06 October 2016
The Horror At Versailles
Who desecrated the sculpture?
By John Watson
Maigret would have cracked it. Dupin would not have been far behind. Unfortunately however neither of these giants of detective fiction is available to solve the mystery of Versailles. Who painted neo-fascist slogans on the statue by Sir Anish Kapoor, a 60 foot artwork made from rock and steel which was being exhibited for five months in the chateau gardens? As with all the best detective mysteries, there are lots of theories. Kapoor himself believes that it was an inside job. Did the vandals have accomplices among the palace staff? A local theory is that it was Kapoor’s own studio, trying to create a global buzz. You really cannot trust the perfidious English! Or is it ultra-right Catholics feeding their bigotry, a last hurrah from the Brood of false Lorraine? Then, again, maybe it was the French traditionalists who, for reasons which will shortly appear, regarded it as an affront to the memory of Marie Antoinette.
As if this wasn’t exotic enough, there is a new technology aspect. One, although only one, of the security cameras picked up drones operating in the area. Were they active participants or did they film? Who controlled them? If we knew that, it might lead us to the culprits. It is stimulating and exciting stuff; just what the public enjoy. But there is also an important message under the surface. To read it clearly we need to retreat from the excitable world of the French detectives and rely on techniques honed in the more reflective surroundings of 221b Baker Street. Yes, that’s right, relax in the armchair, light a pipe and think about it.
Let’s start with the statue itself. There have been pictures of it in the press. The main part is shaped like an end of the bugle and is clearly some form of orifice. The work is officially called “Dirty Corner” and Kapoor himself has said that it is meant to symbolise “the vagina of the Queen taking power.” It isn’t clear which Queen but, as it is at Versailles, leading contenders must be Maria Theresa, first wife of Louis XIV, and the tragic Marie Antionette. Of course there are other possible candidates or, indeed, it may have been a French queen in abstract. It could even be a conceptual queen which draws suggestions of nationality from the place where it is exhibited.
Whichever it is, however, you can see how this rather biological sculpture by an eminent English artist could give offence. After all, the French are a proud race and probably do not like Englishmen producing sculptures which mock those who ruled them. If a Frenchman were to exhibit a statue purporting to show the vagina of Elizabeth I in Trafalgar Square, most freeborn Englishmen would want to kick his French backside the entire to the Channel Tunnel for gross impertinence, and quite right too. No, there can be no doubt. This outrage was perpetrated by Frenchmen.
What sort of Frenchmen? History buffs? A resurgent monarchist party? No, no, my dear Watson, the origin of this affair is much darker than that. We are looking at the visible part of an iceberg which threatens the whole fabric of the Western world.
Let’s go back to that statue again and ask who will appreciate it. Well, the elite, of course, the intelligentsia, educated artistic types. The sort of people you find in the cafes of Montmartre, a sort of French Islington with better food and fewer estate agents. Cultured, elegant and perceptive, they will see Sir Anish’s work for the glory that it is and be delighted that it should be exhibited in such a prestigious place. But what about the public as a whole, the artisans, those who did not go to the Sorbonne? Will they like it too? Well no, of course not. They are not sufficiently perceptive to understand sculpture at this level but, never mind, they normally take a lead from their intellectual betters and applaud whatever pleases the critics. The approval of the authorities at Versailles should surely be sufficient for them. These people are the curators of a great national monument. Why would the public query their taste?
If you ask that question you have been asleep for the last couple of years. Whether it began with better information being available over the Internet or as a general revolution against the patronising attitudes of a political class which always thought it knew better, a refusal to accept the views of the elite is now the central political driving force across the Western world. It lay behind the Brexit vote. It lies behind the popularity of Trump. It can be seen behind the rise of the far right in continental Europe. And it is not just a distrust of the elite’s judgement either; the movement is fuelled by a dark suspicion that the elite have used the deference afforded them to promote their own interests, to set up institutions which favour them, and to cream off any benefit; all with scant regard to the concerns of the rest of the population.
Breakdowns in authority happen from time to time and they are never easy. Look at the bloodshed across Europe caused by the spread of Protestantism in the 16th century when the authority of the church was under attack; look at the French revolution itself. But, hold hard, our task is not to look ahead to the future of our civilisation but to help the French police find the perpetrators of a piece of vandalism. So what do we have? A Frenchman; a patriot; one of the disenfranchised class, angry enough to use fascist graffiti, capable of operating a drone, a recent visitor to Versailles or someone who works there. It is still quite a large field but then add this: only one of the security cameras picked up the drone. Were the others switched off or merely looking the other way? Why? Who controlled them? Were they the equivalent of the curried mutton in “Silver Blaise”? That is where the French police should look. I think, Watson, that a telegram should do the trick.
Once the perpetrators have been caught, how should they be punished? Damage to rather offensive work of art placed by the elite in a public place? Hmm. Luckily there is a precedent.
In the early 1970s, a corporate sponsor paid for a statue of no discernible merit to be erected on Laundress Green, a piece of meadowland in Cambridge. The Green was a pleasant place, somewhere you might eat your picnic lunch or perhaps stop on the way to the pub to watch the punts on the river Cam. The statue was a collection of steel bars, rather like a haphazard piece of scaffolding but bigger. No one, apart presumably from the corporate sponsors, the City authorities and the artistic elite which advised them, was happy that this beautiful place had been desecrated and every night, as the pubs came out, any self-respecting undergraduate who was passing that way would pull a spanner from his pocket, remove a steel bar from the statue and throw it into the river. To the Cambridge constabulary it was vandalism and stories circulated of a final night when drunken young men tried to escape a police ambush by commandeering a punt but were remorselessly overtaken by their pursuers in a “Panda punt” behind. No doubt the stories were better than the reality but I believe that some people did appear before the magistrates who took a very tolerant attitude to the affair. They were right to do so. The imposition by the elite on the people of Cambridge was outrageous and the reaction was entirely proportionate.
You may be able to rely on English magistrates for a bit of common sense but what about French ones? Will they consign the perpetrators to some oubliette while they sit analysing the role of elites with Cartesian precision? It is hard to say but there is certainly a risk.
“Ah, yes, the boy has come to take the telegram. Watson, tell him I have changed my mind. There will be no telegram after all.”
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