Paris, though a comparatively small capital, has long been an artistic and cultural hub. It is unlike London, the trendiest of trendiest, or Berlin, buoyantly alternative, or New York, infinitely diverse. Paris is more reserved, conservative and distant at times, elegantly old-fashioned. This may be why it so often knows how to take a new perspective on the old and the foreign, with poise and thoughtfulness… So make the most of your time in Paris and miss no opportunity to see random bits of the world joining together and suddenly making sense along the galleries of Parisian museums.
One such opportunity takes the form of a fascinating exhibition at the Dapper museum, near your Hotel Louvre Marsollier, entitled Masquerades and Carnivals. The exhibition looks at African masks, an object unfamiliar and often troubling to the Western eye, though artists like Picasso and George Braque dubbed them Art. In Africa, masks and costumes making exuberant use of natural materials to create monsters and chimeras of all sorts are consistently displayed in the ceremonies that structure the social and political reality: initiations, elections, justice, death…
The exhibition also explores Caribbean carnivals through artifacts, photographs and video recordings, inviting the visitor to feel the specific atmosphere of these celebrations, and illuminating their profound social and political meaning, often undecipherable to the outsider. Modern day Caribbean culture is a collective memory of the original African and American Indian influences which, layer by layer, created these specific cultures.
