Between 1771 and 1772 Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry maintain a personal confrontation of historic consequences: if Marie Antoinette does not speak to Louis XV’s courtesan, the King, annoyed, could abort the plan to divide Poland, plotted by Frederic the Great and Catherine of Russia together with the Emperess Marie Therese, Marie Antoinette’s mother.
Due to pressure by the Emperess and by European diplomacy, on January 1st, 1772 these forced words come from Marie Antoinette’s lips, “Il y a bien du monde aujourd’hui a Versailles”.
It is the victory of the power of vanity over ethical sense and State duty.
The attempt to dignify the preference of monumental marble with a more profound theoretical objective by way of a cultural ideology is a vanity shared by all totalitarian leaders.*
Challenging this despotic stylistic formalism, Lluís Hortalà has substituted marble with oil paint, trompe l’oeil, which poses the question of the rela- tion between painting and power and reflects on the ‘occultation’ inherent in the practice of painting.
*Deyan Sudjic
Madame du Barry / Marie Antoinette
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