Libya after Gaddafi: Europe’s Iraq?

Café Babel, "the first multilingual European current affairs magazine", has just published a translation by Culturissima's David Winter that draws timely comparisons between post-Gaddafi Libya and post-Saddam Iraq.

Libya after Gaddafi: Europe’s Iraq?

The post-Gaddafi era is taking shape around the National Transition Council, which is currently in control of Tripoli. Uncertainty about the future is already taking hold though, with fears that Libya could become a new Iraq. This time it is up to Europe to avoid repeating the post-Saddam disaster.

The Iraq experience has left its mark. The triumphalism which was the order of the day amongst US hawks immediately after Saddam Hussein’s fall has this time round been replaced with caution: there is no question of repeating the mistakes of Mesopotamia in the southern Mediterranean. Barack Obama, anxious to avoid being seen as the "worthy" successor to Bush Junior, has hammered home a clear reminder in all his speeches that "Libya is no Iraq".

It is difficult to disagree. Whereas eight years ago the Americans intervened (almost) unilaterally in their rush towards Baghdad, their intervention in Libya has been much more subtle. This time an international coalition - originally European and American and later with the gradual and grudging support of Arab countries, Russia and China - has come into play under the mandate of the United Nations... the same UN that in 2003 could only watch US military action helplessly from the side-lines.

Exit the crudely assembled case about weapons of mass destruction. Exit the arrogance and ignorance of an international community largely opposed to the intervention. Eight years later, Obama has abandoned the Bush way of doing things and the United States has kept a fairly low profile, accounting for "only" 27% of all NATO’s air-strikes. Instead, "old Europe" has more or less taken over.

Their war, their victory

In particular, Great Britain, France and Italy have assumed the burden of intervening and assisting the rebels in order to protect the civilian population in accordance with resolution 1973 of the UN security council. Their operations have been on a larger scale than expected, particularly as concerns aerial intervention and the supply of weapons, to the extent that they have at times been in danger of going beyond the UN framework. Nevertheless, the overall idea has not changed: NATO should not be on the front line.

The determining factor in the fall of Gaddafi was the successive rebellions of tribes

In an article for Slate.fr, Fred Kaplan, former war correspondent of the Boston Globe, writes of the Libyan rebels: "It was their war, and it will soon be their victory, not ours". While the West has supplied the drones, missiles and automatic weapons and has almost certainly trained part of the rebel forces, the determining factor in the fall of the Gaddafi regime was actually the successive rebellions of various tribes. According to Patrick Haimzadeh, a former French diplomat stationed in Libya, it was the actions of the Zintan clan (named after the eponymous town) that brought about Gaddafi’s overthrow.

Libya: a failure in European political policy?

However, France, Great Britain and Italy, having served as a particularly substantial auxiliary force, have run the risk of seeing Tripoli take on the appearance of a second Baghdad. This is not just because Libya is an economic wasteland, but also because the national transition council is an unknown political force. The European countries are going to be obliged to take on the leadership that they have assumed for seven months and avoid making the same mistakes as the United States in Iraq. In particular, they will have to take into account the importance of Libyan tribalism and local realities.

Yet is Europe really ready to meet the political challenge of Libya? Nothing could be less certain. While it is true that London, Paris and Rome have been the most active participants in Libya, the old continent remains divided. Half of NATO's members, including countries such as Poland and Germany, refused to take part in the intervention. "The sad reality", AFP quotes one former European diplomat as saying, "is that the idea of Europe as a political and strategic concept has been entirely missing". Although bitter, this is not necessarily a final assessment. The European union clearly has the chance to bring hoped-for multilateral success that will be based, we can hope, on the interests of the Libyan people rather than multi-national oil companies, as was too often the case in the Iraqi desert. The stakes are high – both for Libya and, beyond her shores, for Europe.

Gabon's growing its own timber

A report last year estimated that foreign workers held 1,893 of the 8,590 posts in the Gabonese oil industry, with nationals occupying just 17 percent of available executive positions. If Gabon wants to secure its future as one of Africa's leading oil producing nations, then it needs to start “growing its own timber” before it is too late. 

