self-portrait at Louvre

Every month, the Louvre chooses a “painting of the month”, which is displayed in Salle 18.

From June through September, the Louvre has chosen a self-portrait by Elisabeth-Sophie Chéron. Summer visitors to Paris: rejoice! This is a rare chance to become acquainted with a remarkable artist.

I must have dozed off in art history class when Chéron was discussed, because I became acquainted with her work years after my college days.

An introduction to Chéron:

• born 1648, died 1711
• protestant father, catholic mother; brother Louis, also an artist, settled in England after the revocation on Nantes made life difficult for protestants in France
• won acclaim as a painter for portraits, including the two self-portraits in this post, done while Chéron was in her 20s
• admitted into the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1672, when Chéron was in her 30s
• also a celebrated writer and poet; most of her work had religious or Biblical themes
• good with languages : French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew
• for her writings, was inducted into the Accademia dei Ricovrati in Padua, which seems to have had a practice of admitting French women because they would not attend Academy proceedings in person
• also an accomplished musician
• married after her childbearing years were over

self-portrait at musée condé, chantilly

The Paris transit authority, the RATP, wants to promote civility through a communications campaign aboard its buses.

In a previous post, I joked about the RATP’s seeming inability to see the world through the eyes of its customers, who saw an over-crowded train where the RATP saw an ordinary train.

The RATP’s new campaign is unabashedly philosophical and frankly reactionary, with a tag line that speaks out against making up or living by your own rules.

City buses feature illustrations of this principle. I’d have expected the illustrations to stress the importance of paying when you ride the bus, speaking politely with the driver, abstaining from playing music at loud volumes, or leaving your seat to an infirm passenger.

I was mistaken: the RATP again represents its passengers as problems. In this case, it lashes out against … babies.

The RATP has a point: strollers take up space and end up making a bus crowded.

But the RATP fails at making this point.

Its visuals instead show how babies make life difficult for a working man.

The image that introduced this post shocked me. The four babies are all doing fine, enjoying the bus ride or napping. Their companions –to my eyes, a mother, a father, and a grandmother– are smiling. Everyone is getting on and getting along fine. Then a malcontent enters the scene: a working man. He’s shown to be bothered and inconvenienced.

Bizarrely, the RATP shines its spotlight on and casts its sympathies with this one, solitary traveler; it seems blind to the fact that a bus ride is a happy experience for seven other travelers. The RATP’s tag line reads roughly as: “with strollers, don’t push it”. And the RATP’s solution –strollers subsequent to the second stroller must be folded– doesn’t make life any easier for its youngest passengers or their companions.

Si chacun fait ses propres règles, tout se dérègle

Seen in Paris on 18 December 2010. Photo taken in front of Comédie française.

In an effort to promote civic-spiritedness, has the Paris transit authority lashed out against individual liberties?

Paris perdu is a coffee-table book written by a collective and featuring hundreds of interesting photographs; as befits the funereal tone, all of the latter are in black and white.

The book’s title means “lost Paris”, although the title also is a pun on “losing bets” or “a lost wager”.

The book’s subject is the loss suffered by various Paris neighborhoods through urban renewal, renovation, and development.

This reader found the text militant and ultimately superfluous: Paris perdu makes a strong case through its use of photographs. All of the photographs were chosen carefully, and many of them are intriguing. They make Paris perdu a great book for leisurely, repeated viewing, for any lover of Paris. I was particularly captivated, and dismayed, by a treasure of photographs of the Halles before their demolition and replacement by a commuter train hub and shopping mall (whose renovation is pending).

Paris perdu has two weaknesses, both rhetorical. First, it overstates its case at times. From a safe remove (of fifty or a hundred years), poverty or squalor can seem charming, or at least photogenic. Subdivision, cramped living quarters, and tuberculosis are ills on which this book does not long dwell. Second, instead of resting its case by presenting what is no longer, the book too often makes a point by contrasting the past (authentic, rich) with the present (standardized, enriching only for developers).

