The Louvre's closure proves art cannot survive climate change
The article has this passage: "The flooding in Paris is a stark warning of the danger posed by climate change to everything human civilisation has achieved – no matter how priceless."
And priceless is precisely how I would describe ecosystems, oceans, forests, species, the atmosphere, the lot. The destruction of civilisation will come as the inevitable consequence of ecological degradation.
But let's look at civilisation here. Art and culture. We are more than biological imperatives.
"If any museum sums up the best of human creativity through millennia, it is the Louvre. Now that it has been forced to close its doors, to take emergency measures against another of those weather events in which only the most foolhardy or corrupt refuse to see human-induced climate change, we can glimpse how our destructive side will wreck our best hopes if we don’t change.
Some environmentalists, of course, would say the fate of nature matters more than the fate of civilisation: that we humans have proved a pretty nasty little species. That is wrong. The great art that fills the Louvre proves it is wrong.
The most apocalyptic masterpiece in the Louvre is Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. As they cling to a raft on a savage sea, the last survivors of catastrophe have apparently been driven to cannibalism. Civilisation has died. Bare survival is all they have. Is that enough?"
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/jun/06/louvre-closure-flooding-paris-climate-change?CMP=share_btn_fb
The history of art is full of lost masterpieces. Works by Picasso were burned by the Nazis, and frescoes by Leonardo da Vinci were painted over. But the most intriguing lost work of all is Michelangelo’s ‘ice sculpture’. It’s the greatest snowman ever.
In January 1494, Piero de’ Medici sent Michelangelo into the snow-covered courtyard with instructions to make him a snowman. And Michelangelo did a fine job too. According to the 15th-century art historian Giorgio Vasari, the snowman Michelangelo was the greatest snow sculpture in the history of the world. The New York Times claims it was a dry run for his sculpture of David.
His biographer Vasari says only this:
“It is said that Piero de’ Medici, who had been left heir to his father Lorenzo, often used to send for Michelangelo, with whom he had been intimate for many years, when he wanted to buy antiques such as cameos and other engraved stones. And one winter, when a great deal of snow fell in Florence, he had him make in his courtyard a statue of snow, which was very beautiful…”
(Life of Michelangelo, p. 332 in the Penguin Classics translation by George Bull.)
But the sculpture couldn’t survive for long. A couple of days later, and one of Michelangelo’s earliest masterpieces disappeared, the greatest snowman in human history.
We’ve all made snowmen. A couple of years ago, someone down the road from me made a snowwoman. I’ve made four snowmen over the years. The first three were good, but the last one was abominable.
OK, But here’s a serious question: why would Michelangelo pour all his genius into making a beautiful snowman? Let's call it an ice sculpture to make it sound like real art. Here is a great artist prepared to accept impermanence and submit his genius to inevitable destruction and disappearance. Why?
“We too were men joyful and weary like you, and now we are lifeless, we are only earth, as you see. All that is created must end. All, all around us, must perish." (Michelangelo).
Michelangelo made an immense contribution to civilisation. But he knew that all that is created must end.
Sic Transit Gloria civilisation?
It just makes me wonder why we carry on, in face of a seemingly inevitable ruin. We do what we have to do in order to be, as part of our healthy flourishing. I can go with that. Anything else?
Sic transit gloria mundi is a Latin phrase that means "Thus passes the glory of the world." "Worldly things are fleeting."
"O quam cito transit gloria mundi" ("How quickly the glory of the world passes away") (Thomas à Kempis).
Yet that 'glory' seems to matter to us. We carry on building. In ruin of hope, to hope all things. We are transcendental beings.