More than a generation after oil was first discovered in Gabon in the early 1970s, one issue unites the industry's major players more than any other: the raw materials are just not up to scratch.

But it is not Gabon’s vast supplies of black gold that have been found wanting. Rather, it is a lack of local expertise that is causing concern as the Gabonese government faces up to the fact that there is a national skills shortage at all levels of the oil industry.

In October 2010 President Ali Bongo, responding to pressure from vocal unions such as the ONEP, announced plans to impose a 10 percent cap on foreign oil sector workers and to prioritise local job-seekers over their foreign counterparts.

But for a more sustainable future Gabon has to find a way to grow its own timber. And it is here that foreign oil companies are playing a significant role, their plans to increase the number of skilled local workers based on a simple formula: training, training and more training - not just for new recruits to the sector but also, crucially, for senior management. 

Shell Gabon, which first started operating in the country in the 1960s, has been promoting overseas bursaries for Gabonese students for several decades. And in 2010 ENI Gabon, part of the Italian ENI group, launched its "Citizen Programme", in which Masuku University will become a training hub for final-year geology graduates. There is more good news, too: experienced executives from the state oil ministry will soon be able to pursue their professional development at the renowned ENI Corporate University in Milan.

Total has resolved to take training a stage further. Earlier this year the French multinational signed a public-private agreement that will lead to the construction of a National Institute of Petrol and Gas at Port-Gentil. With courses in everything from oil exploration to the commercialisation of hydrocarbons, hopes are high that the institute will generate Gabon's very own oil elite, local men and women who will pass their technical and managerial skills on to the next generation of young Gabonese.

In Paris? Forget haute cuisine - head for le Petit Bleu!

If you're American and you're on holiday in Paris, you're going to want to sample some of the capital's finest French cuisine, right? Preferably washed down with a bottle of Bordeaux? Maybe in one of those literary cafés that line the Boulevard St German or somewhere along "the most beautiful avenue in the world", the Champs Elysées?

Montmartre, Paris

On the other hand, you could have the best meal you've ever had - and perhaps the cheapest, too - at the tiniest Tunisian restaurant in town, where you're welcomed as a long-lost stranger - and asked to nip across the road to fetch a couple of baguettes before you sit down.

Le Petit Bleu is the kind of place where a first-time tourist wouldn't dream of eating (it's not on the main drag), where a more seasoned visitor would like to eat (but it's a little intimidating), and where the old timer keeps coming back time and again.

The Cruise of the Vanadis

From the snowy mountains of Massachusetts to the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, Culturissma has always been fascinated by the life and times of the Amercian authoress Edith Wharton. 

For many years Culturissima organised cultural tours to the Berkshire Hills, not so very far from Boston, that included visits not only to Wharton's former home, The Mount, but also to Melville's Arrowhead and Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables.

Wharton, America's first woman of letters and a Pulitzer Prize winner to boot, was also an adventurer. In the following abridged extract from The Cruise of the Vanadis, which details Wharton's travels across the Mediterranean, we read about her impressions of Algeria, a country we frequently visit on behalf of www.expertalgeria.com.

On the 17th of February after two weeks of icy fog in Paris, we left Marseilles for Algiers, in the steamer Ville de Madrid. The Gulf of Lions was in its usual disturbed condition, and it was after a very rough passage that we reached Algiers on the following night. The steam-yacht Vanadis, which we had chartered in England for our Mediterranean cruise, lay awaiting us in the harbour, and the gig came alongside the steamer as soon as we anchored.

We had to row ashore first, to pass through the Custom House, in common with all the other passengers; and on setting foot in the sea of mud which covered the landing-place, we were surrounded by the first Arabs we had ever seen - startlingly picturesque in the flashes of lanternlight, with their white burnouses and long white cloaks. A few minutes later we were again in the gig, being rapidly rowed across the wide harbour, under a sky glittering with stars, and our first view of Algiers, stretching its illuminated curve high above the dark waters of the bay, was extremely fine. We were soon alongside the yacht, and presently found ourselves peacefully seated at supper in the brightly lighted saloon, which had been filled with roses and violets in honour of our coming.