Paris perdu was published in 1991 by Editions Carré. It is no longer in print, but can be found in used bookshops or in libraries.

Factory

This is a short detective story.

The city of Paris awarded architect Paul Friesé for the 1903 facade of the Métropolitain (subway) factory at 179 rue de Bercy. For the award jury, “This factory entrance is almost monumental.”

Viewed from the street, the factory brings to my mind the Museum of Natural History, in New York, or turn-of-the-century university buildings.

The facade was part of a large factory complex. To my eyes, what it most brings to mind is a mosque, complete with minarets. The entrance is a giant arch.

Factory

The Métropolitain factory has been demolished. The Paris transit authority has offices on the site, in part of a nondescript line of postwar office buildings that would be equally in place in Birmingham or Tulsa as in Paris.

Paris is receptive to industrial techniques –the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais, even the Grande Arche de La Défense– but not to actual industry. I’m left with the impression that Paris –city leaders, planners and architects, ordinary citizens– think factories and industry are embarrassments, better forgotten. What else could explain the oblivion into which the Métropolitain factory has fallen?

In addition to the factory on the rue de Bercy, the Métropolitain commissioned numerous electrical plants or sub-stations that are scattered throughout Paris. Some of these were also designed by Paul Friesé and are still standing. They bring to my mind armories, tiny forts.

Architect Paul Friesé was a remarkable figure. I’d recommend Hugues Fiblec’s Paris Friesé 1851-1917: Architectures de l’âge industriel, published by Norma; and the French architecture institute’s biography, from which I’ve borrowed the uncredited photo and illustration to show the Métropolitain facory.

Friesé was born in 1851 in Alsace. When he was 19, war broke out between France and Germany. Friesé enlisted, but France soon lost the war, and Alsace. Friesé moved to Paris and studied architecture. His architectural practice featured superb industrial buildings, few of which survive today. In keeping with his time, Friesé brought artistry to industry. He traveled extensively, and seems to have participated actively in architectural exchanges on design and materials.

France’s loss of Alsace to the Prussians nourished many hopes for revenge or re-taking. When war broke out in 1914, Friesé enlisted. He was 63 years old. From frequent visits to Alsace, Friesé had many contacts. He also had a command of German and equestrian skills. With this background, Friesé served as an interpreter. Paul Friesé died in 1917, while visiting his son, Jean-Paul, on the front. (I’m sure that there’s a superb story behind this fact, befitting of a W.G. Sebald tale, and I hope some day to look into it further.)

I love this building, because to my eyes, it’s a poor man’s building set in a rich man’s neighborhood. Put differently, it’s a building that I find democratic or egalitarian.

Viewed from the street, the corner building is modest compared to its neighbors. It’s made mostly of brick. The ground floor has some boutiques but otherwise keeps quiet.

What makes this building special? What makes it stand out?

Two points come to the mind of this spectator.

First, the architect puts creative use of stone and sculpted elements a few floors above street level.

Second, the architect reserved his most exuberant treatment for the building’s corner. Delgane departs from the neighborhood convention (corners at a 90° angle) with a rounded corner, with large windows and balconies on upper floors.

sober storefronts

corner

facade details

5 rue de Luynes

“Finally, we’ll describe the charm of detail, of invention, of inspiration from nature for the sculpted elements that seduced all of us in an apartment building on the rue de Luynes, by the architect Pradelle.”

These were the remarks made by the jury when it chose Pradelle and his building at 5 rue de Luynes as having one of the six priezwinning facades in Paris for the year 1904.

Pradelle’s building looks typically Parisian, Haussmannian. Nothing makes it stand out from its neighbors, in a quiet part of the 7th arrondissement.

Pradelle’s inventiveness lies principally in his use of decoration, especially vegetal and floral motifs. The ironwork of the building door signals or echoes these motifs.

floral motif; "swastika" motif unfortunate in hindsight

199 bis, bd St-Germain

Compared to the exuberance of Lavriotte’s apartment house on the avenue Rapp, Pasquier’s building at 199 bis boulevard Saint-Germain looks sedate.

