Louvre creates Beyoncé and Jay-Z art tour after viral music video pop’s power couple shot there for Everything is Love album
The paintings and sculptures R’n’B superstars feature in subversive six-minute music video that’s been viewed 57 million times, including the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, appear in a curated mini tour of the famed Paris museum
The Louvre has dedicated a new art tour to Beyoncé and Jay-Z after pop’s biggest power couple shot the video for their latest hit in the Paris museum.
The R’n’B stars’ hit song Apeshit – which used some of the museum’s greatest masterpieces as backdrops – has been viewed more than 57 million times on YouTube alone since it was released a fortnight ago.
Now the Louvre, which already has a tour based on the US rapper will.i.am’s hit Smile Mona Lisa, has created another based on the singers’ night in the museum.
The choice of works that Beyoncé and Jay-Z used or posed in front of has been taken as a celebration of black bodies and empowerment in an institution that was built on the spoils of conquest and imperialism.
The video appropriates, exploits, and reinterprets Western paintings and sculptures as a way to chart and celebrate the Carters’ success, and black bodies …
Portrait of a Negress was painted in 1800, six years after revolutionary France had abolished slavery in its Caribbean colonies only for Napoleon to reinstate it two years later.