Never was town more nobly placed. Backed by the green slopes of the Sahel, the tiers of white houses follow the long curve of the bay, above which they are raised by the high arches of the terrace - like Boulevard de la République, and over the denser roofs of the city lie the scattered villas of Mustapha Supérieur, their horse-shoe windows glancing seaward through groves of orange and palm, their white walls tapestried with crimson bougainvillea. The harbour, crowded with shipping, is bounded on one side by a mole of modern construction, on the other by the jetty which 30,000 Christian captives toiled to build less than 400 years ago. But the reality of Christian slavery in Africa is brought much closer to us by Goethe's description of Prince Palagonia whom he saw, hardly more than 100 years ago, clad in black small-clothes, with silk stockings and silver buckles, begging in the streets of Palermo for money to ransom the Christian captives of Algeria. Even in 1816, 3,000 still remained to be released by Lord Exmouth when he destroyed the fleet of the Algerine pirates.

It seems incredible that such things should have been within the memory of living man, when one walks today through the street of the French quarter, crowded with carriages and tourists, and lined with shops as inviting as those of Nice.

To see the Arab side of Algiers one must go to the market or the mosques, or better still, climb the steep lanes which lead upward from the Parisian arcades of the Rue Bab-Azoun. In these narrow streets, we saw veiled women hurrying along with the peculiar shuffling gait due to those loose slippers of the East, their painted eyes shining through the thin white yashmak; then there were dark doorways in which old Arabs sat squatting over their tailoring or shoe-making; and groups of stalking Bedouins in ragged garments which had once been white, and negroes and Jews and half-clothed children, and all the other fantastic figures which go to make up the pageantry of an eastern street scene. We hired a little phaeton one day, and drove out to Mustapha Supérieur, catching charming glimpses of walled gardens and Mauresque villas, and meeting omnibuses crowded with wild-looking figures, and driven at a headlong pace down the muddy suburban roads.

Mustapha, though quite as pretty as any of the suburbs near Cannes or Nice, lacks the neatness and garden-like look which we associate with the Riviera; but perhaps the general air of slovenliness is atoned for, to many eyes, by the picturesque populace filling the untidy streets. And nowhere in Europe could one see anything so Oriental as the little arcaded café at Mustapha, where white-robed Algerines sit crouched on the terrace, drinking their coffee under a group of plane-trees. We passed the summer palace of the Governor, getting a glimpse of well-kept gardens through the gateways, and then drove through the Vallon de la Femme Sauvage... This wild little ravine led us to the quarter called Mustapha Inférieur, lying near the sea on the lower slope of the Sahel; and here we found the Jardin d'Essail which I was particularly anxious to see.

We walked under avenues of India-rubber trees as large as oaks, and between trellises of tea-roses in bloom, and high clumps of Arundo donax, but a cold wind sweeping through the long alleys made the scene cheerless in spite of this southern vegetation. It was, however, a bad time to visit the Jardin d'Essai, for it had been very cold for some days in Europe, and we heard afterwards that there was snow at Avignon and skating near Marseilles, while we were shivering under the India-rubber trees of Algiers. Perhaps it may have been owing to the exceptional weather that all the more delicate palms such as Lantana borbonica, Phoenix, Cycas revoluta, etc, were sheltered by tents of matting.

On the 22nd of February, at about 3pm, we started for Tunis, but the wind was so high and the sea so rough, that on the following afternoon we put in at Bone. Never was tranquil harbour more welcome, and as soon as we could get pratique [formal permission] we were set ashore and took a walk through the town. It is charmingly situated on a bay surrounded by mountains, and close by lie the ruins of Hippone, the Bishopric of St Augustine. The town itself is clean and pretty, with an arcaded French quarter, as usual, and a square planted with palms, and beds of roses and violets. At the head of this square stands the modern Catholic cathedral, and a little further on a gate in the wall of the town leads into the country. In the Arab quarter we saw many striking figures - children in bright frocks, with broad gold bracelets, women in white burnouses, with black silk yashmaks over their faces, and strangest of all, the Jewesses with silk turbans over their plaited hair (like 17th-century pictures of Judith or Herodias), loose flowing sleeves of embroidered gauze or muslin, and flowered silk dresses with jackets braided with gold.

