LOOK ALIKE GHOSTS ......
Sometimes I wonder why I go to an exhibition at all? I go, I look and come out with a frustration of not always understanding why I went. Erik Bilal a photographer, writer and cartoonist was one of them. French, but born in Yugoslavia in 1951. I’m not a cartoon lover but the subject of Ghosts in the Louvre was fascinating. So after our weekly excursion in one of the galleries following the Ecole du Louvre conferences, Marielle went her way and I went to study ghosts. Bilal’s ghosts include those of a Roman soldier, a muse, a painter, a German officer… men, women and children who died long ago, often meeting a violent end. Now they wander the Louvre, hovering near the place or work of art that changed the course of their lives—the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a recumbent Christ, an Egyptian bust, the Alcove Bedchamber… The artist conjures up these evanescent, wandering souls with a delicacy that belies their forceful presence. And he recounts their life stories in dram