La mirada de Georges Salles

Abstract

It is impossible to remain indifferent after reading Le Regard. This collection of essays published in 1939 by Georges Salles (1889-1966), art historian, collector and curator of the Louvre Museum, deals with the encounter with works of art and proposes, in a beautiful and rapturous prose, an “art of seeing” behind which we glimpse a bold but disturbing lesson on man’s relationship with objects and knowledge. The book, “very Parisian”, captivated an illustrious contemporary, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), who, also gifted with a dreamy and visionary eye, wrote an enthusiastic chronicle in the form of a letter, in the year of his death. This article will explore the career of Georges Salles, a figure still obscured today despite his distinguished role in the museum world in the 1940s and 1950s. It will also try to shed light on this unexpected conjunction between the French curator and the German philosopher around a modern “anthropology of the gaze”, with decisive consequences concerning the museum experience, the gustatory nature of understanding, the exhibition of artistic objects, and cultural mediation. These are all themes that, despite the time that has elapsed since the publication of this book, continue to offer innovative proposals for the museology of the 21st century.

Keywords

• museum experience
• Georges Salles
• Walter Benjamin
• Adrienne Monnier
• museology history - biography