Word: malraux
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With André Malraux, France's Minister of Culture, adoration of art knows no bounds. He has put Marc Chagall's lovers on the ceiling of the Paris Opéra, Maillol bronzes in the Tuileries gardens, Masson's abstracts in the dome of the Comédie Française. He has washed the face of Paris from a dingy grey to honey-colored sandstone, and his art history, Voices of Silence, was a monument to a world he saw as "a museum without walls...
Nearly forgotten nowadays is the fact that Malraux's passion for art once led him to commit an act of downright thievery that got him arrested. The incident, a cause célèbre in 1923, has popped up again with the publication in France of the memoirs of his ex-wife Clara, and a biography by Walter Langlois subtitled Indochina Adventure...
Without a Sou. At the time of the adventure, Malraux was a 22-year-old cubist poet. He and Clara were very broke, following a highly unartistic attempt to make a killing on the Bourse. Intrigued by archaeology, especially by a little-known Cambodian temple called Bantéay Srei on the way to Angkor Vat, Malraux got permission from the French colonial administration to explore. Off they went first-class-without a sou for the return trip. When they finally found Banteay Srei, says Clara, "It was a kind of Trianon in the jungle...
Plush Exile. Then, last month, Cultural Affairs Minister Andre Malraux appointed Marcel Landowski, a composer of conservative persuasion and little renown, as the ministry's director of music. Boulez hit the ceiling, canceled all future government-connected engagements in France and fired off a scathing letter, which was published in the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur. He accused Malraux of jeopardizing France's musical future, called the Landowski appointment "badly thought out, irresponsible and illogical." Malraux, he charged, should understand "that music is a matter sufficiently important not to have it put into the hands of feebleminded and incompetent...
...Germany's young expressionist Horst Antes, who mashes anatomy into a strudel of bright colors. Actually, in sculpture at least, the laurels were split between two rather conservative choices: Etienne Martin, 53, of France, who was rumored to have received a helping hand from Culture Minister Andre Malraux, and Robert Jacobsen, 54, of Denmark, who makes Model A abstractions in wood, stone and iron...