I am an artist and understand what Buren was trying to do, but it just doesn't work.
It's a very small aesthetic improvement on the square's previous incarnation as a parking lot.
It's a terrible misuse of this part of a grand palace that is filled with so much gorgeous work. Kings hired the best artisans to do stunningly beautiful work everywhere you look- except the Cour de Honneur, where this joke lacking humor is located.
The stark, lifeless black and white-striped columns scattered like headstones on harsh, lifeless metal grates have nothing to say as a piece of fine art and neither relate to or enhance the setting.
If anything, Daniel Buren's sculpture is a mockery in which the joke is on the gullible who can be convinced that any damned thing is a work of fine art.
The joke is magnified further when we consider the French Ministry of Culture in now located there; but it's a joke that has never been funny.
I used to live around the corner from there on rue St. Honore and tried to accept and enjoy this sculpture several times, but instead walked away sad that such a historic place had this thing inflicted upon it.
It's like a wad of belly button lint that just needs to go.
Relocate the Buren sculpture somewhere else and no one will go see it - -
- - for a reason. It's just not a good work of art. read more