The afternoon of our arrival we went ashore in the steam-launch, and drove to Hippone. The road lies through a lane overshadowed by high hedges of prickly pear and aloes, behind which we caught glimpses of orange and lemon groves full of fruit. The ruins stand on a hill overgrown with olives and consist of the piers and vaulting of a very old church, covered with a climbing mass of green. Whether it is the church destroyed in the 7th century or a later one, I do not know. Higher up the hill, Catholic ardour is raising the walls and columns of a new cathedral, the crypt of which is already finished and used as a church. Here we met some Sisters of Charity, who showed us the French Orphanage nearby, and after lingering for some time to look at the beautiful view of mountains, plain and sea, we drove back to Bone. This time our road led through the valley behind the town, skirting a stream overhung with cactuses and blooming mimosa. All the trees were in full leaf, and the land was a blaze of young spring green.

Ithaca (In Response To "A Une Passante")

ITHACA

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon — do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Constantine P. Cavafy

"Madame Africa" unites Algeria and France

The basilica of Notre Dame d'Afrique, towering above the Mediterranean on the heights of the Bologhine district of Algiers, welcomed a small but unusual crowd on Monday.

Algerian dignitaries, European ambassadors and political leaders from Marseilles found themselves in the same pews as they celebrated the restoration, after three years of work, of the Christian edifice erected in 1872.  Until recently a symbol of French colonisation, the basilica is now one of the most visited sites in the Algerian capital.

"It's a chef d'oeuvre" said the delighted archbishop of Algiers, the Jordanian-born Ghaleb Bader, "a chef d'oeuvre that demonstrates the understanding and collaboration that exists between the authorities and the Church as well as between the religions and peoples on the two sides of the Mediterranean".

View from Madame Afrique

Each party has dug deep to finance the 5 million euros necessary for the project. The Algerian state, represented by the minister of religious affairs, the secretary general of the FLN (National Liberation Front) and the préfet of Algiers, has spent 560,000 euros, whilst the city of Marseilles, the département of the Bouches du Rhône and the region of Provence Alpes-Côte d'Azur contributed 360,000 euros each.  The European Union was responsible for one million euros and private companies from Algeria and France made up the remainder with smaller donations.

And the result is there for all to see. Weakened by the shock waves of the earthquake that struck Algeria on May 23, 2003,  "Madame Africa", as the basilica is called here, has had a facelift. The project was entrusted to the architect Xavier David and the French company Girard, who were responsible for the restoration of Notre Dame de la Garde in Marseilles, which is contemporaneous with its Algerian cousin.  Their work has enabled the basilica's pale pink dome and its exterior Hispano-Moresque mosaics to recover their former lustre.
  
Neither the past nor the present intervened to spoil the day, with the Algerian authorities playing the appeasement card, and no one considered lingering in front of the mosaics dedicated to the monks of Tibehirine in the basilica's right-hand apse.  It has been a long time now since other signs of the past have been banished, such as a family ex voto from 1921.  Though still clearly visible on the right of the naive, the addition of a small piece of marble means that the ex voto asks Notre Dame de l'Afrique to protect "the whole of Algeria" rather than "French Algeria". In an aside Father Bernard Lebfèvre, the basilica's rector, stressed that: "There are only the visible wounds left, everything else has healed over".

For several days now, at the other end of Algeria, another restoration work has been under way: the renovation of the basilica of St Augustine at Annaba.    


The above article originally appeared in French in Le Monde and was abridged and translated by Dr David Winter of Culturissima.

One way ticket, Cambridge to Florence

Letter from Italy by Philippe Ridet

"Historian, born in England, naturalised Italian" - this simple line from his biography made him in our eyes - how can I put it? - delectable. At a time when thousands of Italians dream of fleeing Rome for London, Milan for Paris and Bari for New York so that they can forget about Palermo and Silvio Berlusconi, there turns out to be a man, an Englishman to boot, who has undertaken the opposite journey. That was well worth an expedition to Florence, where he had set himself up.  Was he an eccentric? Someone who liked collecting passports? Did he have a lover? I had to go and find out...

