Marbres antiques en couleurs : « kitsch » aujourd’hui, légitimes demain ?
Antique Marbles in Colours: “Kitsch” Today, Legitimate Tomorrow?

Summary/Abstract: In 2019, The Museum of Mediterranean Archeology in Marseille opened its new permanent exhibition, which offers visitors the opportunity to (re)discover its collections in a new light - with their original colors : “Thus, contrary to this diaphanous Antiquity, we have to exercise a colossal effort of imagination to glimpse what the colorful environment of the Ancients could look like, what they like to see and which, for us, is more akin to “kitsch” than to the ideal splendor of our ancient imagination”, specifies one of the texts in the exhibition. The use of this notion (frequent in this context) raises questions: what does it really refer to and what does it cover when it is associated with works from the past? Can antique marbles be polychrome without being kitsch? To answer these questions, our analysis is based on a corpus made up of interviews and observations. Through the data collected, we understand that polychrome antique marbles are considered kitsch because the color transforms an idealized past into a commercial Antiquity, and works of art into consumer products. But above all, the field shows that polychrome antique marbles are considered kitsch because they are unusual – “kitsch” then designating an ephemeral state.

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