After the Venus of Milo, disfiguring the colonnade of the National Assembly, the Olympic Games grace the capital with additional ugliness. The work, signed by American artist Alison Saar and titled Salon, was inaugurated in the Charles-Aznavour garden, between Petit-Palais and Concorde. She’s a black woman surrounded by multicultural furnishings. Contrary to Venus ephemeral, it is intended to remain.
Offered by the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage in Paris, the work is “an invitation to dialogue, to exchange, to meeting, to sharing”, explained Thomas Bach, President of the IOC. It represents “the unity of all humanity in our diversity”. The artist presented it as “space open to all, which promotes dialogue and allows meetings”. No cliché of living together is forgotten.
Another view of the work. © Samuel Martin
A mix without white people
Detail of the work of Alison Saar, a character poorly worked in the peeper. © Samuel Martin
Let’s not trust that lukewarm water faucet. “I am mixed race myself…”said Alison Saar, daughter of an African-American and a German-American, “…so the majority of my work focuses on my African ancestry”. She could have been a pan-German, the times want her to be a black supremacist. The paternal branch? Sawed off. With SalonAlison Saar wanted – these are her words – “to break with the image of the standard white man that we find in most monuments and sculptures”. There is wokism, this anti-White racism and this sexism which presents itself under the guise of diversity.
“The Standard White Man” ? Let Alison Saar go see in front of the Opera, where women are dancing. Let her go and contemplate the tympanum of Notre-Dame, where she will find women and saints, who are by definition not at all « standards ». Let her go see the women of Maillol at the Tuileries, the statue of Joan of Arc at the Place des Pyramides, the Freedom lighting up the world at the end of the Allée des Cygnes, and others. All these women surely have a fault in Alison Saar’s eyes, that of being white – or, in the case of the Virgin, Jewish, which, since October 7, seems an aggravating circumstance.
Black women in Paris
So let Saar go into the 17the district see the statue of Solitudeheroine of the fight against slavery. Solitude is presented as “the first statue of a black woman in Paris”. The untruth is significant. Near the Observatory, the Fountain of the Four Parts of the World presents four women: Africa, America, Asia, Europe. America is not represented by a Yankee nor a pioneer, but by a Native American woman. At his ankle, theAfrica wears a broken chain, symbol of the fight against slavery. The monument dates from the 1870s.
Asia (by Falguière) and Africa (by Delaplanche), two of the six good and beautiful sculptures on the Parvis d’Orsay. © Samuel Martin
Slightly later, in front of the Musée d’Orsay, a beautiful artistic ensemble created for the Universal Exhibition says nothing other than “the unity of all humanity in our diversity”, to speak like the president of the IOC. Six women. Six continents. Here again, America is not a descendant of European immigrants but a Native American. These women are modern. Europe is in “No Bra” mode, this current trend where the absence of a bra affirms the freedom of women. The others are topless. It’s not 2024, it’s 1878.
No, really, “racialized” women, as they say so ignominiously in their Newspeak, did not wait for Alison Saar and other official artists to exist in Paris. But, far from agreeing with us, Alison Saar would tell us that these Africa and these Asia have the congenital defect of having been created by… white men. We always come back to that. The IOC and the Paris town hall cope very well with this racism. As long as he is excited about living together!
