Like the “Mona Lisa”, Beyoncé and Jay-Z are dressed simply, but powerfully. Sure, it’s a callback to the first time they took a photo with arguably the most famous painting in history back in 2014, but something is different this time around. The Carters begin positioning themselves as iconography from the moment we first see them, standing in front of the “Mona Lisa”. It’s a middle finger to convention, a dare aimed at squarely at the gatekeepers of history and artistic tradition: You know we deserve to be here. Their presence in a place that preserves what history has deemed the most important artworks, standing next to said art while themselves looking like art and using their body language to engage with this art, already implies they are as worthy of being there as the older work. Not only can we expect to see (and do see) The Carters standing next to some of the most famous works of art, including the Mona Lisa and Winged Victory of Samothrace, but we see that they are aligning themselves with it right out of the gate.
For modern audiences and fans of The Carters, the disruption is surely welcome. Tradition and the Louvre go hand-in-hand, too, which means that Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s presence is a total disruption from the beginning.
It’s a microcosm of history, which itself is mostly white, male, and heterosexual. Historically, it’s a predominately white space that primarily features white, male-created works of art. Let’s start with the primary location in “APESHIT”: the Louvre.
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