Hanging Your (Uninvited) Art

As the crowds trickled through the Sully wing of the Louvre one recent afternoon, a stocky, middle-aged Frenchman looked around furtively before whipping a gilt-framed painting from under his leather jacket and fixing it to the wall, reports The Guardian. Placed alongside the august portraits of Salle 59, the miniature – a vanité depicting two skulls – held its own amid the splendour of the room's more conventional art treasures. But its presence was not welcome and when the artist returned to see it today it had been removed by irate museum staff. "Now I have to write a letter to the president director-general or someone to get it back. It's pathetic," he said. Pascal Guérineau, 47, has in recent weeks become the bête noire of Paris's most prestigious galleries and their eagle-eyed security guards. The stunt this week was not his first offence. Last month he hung one of his own art works in the Musée Maillol in between a Christian Boltanski and a drawing by Jean-Michel Basquiat. The museum, which only spotted the rogue picture at closing time, was not amused. By hanging pictures in some of the capital's most high-profile exhibitions, he says, he is drawing attention to the desperation felt by many contemporary creatives who struggle to gain recognition. The French art world, he says, has time only for artists who have made it big, or who are already dead. Olivier Lorquin, the museum's president, who was reportedly left furious by the illicit exhibit, described Guérineau's drawing – as "bad, useless, a real piece of crap" and insisted that no problems had been revealed in the gallery's security system by the artist's "ignoble" action. For full source and full article click the Headline. Irish Art