At the opening of this show, Prime Minister Francois Hollande emphasized that France and Morocco “need each other.” Relations between them are strained at the moment. Last February a French judge investigating allegations of torture called in for questioning the head of Morocco’s secret services, Abdelatif Hammouchi, who was passing through Paris. Mr. Hammouchi did not appear and Morocco suspended judicial cooperation with France. That same month, the Spanish actor Javier Bardem -- a supporter of Western Sahara’s independence -- claimed that a French ambassador had described Morocco to him as “a mistress that one sleeps with every night, that one doesn’t particularly love, but that one must stand up for.”

The shows in Paris have been viewed as partly an attempt to patch things up. The one at the Institut du Monde Arabe has a slap-dash quality that makes one wonder if it wasn’t thrown together, or expanded, at the last minute. It features pioneering 1960s artists of great significance such as Farid Belkahia -- who painted on animal skin, with vegetable pigments, and gave his canvases organic shapes -- and iconoclasts like El Khalil El Ghrib, who makes strange patient decaying concoctions of found materials -- stone and wood and moss and wire and fabric -- that mesmerize with the blurred traces of the creator’s intention. You can catch a glimpse of his spectacularly messy studio and hear him talk (in French) with charming earnestness about his decision not to sell his work here.