Incredible photos flooded Instagram on Friday as the Louvre unveiled a large-scale trompe l’oeil by street artist JR that imagined the pyramid entrance of France’s most famous museum into a monument twice its size, rising out of a rock quarry to celebrate 30 years of the pyramids. The construction effort took two days, 400 volunteers and remained intact for only a few hours after it was finished on Friday. The optical illusion stayed up through Sunday, but before nightfall the installation was peeling off of the Napoleon Courtyard like sunburn. While the artist took to Twitter to explain that the work was intended to fall apart, photos from the ground received the installation with mixed reactions.
Granted, the optical illusion is meant to be seen from the third floor of the eastern-facing wing of the Louvre, but from the floor it looked like tourists were walking through a sea of trash. The prestigious French museum offered a nonchalant response “It’s only natural that it gets worse, we just did not know how fast it was going to happen,” a spokesperson told the Huffington Post. “The heat makes the glue dry. It was expected that, in any case, the work would be withdrawn Monday, so all is well.”
The artist insisted that the deconstruction was part of the work. “The images, like life, are ephemeral,” JR said on Twitter. “Once pasted, the art piece lives on its own. The sun dries the light glue and with every step, people tear pieces of the fragile paper. The process is all about participation of volunteers, visitors, and souvenir catchers. This project is also about presence and absence, about reality and memories, about impermanence.” But the crumpled paper that was coming off the ground made many visitors think of the environmental impact of the stunt and not the overall visual it created from above.
When talking about ephemeral art, does the decomposition process matter, or is it only as good as the best photo?
There are plenty of works with a shorter lifespan than JR pyramid illusion. For instance, Berndnaut Smilde’s sculptures have a typical lifespan of only a few seconds. Smilde has created temporary clouds at festivals like Frieze New York and insists on working with a camera to capture the perfect moment before they fall apart. But they literally disappear into thin air, instead of leaving a giant mess. It is the messiness associated with the moment that gives people pause.
Installation pieces that offer visitors impressive Instagram opportunities are a huge draw for Museums, but maybe it is time that people take a peek behind the scenes of the immersive experiences to see what happens to temporary exhibits that can’t be moved to a second space. It is a lot of paper and a lot of waste. The only difference between this piece and other installations is that we got to see the removal process.