Musée du Louvre: Painted Shoes by ACC Art Books

MUSﾃ右 DU LOUVRE CHAUSSURES PEINTES | PAINTED SHOES | CALZADOS PINTADOS | GEMALTE SCHUHE

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MARGO GLANTZ CATHERINE BELANGER LOIS LAMMERHUBER

Chaussures peintes | Painted shoes | Calzados pintados | Gemalte Schuhe

Chaussures peintes | Painted shoes |

Calzados pintados | Gemalte Schuhe David et BethsabĂŠe, 1562 Jan MASSYS, c. 1509-1575,

Chaussures peintes | Painted shoes | Calzados pintados | Gemalte Schuhe

Chaussures peintes | Painted shoes |

Calzados pintados | Gemalte Schuhe David et BethsabĂŠe, 1562 Jan MASSYS, c. 1509-1575,

Chaussures peintes | Painted shoes | Calzados pintados | Gemalte Schuhe

Chaussures peintes | Painted shoes |

Calzados pintados | Gemalte Schuhe Hyacinthe RIGAUD, 1659-1743, Louis xiv, 1701

Chaussures peintes | Painted shoes | Calzados pintados | Gemalte Schuhe

Chaussures peintes | Painted shoes |

Calzados pintados | Gemalte Schuhe Hyacinthe RIGAUD, 1659-1743, Louis xiv, 1701

Chaussures peintes | Painted shoes | Calzados pintados | Gemalte Schuhe

F r ag m e n tat i o n a s a n a r t: the aesthetics of shoes

The French writer Georges Bataille regarded the foot – or rather the big

whether they be the lower parts of the painting, or of the human body.

toe – as ‘the most human part of the human body’. This remarkable

After all, the foot does support the body, does it not?

phrase is reaffirmed when we look at the pictures taken at the Louvre by

The foot is man’s support. In architecture, it is indispensable as the base

Lois Lammerhuber to glorify not only the foot, this ‘limb of all limbs’ – again

of pilasters and columns, and it enables us to stand upright. To many, this

according to Bataille – but also external covering used to envelope the foot:

essential part of us also represents the soul. To Sigmund Freud, the foot

the shoe. Used since time immemorial, man is supposed to have invented

is remarkable and has a phallic significance. The upright carriage which

the shoe to protect himself from bad weather (since nature provided him

man acquired compared to the ape when he descended from the lofty

with neither claws, nor hooves nor fur), and subsequently, perhaps, to

branches to which early history had confined him made him become a

satisfy his vanity and mark his social position in the world. In fact, these

tree himself (again according to Bataille), perfectly erect. The foot also

photographs focus on the foot – or rather on the well-shod foot – despite

the mark of death, since we all are walking towards it at a hurried pace,

the fact that it frequently coexists with the naked foot in its primal perfection.

just like Christ when he walked the path to Calvary, a scene frequently

So why focus on the foot, or rather the well-shod foot? Why is it neces-

depicted in the pictures painted between the 13th and the 16th centuries,

sary to cut away not only the human body, but also the rest of the painting itself? Looking at the pictures reproduced here, we immediately notice an

A widespread and varied symbol, the foot also represents slavery in

important fact: we never see a complete painting, but are only offered

Greek culture, and free men shod it in much the same way as women

the lower part of each, making it impossible – with some exceptions, and

covered their heads. Whilst liberating man, shoes enslaved his feet. Shoes

depending on the angle of the camera– to view entire scenes or bodies.

conceal his primal nudity, the nudity of the support that keeps us upright

This somewhat paradoxical, yet nevertheless productive approach yields

on the triple and relentless symbolisation of the foot. It can represent the

up specific details, performing a kind of dissection of each painting. Our

soul, or rather the link between heaven and earth. We find confirmation

eyes rest on individual elements that become the most visible elements

of this when we remember that the column is one of the most common

in each painting. As explained by Catherine Bédard with reference to the

and traditional symbols of Christ: Columna est Christus.

art critic Daniel Arasse, ‘…the possibility to approach the work of art in this way arouses great excitement, an excitement produced by the proximity of the work, the pleasure of admiring it unreservedly thanks to photography, even if it is only a reproduction.’

Chaussures peintes | Painted shoes | Calzados pintados | Gemalte Schuhe

sheer paths walked barefoot.

The foot also represents the embryonic erection, eroticism in disguise. The picture which Giovanni da Milano painted between 1360

and 1365 – presumably for a Pisa church, and showing St. Francis on

This manner of “dissecting” a painting forces us to see the unusual,

the panel of a polyptych – is a flagrant example of this, is it not? Take a

that which 19th-century Mexicans referred to as ‘porabajos’, or ‘lowers’,

look at the lower part of the painting. The saint is dressed in a grey tunic,