I visited her last days in the Louvre exhibition "The Ancient golden (you can get a preview on this site: http://mini-site.louvre.fr/saison18e/index_f.php?expo antiquite_revee = # / antiquite_revee ), which has the inspiration of antiquity among artists (mostly painters, sculptors, architects and decorators) eighteenth century
I was a little disappointed: not that the exhibition was poorly done and it was excellent and very interesting as the exhibitions are usually the Louvre, but really, the art of the eighteenth century Europe is often very cold.
There are exceptions, fortunately, a few works and delighted me. I also discovered artists that I knew, as the architect Etienne Boullée: the Cenotaph for Newton Project (a huge sphere) surprised me a lot: first course because it is a form quite unusual and striking architecture (even in our modern twenty-first century), but mainly because before to go and read the caption, I was convinced that this drawing was the work of another great architect of the eighteenth century . Claude Nicolas Ledoux, Claude Nicolas Ledoux, whose name was also quoted on the science board of the room contained the design of Boullee, but not the least of his works! For once, this absence was a real regret, because he is an artist whom I am deeply attached, so I decided to take this opportunity to lead my flowery paths towards his ideal city.
CN Ledoux was an inventor and artist of genius, but arrived at the wrong time, so his reputation is average. Best known buildings he had built for the Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans in Doubs, but this superb semi-circle has already attracted the admiration of tourists in the initial project was to form a complete circle, and this circle should be the central element of an ideal city built around the salt, but he had to stop there, for lack of money in the royal budget. It is also the author of charming small houses erected at every door of Paris (for civil servants receiving the award of those entering the city), which, just a few years after their construction, were destroyed by the Revolution who saw the symbol of tax oppression: it remains one in the Place Denfert-Rochereau, one on the Place Stalingrad, the canal, and two or three others. Finally the book he had planned to write to explain his world view, of humanity and art, was interrupted by his arrest during the Terror and stayed in the draft state.
What fascinated me at first with CN Ledoux, the style is absolutely amazing and unlike any other (except the Boullee, can I add now!) Buildings that had imagined. At a time of my adolescence when I was looking for inspiration to imagine the house of my dreams, boards (photocopied in a book found in the library) made me long dream.
It was only later that I discovered his literary work, which was published in 1804 two years before his death, the editions were published by Hermann in 1997 a facsimile I have in my shelves. If I spoke of earlier texts to draft state is that it's hard to follow. There are no chapters, if not titles of plates, but the text that follows does not always correspond exactly to the board. The text seems to be built in the train of thought and without clear order. He jumps constantly accurate descriptions of buildings he designed in poetic or moral tirades evoking life in his ideal city. Faced with such writing and such a personality, do not try to understand at any price, but get carried away with his outbursts. So, behind the jumble of words, we see a man stand truly believed in human progress - many Europeans believed sincerely in the late eighteenth century : What have we done in two short centuries for Humanity are now returned as or even more disillusioned than the ancient and medieval times? - And who believed, with a pride naïve, that architecture and especially his men could make to the well-being, morality, harmony, happiness ...
But do not finish this article without discover the art of Ledoux, because I think I've put water in his mouth! For his architectural work (completed or proposed), a simple "Claude Nicolas Ledoux" typed into a search engine for images give you an idea of the boldness and beauty of his conceptions. As for his literary work, it is hard to choose! I finally opted for a passage where one finds both his lyrical style, his moral and his description of a building:
" House committed to monitoring employees.
Already the king of the universe rejoiced seasons ; His throne decorated majestically circle the ecliptic, and the times came out of retirement, and holding hands, cause the sound of instruments, the gaiety of the morning. Flowers, herbs distributed their perfumes, and regenerate the earth god benefactor. The aurora flickering uncertain displayed one day the bottom of the table when I saw a building that, by its extent, was not entitled to great effect, the view was a bit distant, yet they had invited the shadows blacken the surfaces that were susceptible. It had a porch depth to protect the walls of the second plane cons blasts penetrating from the north. You could see bosses rustic and additional forces ordinary columns were short of a proportion forget the loss of gauge, and s. boasted of these contours outraged (it's always the traveler who speaks). I do not know the prestige that fascinated my sight, but this kind of building I liked. Stone, brick, offered me various shades, and the entire mass was in conflict with the green trees, fruit trees, so the pleasures were not pure, light sentences, the soul still in the sleep of innocence despised the vanities of love ignored the evils that follow, the hymen, disgusts that the tire. O! delusions helpless applaud everything, because you know nothing, extend the comforting illusions of the school is that where the imagination is not chained.
The cut indicates the height of the floors. "
Claude Nicolas Ledoux, Architecture
considered in the report of the art of dying and legislation , P. 204-206
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And still ...
Remember not the Festival of Latin and Greek from 17 to 19 March next!
http://www.festival-latin-grec.eu/
(tab "Program 2011" to see the program, under "Reservations" to reserve)
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