covered with a precious and complicated bodice, a diadem
on her head, and bracelets, Madame Mac Leod is performing for the audience
“The invocation to Shiva”, “The princess and the magic flower”, “War
dances”. She is beautiful and young - a modern beauty compared to the
standards of the early 20th century. In another ten years she became
famous, albeit for totally different reasons: in 1917, under the name
of Mata Hari, she was shot as a German spy. The library still exists
and the caryatids that once crowned the vault still surround the first-floor
rotunda that forms the centre of the entire museum. This is the only
part of the building, besides the façade that looks out onto Place d’Iena,
preserved by architects Henri and Bruno Gaudin during the renovation
work of 1992.
At a cost of 100 billion lire, the Guimet, or Musée National des arts
asiatiques, has now reopened - the most ambitious and costly museum
rehabilitation project after the Louvre. Two thousand five hundred square
metres have been added to the original ten thousand, with five floors
linked by a double staircase that contain over forty-five thousand exhibits.
Light and space enhance the magnificence and impressiveness of the masterpieces
on show and overcome the air of falsity and artificiality that had hung
over the Guimet for so long. Now everything is left to the free extolling
of itself, without filter or mediations. The result is fascinating.
Opened in 1889, the Guimet was the obsession that became reality of
Emile Etienne Guimet, an industrialist from Lyons, then fifty years
old. An intelligent businessman, he belonged to that nineteenth-century
middle class in which the ideals of social elevation for the working
class mingled with the desire to unite religion and science, a certain
degree of optimistic philanthropism combined with an exoticism that
was neither hasty nor banal.
A knowledge of Egypt, Japan, India, China, congresses, the purchasing
of books, prints and work of art, as well as the fact that he moved
in the right circles and had the right friends, enabled Guimet to organise,
in the rooms of the Trocadéro, a first exhibition dedicated to the “Religions
of the Far East” and then the first congress of orientalists at Lyons.
His city of birth was not however responsive enough and his attempt
at establishing a museum failed. To create what he wanted to create,
the only place was Paris. Thus he offered his collections to France:
half the cost of building work to be paid by him, the other half to
be provided by the State. Paris offered the land and he appointed himself
director for life: and so the Guimet Museum saw the light. To the modern
visitor, the floors of the museum offer a glance of exemplary clarity
at the civilisations of China, Japan, India, Tibet and Korea. Displayed
on the ground floor are the wonders of Khmer architecture, a forest
of stones, the architectural decorations of the palaces, bas-reliefs
and pediments, pillars and statues the impressiveness and elegant detail
of which leave one open-mouthed with admiration. Angkor, once the capital
of Cambodia, had its last moment of glory in the mid-15th century, before
sinking into oblivion and neglect. It was only at the end of the nineteenth
century that the French colonial troops woke this “sleeping beauty”
up again after a slumber lasting many centuries. And it was precisely
in the library of the Guimet Museum that Malraux, who had just turned
twenty at the time, came across the monographic work on Khmer art written
by Henri Parmentier, then head of the archaeological service of the
E.F.E.O, l’Ècole Francaise de l’Extreme Orient.
The orient was fashionable in the West. A living could be made from
it without working. On the Cambodian adventure of Malraux, his attempt
to steal statues, his arrest and trial, the sentence by default, the
defence of the clumsy “thief” by the French intellighentia and his subsequent
anti-colonialism, much has been said and written. Now, Maxime Prodromidés
in his Angkor chronique d’une renaissance (Editions Kailash) finally
puts the matter in its proper perspective thanks to the so far unpublished
documents of the E.F.E.O. Thus it comes to light that a sort of cat
and mouse game existed between the colonial authorities and Malraux.
The latter tried to use the former, he placed himself under their protective
wing, he pretended to have funds he did not possess, for an archaeological
campaign he had no intention of starting, he undertook not to take away
anything, while arriving full of axes and saws to try and remove as
much as possible. On their part, the authorities rather rashly and hurriedly
gave him their approval, charmed as they were by his person, his way
of talking, his apparent generosity. After just a month, they discovered
the young would-be archaeologist did not have a cent. From then on it
was all a comedy of misunderstandings and Malraux, not aware that he
was being watched, attempted to take away the statues without being
discovered.
Six hundred kilos of bas-reliefs, stolen by Malraux, were confiscated
on the Hainan boat in the port of Kompong Chnang. At 23 years of age,
without any experience in the field, on the basis of what he had read
and his sensitivity, Malraux had come to understand that culture better
than many experts and enthusiasts.
Years later, Malraux began taking an interest in the museum of his younger
years in terms of its protection and maintenance. He had become Minister
of Culture, an official figure. After being a rebel he had joined the
establishment. The Guimet that had witnessed his birth now found him
again as its putative father.
The circle had closed.
(traduzione Interpres sas-Giussano)
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