”If you take the worm out, the earth goes bad if you take the artists out, society goes bad,” he explained. ”They are a bridge between life and death,” he said.įabre, who claims links to famed French 19th-century entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre, for example has placed opposite Rembrandt’s Carcass of Beef his own big Skinned Beef, a piece made of brown and red beetles that all but bring the hunk of meat literally crawling back to life.Īnd in the vast Rubens gallery dedicated to portraits of French queen Marie de’ Medici, Fabre has installed a graveyard, carting in 40 tonnes of granite tombstones engraved with insect names and dates of philosophers and artists - in the middle of which wriggles a giant worm with Fabre’s talking head.
It’s about celebrating life.”īut beetles clearly take the spotlight at Fabre’s Angel of Metamorphosis show, an insect he describes as both warrior and the world’s oldest computer.
”Many of these works are very avant-garde. ”I chose this department because this is what I know, this is my tradition” he said at a preview. The latest show at the venerable Louvre sees blood, bones and beetles cohabiting with the grand masters of the Dutch, Flemish and German schools.įor the fourth year running, France’s biggest museum has invited a contemporary artist to show works ”in counterpoint” with those of the old masters, juxtaposing art produced hundreds of years apart.Īnd this year’s guest is none other than provocative Belgian artist Jan Fabre, a painter-cum-sculptor-cum-performer turning 50 this year, obsessed by life and death and body art and body parts, as well as insects.įabre’s show opening on Friday comprises 39 eye-catching and often awesomely sized pieces inspired by the northern European masters he grew up with - Bosch, Vermeer and Van Eyck as well as Rembrandt or Rubens - who, he says, play second fiddle to star draws at the Louvre such as the Mona Lisa. Rembrandt and Rubens may be turning in their graves.