Fans of Beyoncé and Jay-Z will absolutely love the Louvre's dedicated art tour featuring the artworks that were part of their music video.
The power couple's "Apes**t" video has raked in 62 million views on YouTube after it was uploaded on June 16. It made use of some of the museum's most popular masterpieces as backdrops.
The Tour
The Louvre has added the 90-minute self-guided tour. It takes the Parisian museum's visitors to 17 different artworks seen on the six-minute music video from the monumental white Greek marble Nike of Samothrace, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and Marie Benoist's Portrait of a Negress.
In the Jay-Z and Beyoncé at the Louvre tour, the guide describes each artwork featured in the video in detail, and the symbol it depicts. The tour is available every Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. Notably, the museum already has a tour based on Wil.i.am's single "Smile Mona Lisa."
Icons Of Empowerment
The music video celebrates the iconic couple's power as they pose in front of some of the best artworks ever made. CNN reported that the couple is worth more than $1 billion.
The Carters did not just focus on their glamour in their video. They also used it to celebrate and empower African-Americans in a setting that was made on the spoils of conquest and imperialism.
One clip features a woman working on her friend's afro in front of Mona Lisa as if the two were just in the comfort of their own living room. "Apes**t" also features African-American dancers taking over the museum, which, like most museums in the Western world, only dedicates a little portion to non-white artists.
One of the music video's most striking scene depicts Beyoncé at the center of a line of Black dancers. Behind them is Jacques-Louis David's The Coronation of Napoleon I and the Crowning of the Empress Josephine as she sings, "I can't believe we made it."
"Apes**t" is a single from the couple's first and surprise joint album Everything is Love, which is under their real last name The Carters.
Beyoncé is known as an icon of empowerment for the African-American community. The singer has also been transparent with her works in her 2016 album Lemonade, detailing Jay-Z's infidelity.
Professor James Smalls of the University of Maryland described the music video in Frieze magazine as brilliant and arresting. Smalls added that the video is appropriate and reinterprets the Western sculptures and paintings as a way to celebrate the couple's success, and black dancers in an artistic canon to signify the history of the painting that is linked to colonialism.
The music video is directed by Ricky Saiz, who also made "Yonce,"
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
