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Pei's Pyramid |
| Section: THE ARTS / ARCHITECTURE |
| Author: Curtis Cate |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 3/1/1990 |
| Size: 1,657 Words, 10,472 Characters |
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In France, as the old saying has it, plus ca change, et plus c'est la meme chose. The fierce debates aroused by President Francois Mitterrand's bold decision to have the vast forecourt of the Louvre embellished by a seventy-foot-high pyramid made of metal wiring and glass are only the latest episode in a long series of intellectual battles between the ancients and the moderns.
These battles really began in the early seventeenth century with a furious controversy among Parisians as to whether sonnets should be composed in Alexandrine or octosyllabic verses, and was perpetuated by Victor Hugo and the Romantics with the uproar over his convention defying play, Hernani; by the admirers of Richard Wagner against the outraged whistlers and cat-calling enemies of Tannhauser (1861); and which rose to a new crescendo toward the end of the last century with the erection of that metallic "monstrosity," the Eiffel Tower.
The latest uproar, aroused by the French president's decision to have the last for ecourtes of the Louvre enlivened ...
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...ting the Abduction of Persephone. Painted by whom? I have no idea, for the identifying brass plaque on the ornate gilt frame, like so many others in this part of the museum, was illegible. Such is the cruel pass to which sadly neglected and often disgracefully uncleaned canvasses are reduced when the available funds are reserved for more exciting exploits in the field of cultural gimmickry.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
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Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
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