Apollinaire et ses amis. Le Louvre en ses ambivalences

The attitude of Apollinaire and the writers around him is less symptomatic of a systematic opposition than of an ambiguous relationship with the Louvre and museums in general, the place where art is legitimated. Taking stock of the equivocal, even contradictory relations of the promoters of “l’art vivant” (Salmon) at the Louvre, this article proposes to reread the episode of The Mona Lisa's theft on the imaginary and symbolic plane as an aesthetic transgression and carnivalesque travesty.