Echoes of versailles: Is History Repeating Itself in the White House?
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WASHINGTON
An examination of the current governance’s aesthetic and rhetorical similarities too Louis XIV’s France.
In three decades studying the literature and culture of Louis XIV, it seemed improbable an American president would emulate the Sun King. A recent essay highlighted the Oval Office décor as a “gilded rococo hellscape.” It was always assumed Americans lacked the appetite for the hubris defining the French king’s style. Student visits to versailles often resulted in agreement with the Duke de Saint-Simon’s assessment: “a masterpiece of bad taste.”
Trump’s Affinity for Versailles: A Pattern
The White house is the third residence that President TRUMP has tried to make resemble VERSAILLES.Interior designer ANGELO DONGHIA added gold to TRUMP Tower’s penthouse, with HENRY CONVERSANO adding more. Architect PAUL GOLDBERGER described it as a “pseudo-Versailles in the sky.” The ballroom at MAR-A-LAGO mimics the hall of Mirrors. A 2007 appraisal described the ballroom as “in the style of Versailles, in a Louis XIV gold and crystal finish, with huge crystal chandeliers and floor-to-ceiling mirrors on one wall.” This ballroom, with its $7 million of gold leaf, is what TRUMP wants to re-create in the East Wing; the gold cherubs have already been brought up from FLORIDA.This third VERSAILLES revamp will have a ceiling painting to rival the original by CHARLES LE BRUN depicting LOUIS XIV‘s military victories.
the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles,a possible inspiration for current renovations.
Echoes of Absolutism
More disturbing then the president’s taste is the administration’s view of executive authority,evoking the absolutist rhetoric of LOUIS XIV’s sycophants. The TRUMP Cabinet’s paeans to the president’s leadership echo the VERSAILLES courtiers. SAINT-SIMON’s description of the Sun King’s appetite for adulation suggests a vulnerability to praise: “The self-effacement, the self-abasement, the look of admiration, subjugation, supplication, most of all the look of negation except through him, were the sole means of pleasing him.” SAINT-SIMON knew that kings embracing flattery open themselves to manipulation. He viewed LOUIS XIV as an illusory absolutist controlled by fawning scoundrels, similar to an American president hoodwinked by a Russian dictator offering him a complimentary portrait.
Past Ironies and Contrasts
Ironically, DONALD TRUMP is not governing like LOUIS XIV. The Sun King invested in science, technology, the arts, and intellectual activity, while TRUMP disdains them. LOUIS XIV created the Royal Academy for Sciences, the Royal Academy for Painting and Sculpture, the Royal Academy for Dance; TRUMP cuts the National Institutes of Health, bullies the Kennedy Center, threatens Big Bird. LOUIS XIV built roads, paved streets, carved canals, constructed ports; TRUMP freezes infrastructure spending and may decimate the National Park Service.VERSAILLES isn’t built by firing state workers.
A Different Louis?
In terms of incompetence and ideology-driven decision-making, the president resembles LOUIS XIV’s great-great-grandson, LOUIS XVI. One of his finest decisions was supporting the rebellious American colonists against the British. Because of this king, the American experiment with republican government commenced. It’s an irony that TRUMP’s love affair with LOUIS XIV may mean that this experiment will ultimately be continued somewhere else, where a gilded hall of mirrors has less attraction than a system of laws and values against authoritarianism.