The city of Paris awarded prizes for the facades of both buildings in 1901. What is it about Pasquier’s stately and low-key building that pleased the jury?

I have a couple of hypotheses; right or wrong, they underscore what makes this building special:

• Pasquier’s boulevard Saint-Germain building has a door. A real door, made of heavy ironwork, framed by stonework. As the century wore on, Paris architects seem to have forgotten about doors. Post-war buildings are especially egregious offenders in this respect, as they often have swinging glass panes as doors.
  There’s glass in the entry to Pasquier’s building, but it separates the entry from the courtyard. It features an art nouveau vegetal motif; it’s visible from the street but contributes to separating what’s in the building from the street outside.
• Pasquier respects the alignment, style of adjacent buildings, and a limited ornamental palette, while showing an extraordinary attention to detail. I’m especially taken by how the architect treated a north-facing, first-floor window. The window practically invites light in, and its canopy segues into a different treatment reserved to the second-floor balcony.

29 av Rapp (Paris)

“It’s not likely that Paris will witness a proliferation of this kind of construction.”

These were some of the selection jury’s comments when it awarded a prize in 1901 to Jules Lavriotte for the façade of the apartment house at 29 avenue Rapp, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris.

Years ago, I had the good fortune to study art history, and the greater fortune to study this building. (Thank you, Martha Ward.) Befitting American students prone to afternoon somnolence, examination of the building focused on its entrance, most aptly described as labial, and at its sculpted door, with a phallic motif.

When I return to look at the building today, I see all of that, but I notice a lot more:

• Lavriotte plays with symmetry, or rather an absence of symmetry: the entry is off-center. A balcony on the third floor is centered, but the structure on either side of it is not; and examined vertically, one side of the facade has continuity, while the other has an interruption.
• Inside or outside? Lavriotte toys with facade viewers by alternating projections and indentations to the facade. The second, third, and fourth floors take flights of fancy, while floors above and below adhere to strict conventions.
• Rich art nouveau ornamentation is everywhere! As a repeat spectator, I’m especially drawn to the balcony on the third floor. There’s great attention to detail in the stonework, the iron grillings, ornamentation (with vegetal art nouveau themes) on the facade surface, and on the underside of the balcony, where there are colored ceremics, including a pair of cows.

entry

facade

balcony detail

This was a brilliant contest. By celebrating the facade –what a passerby sees, from the street– the city celebrated citizens as much as architects. By critiquing the facade, the city also addressed, indirectly, ongoing social patterns: urbanization; democratization; social classes and disparities of wealth; tradition versus novelty. Since the time of Baron Haussmann, Paris building facades were regulated strictly; architects in 1900 used a limited vocabulary in surprisingly innovative and challenging ways. By choosing six winners, the city allowed for diverse schools and interpretations to shine.

The spirit of these years and of this contest is captured by an observation from the city of Paris:

No one disputes that Paris is the most beautiful capital in the world. It owes this supreme glory not only to the magnificence of the Seine, its avenues, its parks, its gardens, its squares –whose aspects are in all points admirable– not only to the varity and number of its sumptuous monuments; but also to the felicitous line of its broad streets, which offer profound perspectives that give it the cachet of opulent originality, for which there is no equivalent, anywhere abroad.

The quotation is from a publication by the city of Paris, Les concours de façades de la ville de Paris, 1898-1905, published in Paris by the Librairie de la construction moderne (the quoted passage is on p. 23; the translation is mine). The passage struck me, partly because it’s so triumphantly chauvinist, but especially because it places the heart of what makes a city great and beautiful at and in the street.

Les concours de façades de la ville de Paris was published in two volumes, one for the years 1898-1905, the other for the years 1906-1912. I located and read a copy at the historical library of the City of Paris. The contest offered a public reward and recognition for architects, and I regret that the slender volumes have gone out of print. The contest reports, and the drawings or photographs of award-winning facades, are priceless. In the coming days, I’ll comment on some of the winners that especially marked me.