VERSAILLES, FRANCE — Two years ago, the Château de Versailles set off a predictable firestorm by displaying works by Jeff Koons in and outside its imposing buildings.


Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd
Takashi Murakami will be the latest contemporary artist to receive a showing at Versailles. Above, the artist’s Oval Buddha Silver (2008) in the palace’s Salon of Abundance.

ArtsBeat

Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co.
Takashi Murakami at Versailles.

As the old saw goes, there is no such thing as bad publicity, and the Koons exhibition, organized under the directorship of Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the museum’s president, brought much that was useful to any cultural institution these days: attention and visitors. After a show last year by the French artist Xavier Veilhan, the next “guest,” starting in mid-September and running through mid-December, will be Takashi Murakami, a highly successful Japanese artist known among other things for his Manga-inspired works. The intention is to turn this into an annual event, alternating French and foreign artists. Mr. Aillagon is also planning to install some modern artistic chandeliers to replace mock-old lighting and various other decorative touches to what he sees as the more lugubrious parts of the château, as well as giving parts of the famous grounds some more recent touches. Contemporary gardeners!

The visiting contemporary art will predictably leave some people completely indifferent — after all, we are no longer necessarily surprised by unusual art turning up all over the place — and others very happy, or spluttering with rage over a “desecration” of the cultural past. This is of course the whole point of the game of contemporary art that goes Boum. We can be pretty sure that neither Mr. Koons nor Mr. Murakami shed any tears on the way to the bank no matter what is said about their work.

Mr. Aillagon, a former culture minister and before that the head of the Pompidou Center, is, unsurprisingly, not unaware of all these amusing little societal contradictions.

“The Jeff Koons show brought contrasting reactions, some fiercely in favor, others fiercely against. I think that debate was a useful debate, it’s about the possibility of making an ancient patrimony coexist with today’s art,” he said in a recent interview in the famous château brought into being by the oh-so-famous king to preserve his glory for posterity and in the meantime to allow him to keep a close watch on the shifty-eyed nobility.

“There are people who, no matter what artist you show, decree they are against contemporary art, whether the artist is abstract, figurative, conceptual, French, American, Chinese or Finnish,” Mr. Aillagon said. “They will say they are against it because they believe that culture stopped forever I don’t know how long ago — two centuries, or one century, or 50 years. For my part, I am certain that the movement of civilization, the movement of culture is an unceasing movement, and there is no reason to separate in such a brutal manner the arts of today and the arts of yesterday.”

Some of what shocks those who don’t like artists most famous for being famous is that much of what they “produce” (and the word is not unfair) is annoyingly and repetitively described as transgressive when it is in fact pretty strictly business. Andy Warhol, that now ancient artist, figured that out way back when. Still, Versailles, a symbol of one of the most interesting periods in French history, the long reign of a mercurial control freak who bled the country and paved the way to the Revolution, is a good deal more than an exhibition space made up of old lofts. At the same time there is a kitsch side to Versailles, first the over-the-top splendor of a man who knew how to put on a show, but also its current, sometimes weird mixture of architecture, including the redone areas, some looking like old Hollywood sets waiting for that silly costume drama.

“It’s not a question of turning away from things,” said Mr. Aillagon, who presides over almost constant renovation work to make the château more visitor-friendly, and to restore the sumptuous minutiae of ceilings and gilt in the maze of rooms with their creaking floors and vertiginous windows. “Our first duty is to serve this patrimony, to restore it, to enrich it with acquisitions, to open it to the public, to make it understood through publications and exhibitions.”

Versailles was initially built by Louis XIV in the 17th century on swampy grounds southwest of Paris, and much of what’s left of his palace remains in the Italianate style, with colored marbles and large columns. Building and remodeling continued after his death in 1715, with the legendarily luxurious lifestyle of Louis XV (under whom the French peuple nevertheless fared rather better) and the now vaguely poignant reign of the scientifically minded Louis XVI and his capricious wife, too often portrayed as no more than a stupid shopping addict. They were doomed, and so indeed was the palace as a true royal residence. Louis-Philippe, in the 19th century, introduced some eyesore architecture and turned it into a museum for French history.

There are the remains of American history (the 1783 signing of the colonies’ independence, the Rockefeller money that restored so much), and of World War I (the Versailles Treaty); along with the gardens, designed by Le Nôtre, planted and replanted over time, with their fountains and their sculptures, including the back terrace with its stunning perspective of water and greenery, where one of Mr. Murakami’s works will have place of honor.

Versailles is a huge international tourist destination, with 5.7 million annual visitors from around the world to the palace alone, and an estimated 15 million to the whole area, including the gardens.

On a recent sultry day when the château was closed to visitors, Mr. Aillagon gave an enthusiastic tour of the small and the large: the enormous, almost empty rooms, the small hidden doors into smaller rooms, the gigantic scaffolding where a ceiling was being restored, the themes being organized through eclectic paintings, which in themselves create a cacophony of chronology, though all firmly in the realm of the non-contemporary.

“We have the luck, we women and men of the beginning of the 21st century to be able to reach an extremely diverse, rich, universal culture,” Mr. Aillagon said.

“We all have a personal capacity to make ourselves a cultural menu in which we find the plastic arts, architecture, design, music, literature, theater, fashion even — perhaps cuisine since some consider that cuisine is an art, therefore an example of the cultural dimension of humanity.”

“Still, let’s not cause confusion by saying that everything is the same,” he added, “that nothing has any meaning, chronological or historical or topological. That’s not acceptable, but nevertheless all this is our culture. We can like Palladio and like Frank Gehry. It’s not incompatible.”