Paul Ginsborg, sixty-five, has the discreet and gentle manners of a professor of contemporary Italian history (he is author of several books on the subject) and the unruffled delivery that makes taking notes easy. At the same time, he has kept an Englishman's taste for Shetland pullovers and a way of dissolving the Italian "r" sound to compensate for his inability to roll it as most foreigners do.

"I was a prof at Cambridge when, in 1992, the University of Florence offered me a chair", he explains in his apartment lined with books, situated two minutes from the Arno. "It was a radical choice but I've never regretted it".  He immersed himself in local life in Florence, quickly becoming a key figure in the first people-led anti-Berlusconi movements at the beginning of the decade. A Londoner, he was bowled over by Italy's charms. "I really do think that there is a gentleness in this country, a kindness towards people quite unlike anything in England.  Italy isn't haunted by dreams of grandeur and domination.  I've felt a greater lightness since I've been here".

So, do the English have a passion for Italy? Ginsborg explains: "The Garibaldi expedition aroused great sympathy on the other side of the Channel and England leant its support. That's how the Society for Italian Studies took shape, which has 200 members in London. The first biography of Garibaldi was written by his nurse, an English woman by the name of Jessie White-Mario".

But why take the plunge and become Italian? "Four years ago I started to think about the idea and I obtained Italian nationality in 2009. It's also a way of me giving something back to Italy". This episode is recounted at the start of a short but brilliant essay which has just been published by Ginsborg, Salviamo l'Italia.*  "Most of my friends were dumbstruck by the news of my naturalisation", he writes: "'But what prompted you to do that, and now of all times?' they asked. Some of them rushed to make sure that I had had the good sense to keep my English (sic) nationality. But the most caustic comment is still this one: "'From now on, Paul, you can join in with us when we say: I'm ashamed to be Italian!'"

These friends are going to be disappointed because the "new Italian" does not succumb to disparaging or excessively and unjustly criticising his adopted country. Amongst the plethora of books published to accompany the 150th anniversary of a unified Italy, Ginsborg's (which is steadily heading towards sales of 10,000) is distinguished by its objective, sometimes ironic and always stimulating, approach. Moving back and forth between the Risorgimento era and present-day Italy, Ginsborg tries to identify the essential elements of Italian society over the last 150 years, the rudiments which, in his opinion, would allow Italy to "save itself" and find an original voice that would secure its  place in the modern epoch. The historian has identified four elements: Italy's long tradition of self-rule in its cities; the predilection for Europe; the quest for equality; and "the importance of mitezza in its history as a social virtue".

Mitezza? Our bilingual dictionary suggests "kindness" or "gentleness" and we could add "bonhomie" if the word was not over-used and "pacifism" if it did not weigh so heavily. It might seem slightly surprising that such an idea, borrowed from the philosopher Norberto Bobbio, should spring up to support an analysis of contemporary Italy. Kind, the fascists under the command of Mussolini? Kind, the mafiosi? Kind, the men of Rosarno in Calabria who, in December 2009, shot at African immigrants as though they were rabbits? Kind, the politicians always so quick to insult their opponents?

But Paul Ginsborg is far from only being a gentle Englishman who has had his head turned by a political utopia. Although in love with Italy, he knows all about the obstacles and burdens that weigh it down: the Mafia, vote-catching, a Church that has too much power and... the weakness of the left, which drives him to despair. Whilst the country is left hanging following a political crisis of uncertain outcome, the politically committed historian is careful not to strike up the old refrain about the inevitable demise of the Berlusconi era.  "Even back in 2005 funeral orations were springing up in the press", he remembers. "Berlusconi is never more ready to fight than when his back is against the wall.  Everyone should remain wary".

Today Paul Ginsborg receives twenty-five requests a week to give lectures. At the beginning of the month he organised a conference on "Italy in the Time of Berlusconi" for the upper echelons of the Italian intelligentsia.  As a matter of  principle he rails: "And to think that it needed an Englishman to organise it!" There is a palpable feeling that the historian bemoans the amount of time taken eaten up by campaigning.

