In Red Pen: The Perfume Exhibition and the Monet Exhibition!
The author compares the massive crowds at a perfume exhibition in Mubarak Al-Kabeer with the initial rejection of Monet's paintings, criticizing the preference for superficiality over high art.
Translated by Qiyas from الجريدة — Original source
In 19th-century Paris, people jostled and waited for hours to attend puppet shows and vulgar circus performances. In contrast, creative French artists, including Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir, proposed exhibiting paintings that captured the spirit of the age in a new style, but their works were rejected for display. These artists founded their own artistic school, and after a “spiritual breakthrough,” they were finally permitted to exhibit their paintings in 1863. However, only a handful of people attended, and they came to laugh and mock.
Recently, we witnessed a similarly chaotic exhibition here! A suffocating crowd, closed roads… This frenzy was over a few “spritzes of perfume” and “false eyelashes,” which caused traffic disruptions in the Mubarak Al-Abdullah area (west of Mishref) and its suburbs. It truly made me wonder: What is it about a perfume exhibition—perfumes that are available in every mall, association, and grocery store—that draws such massive crowds, while other refined events attract only a few officials, a handful of artists and their families, and a few enthusiasts?
I wondered about people’s and society’s priorities regarding this culture of “collective frenzy,” compared to more beautiful and refined events that lack even a single attendee! Why can’t it be the other way around: an empty perfume exhibition and a crowded art exhibition?
In red ink: That was in Paris, and yesterday it was here. The lesson to be learned is that the culture of flocking to superficiality has not changed over time!
