The penultimate work shown is Portrait of a Negress, the only featured artwork that depicts a Black woman. I’d have preferred uncentered, in the background: a rejection of status on those particular terms, in conjunction with a song that says fuck the NFL, fuck the Grammys, and fuck the fame. I’d have preferred her uncentered, in the background: a rejection of status on those particular terms, in conjunction with a song that says fuck the NFL, fuck the Grammys, and fuck the fame. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.” It made me wish Bey and Jay had kept their backs turned to her, instead of facing her at the end of the video. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. Highly esteemed, ostentatiously protected (in the Louvre, it sits behind bulletproof glass), it brings to mind a snippet of Malcolm X's speech at the funeral of Ronald Stokes, which Beyoncé included in Lemonade’s visual album: “The most disrespected woman in America is the Black woman. Besides Bey and Jay famously snapping a selfie in 2014 with the Mona Lisa, and the couple of times Jay has referenced it directly (“sleeping every night next to Mona Lisa / The modern day version with better features” in “Picasso Baby,” “If Picasso was alive he woulda made her / That’s right, n-a, Mona Lisa can’t fade her,” in “That’s My Bitch”), it is one of the most valuable, and certainly the most famous pieces of art in the world. Cut to the immaculate ceiling of the Galerie d'Apollon, depicting Apollo's battle with Python: a contemporary Black angel to mirror the angelic figures framing the battle, and potentially to juxtapose the "he was no angel" rhetoric used to dehumanize Mike Brown and deny Black boys’ and girls’ innocence. "Apeshit" opens with the camera panning over a shirtless, dreadlocked Black man in sneakers and ripped jeans, white angel wings draped across his back. It's Bey, Jay, and their gorgeous cast that command attention and get affectionately treated as the invaluable art within a building that houses the largest collection of art in the world, but not nearly enough by Black artists. There's an almost-disregard for the art, or a bored, perfunctory acknowledgment of it at best, in favor of these audacious and unrelenting displays of Black love and brilliance. They’re interspersed with images of a spectrum of brown skin, at times mimicking poses in the works, but mainly dancing, swaying, and caught in moments of intimacy, abandon, and defiance. There are numerous extreme close-ups of priceless paintings it’s usually difficult to get even within fifty feet of in person. Shot both in and outside of The Louvre Museum in Paris, "Apeshit" is art nerd eye candy, optically exquisite, and metaphor-heavy.Įven taking into consideration The Louvre's boasts of 500 on-site shoots a year, it's arresting to witness Beyoncé and Jay use this storied institution as a backdrop for a braggadocious, expletive-filled, goes-hard-in-the-whip trap song.
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