The professor has become a protagonist in a part of history that he only wanted to recount and it is now his turn to be caught up in the tritacarne or meat-mincer of Italian public life: Il Giornale, the daily newspaper belonging to the Berlusconi family, has devoted a vitriolic article to the book written by this son of "perfidious Albion".

* Let's Save Italy, published by Einaudi; no English translation available.


This article first appeared in Le Monde, November 29, 2010 and was translated by Culturissima's managing director, Dr David Winter.

Walid, l’embarrassant blasphémateur palestinien

Monet Exhibition in Paris

This year Richard Thomson took his holidays in June. Difficult to do otherwise, since he's the chief curator of the Claude Monet exhibition that opens in Paris' Grand Palais on September 22nd. With 176 works of art, the exhibition promises to be a major event. And so we might have expected to encounter a worried man. 

Is it the result of a breezy disposition or is it the natural Anglo-Saxon discretion of a professor at the University of Edinburgh? The morning we meet, it is as much as he can do to admit that he still has a few small jobs to finish before the fateful day.

To listen to Richard Thomson, everything is being carried out without a hitch and on good terms with the French curators who are helping him. The catalogue? The entries were submitted on time and they are of good quality. The design of the exhibition space? He is relying on the ideas of Hubert Le Gall, with whom plain-speaking is the rule. The hanging of the pictures? The plan was fixed long ago using computer simulations.

Calculated to the nearest tenth of an inch

On this point, however, Mr Thomson admits that his happiness is not complete. He yearns for the time when hanging was not calculated to the nearest tenth of an inch weeks before the arrival of the paintings, when the curator and a few assistants positioned the canvases "by eye", taking them from room to room until the desired effect was achieved. "That's impossible today. Can you imagine, with the cost of insurance? They would think that we were being irresponsible". Each Monet, then, already has its spot reserved.

This is even more the case because the exhibition has been designed to follow a very complex structure: "That's the key feature of my work: to think about the best way of showing a painting, not settling for an ordinary, boring retrospective where the masterpieces come one after another in chronological order from beginning to end. It has been about giving a new image of Monet, about sparking off new debates".

And so begins Thomson's account of how he first thought about the history of the exhibition: "I thought that 1890 should be the pivotal date. Monet was 50 in 1890. He arrives at Giverny. The art dealers are becoming more and more interested in him. And it's the start of his series. There is a before and an after 1890. That's the central idea. The first section comprises French landscapes before this date, the links between their creation and nature: the canvases from Fontainebleau, Normandy, the region around Paris, Vétheuil and two places further away, Belle Ile and the Creuse region. At the end of this part, I wanted a very clear break. There will be two rooms, one devoted to the human form in the years 1870 and 1880, the other to still-lifes. I preferred to do that - rather than scatter figures and still-lifes everywhere - to show that, for Monet, these are important subjects.  Then the second section, the years after 1890, begins".

You only need to hear the historian's voice to sense how important it is for him to convince the listener of the appropriateness of his scheme. His explanation is already well-polished. There will be, then, another three subjects, with the themes of repetition, inner nature and adornment. Haystacks and Poplars will appear in the first, Vétheuil and Venice in the second, Giverny and her water-lilies in the last.

Once the order was established, all that remained was the paintings themselves. Everything went well, perhaps even too well. "At the end of 2009, the museums started to reply. All the responses were positive.. In fact, there were too many paintings. Towards Christmas, we knew that we were going to have to make some sacrifices. I had started with the idea of 200 paintings but it became clear that we'd have to go down to 175 so that there would be enough space left for visitors". But how does he explain so many loans? "The American museums have been very forthcoming... New York, Boston... They're used to working with the Orsay and that helped with the negotiations".

No setbacks, then? "Unfortunately, yes. The Marmottan Museum refused to lend, Impression, Rising Sun", the historic work to which Impressionism owes its name. "But it's not too serious. They will be some less well-known paintings whose discovery will to a large extent compensate for its absence. We suggested some exchanges but, clearly, it wasn't possible. In its place you will see a view of the port of Le Havre from 1873, a night scene, an extraordinary one, that has come from a private collection".

Having worked so long on Monet, what has he learned? "That you have actually to go to the places where he painted to be able to understand him". So the museum man got lost in a forest in the Creuse: "I wanted to find the spot where Monet had painted the confluence of two rivers in 1889 - he painted it ten times. Today, there are trees everywhere. I couldn't see the river any longer. Nothing corresponded to the paintings. Monet had gone there at a time when the peasants had stripped the wood for heating and when their herds of goats were grazing on the under-growth. The hills were bare. Today, it's a forest. I finished by finding my bearings thanks to a rock... I started again at Belle Ile so that I could identify the exact viewpoint over the needles of Port Coton. Just at the edge of the cliff, about 50 yards away. That's what organising a Monet exhibition drives you to!"


This article first appeared in Le Monde, August 17 2010; it was translated from the French by Culturissima's managing director, Dr David Winter.

Her body, muscular and almost masculine, bathed in light...

The Venus de Milo brings a smile to the Louvre

According to legend, Venus - known to the Greeks as Aphrodite - was born from the foam of the sea as she emerged from bathing off the coast of Cyprus. Be that as it may, the goddess of love serves as the model for the canon of beauty, an ideal epitomised in the Louvre's Venus de Milo.

The famous statue has just been restored, which comes as a pleasant surprise to the six million people (out of a total of eight million) who visit the Louvre each year with the stated aim of admiring the Venus de Milo together with the museum's two other jewels, Leonardo de Vinci's Mona Lisa and the Victory of Samothrace. The Venus, sculpted from white marble from Paros circa 120 BC, was found in 1820 by a peasant on the Greek island of Milos in the Cyclades and was given to the Louvre by King Louis XVIII in 1821.

This summer, the statue is radiating good health.  Her body, muscular and almost masculine, bathed in the light streaming in from the south-facing windows, has recovered the milky lustre of its origins. So, too, its energy and aura next to the gods and goddesses who surround it, Athena, Apollo, Hermes, Dionysus and others - Roman copies of lost Greek chefs d'oeuvres.

The smile that plays across her left cheek, almost teasing, contrasts sharply with the serious look sketched across her right side. The subtle folds of her toga, which could easily be made of real linen, fall to her hips and reveal a perfect bust.

Positioned in the centre of a carpet of red marble and mounted on a plinth (it is possible to walk all the way around her and view her from all angles), the Venus de Milo, six-and-a-half feet tall, stands sentinel over the 2,000 square feet of former royal apartments as they stretch towards the caryatids gallery.  She is the crowning feature of a new museum lay-out devoted to classical Greek and Hellenistic art (450-30 BC) devised by Jean-Luc Martinez (director of the Louvre's department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities) as a three-dimensional walk amongst the works of art.

Where are her arms?

At the head of the world's foremost museum of Greek art, totalling more than 45,000 objects, Jean-Luc Martinez has for the first time put on display works taken from the museum's reserve holdings or dispersed in other departments (ceramics, jewellery, numismatics, furniture). From now on these will be presented by geographic region to showcase the world of the Greek Mediterranean.

As for the Venus de Milo, she has once more found the place that she occupied from 1824 to 1848.  Since she first entered the Louvre, she has never ceased to be moved about. In the 1820s, following a controversy, it was decided not to attach the missing arms that had been sculpted for the occasion. Only her nose, left foot and big toe were re-attached.

"Whilst removing the old restoration work we noticed that the surface had been prepared for a marble adjunct that was never finished", indicates Monsieur Martinez. In 2009-2010 a scientific study brought to light the alterations and repairs that have been undertaken over two centuries.  It was decided to keep her nose, but not her foot. Fragments of marble are displayed around the goddess, including an outsized hand, which nourish the enigma... her arms are still unaccounted for.

This article first appeared in Le Monde, August 20 2010; it was translated from the French by Culturissima's managing director, Dr David Winter.