"Bad joke," "vulgar," "toothpaste squeezed from a tube" - these are just a few of the Establishment insults hurled at the Art Nouveau buildings designed in and around Paris from the 1890s until 1926 by architect Hector Guimard.
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Porte Dauphine
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Never heard of him? Well, if you've visited the French Capital you can't have missed some of his most prevalent brain-children: the turn-of-the-century subway entrances embraced by lissom, drooping, bug-eyed lamposts, and surrounded by railings that are a cross between jungle vegetation and sculpture. Their medallions look for all the world like Mayan masks, but are in fact a free interpretation of the letter "M" for "Métro" - the Paris subway opened on July 19 1900.
The most complete entrance extant is at Porte Dauphine, and well worth a special ride to view it there.
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Porte Dauphine
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Porte Dauphine
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N° 14 - Castel Béranger
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For me, Guimard's zany, lop-sided creations are a fitting rejoinder to the pompous and rather constipated haute bourgoisie buildings created during the Get-Rich years of urbanist Baron Haussmann, who gutted much of traditional Paris. Humorous, yes, but far from a "bad joke," they are - as a UNESCO project dubbed Art Nouveau - "smiling architecture."
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Decorative sea-horse
gargoyles
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Some of his Best-Of is concentrated towards the South of the 16th arrondissement. And beckons you to this stroll, of about one hour through "Guimard-land."
Why not begin with the BEST of Best-Of?
Take public transport - bus or RER train - to La Maison de la Radio (Radio House), just behind which is rue LaFontaine. At N° 14 is the Castel Béranger, dating from 1894, Guimard's first major commission - he was all of 27! - and a veritable architectural circus, called "Castel Dérangé" by one critic
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Castel Béranger-"tower"
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"Crazy" and "Cosy"
Check out first, if you will, the building materials: brick, glazed brick, a steel beam stuck right up-front: all considered vulgar at the time. Then look at the proportions: giddily asymmetrical. And the decorative sea-horse gargoyles - a reminder of Guimard's attachment to the Middle Ages, as is the corner " tower." Ah, and the wild wrought-iron main door. A journalist once wrote, appreciatively this time, that it is "a web woven by an inebriated spider."
Step into the mews to the left of the building and look at the rhythm of the wrought-iron fence, the stained glass windows following a stairway up the wing facing the courtyard.
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Brick, glazed brick, a steel beam stuck right up-front: all considered vulgar at the time
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Wrought-iron main door
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Stained glass windows following a stairway up the wing facing the courtyard
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Square Agar
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The proof of the pudding? Bachelor Guimard himself moved in here and set up his architect's studio. Quite a self-promoter, he had postcards made of himself at work there, and signed his visiting cards "H. Guimard, Architect-Artist." A journalist
mocked him, asking rhetorically: "What architect is not an artist?" "Hey, Jack," I would have challenged him, "just take a look at much of today's cityscape!"
Painter Paul Signac (his granddaughter is today Conservator of the Orsay Museum) also moved in and boasted in a letter to a friend (original English in italics) "The building is crazy, but the apartment is cozy, and... we have a telephone!"
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A few steps along rue LaFontaine brings you, on your left, to the Square Agar, where Guimard built most of the apartment houses some 15 years after the Castel.
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Square Agar
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Square Agar
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Le Café Antoine
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Thirsty? Step into Le Café Antoine on the ground floor of one of Guimard's six creations on this block. The "Antoine" in question launched his café when the building opened, in 1911. His daughter took over, and sold the place only a few years ago to the present owners, who haven't altered the original Belle Epoque decoration.
Go a bit farther down the rue LaFontaine to 11 rue François Millet, on the left, where a Guimard masterpiece leers at you, just cleaned to its pristine original ivory color.
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11 rue François Millet
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11 rue François Millet
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11 rue François Millet
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Back along rue LaFontaine to N° 60, with its post-harvest grapevine fencing, off-centred façade, semi-medieval turret and intimate bow-window. It was built by Guimard for a pal, artist and textile industrialist, Paul Mezzara.
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Off-centred facade, semi-medieval turret
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Post-harvest grapevine fencing
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Intimate bow-window
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"What music would have been played behind that intimate bow-window?" I ask the visitors I guide here. "Debussy" is the general answer. Wrong! A Belgian enthusiast of Victor Horta, Guimard's Brussels "master", did hit target: Eric Satie! As witty as sardonic, Satie once wrote "All his life, Debussy refused the Légion d'Honneur while all his music always accepted it!"
The Hôtel Mezzara is public property and if you're in luck it will be hosting an exhibition, enabling you to visit Guimard's marvellous and still-intact original interior deocration.
Continue along rue LaFontaine until it corners with avenue Mozart, on which turn right. At N° 122 is the mansion Guimard built for himself and bride Adeline Oppenheim.
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122 avenue Mozart
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The American Connection
She was an American painter, and the top storey of 122 avenue Mozart (windows unfortunately "modernized") was her studio. The couple's credo was "Let's make our life a work of art" and Guimard, who had designed Adeline's wedding dress and shoes, conceived not just the architecture of this townhouse but also details including doorknobs and curtains, not to forget their bedspread and the radiators - like the telephone, central heating was just coming in.
Adeline's Jewish origins led the Guimards to flee the rise of anti-Semitism in France at the end of the 1930s, and they settled in New York. Guimard died there in 1942, completely forgotten.
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122 avenue Mozart
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122 avenue Mozart
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122 avenue Mozart
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122 avenue Mozart
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Ironically, while Paris continued to demolish his materpieces until the late 1960s, it was an American institution - New York's Museum Of Modern Art - that began to bring him back into favor ca. 1950 by acquiring, and "planting" in its garden, the lissom lamposts of one of his Paris Metro entrances.
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1 Villa Flore
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Just across from the couple's mansion, at 1 villa Flore, is one of Guimard's last Parisian creations. It was built in 1924, just a year before the Decorative Arts Exhibition sounded the death knell of Art Nouveau and ushered in Art Déco as the new architectural craze. Its clean lines suggest that the "deranged" wind had pretty much dropped out of his creative sails. I find it a bit sad...
Art Nouveau in Paris Museums
Permanent collections feature Art Nouveau artifacts, including Guimard furniture, at:
- the Musée d'Orsay (1 rue de la Légion de l'Honneur, Paris 7 - Métro Solférino and RER Musée d'Orsay) and
- the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (107 rue de Rivoli, Paris 1, Métro Palais Royal).
by Arthur Gillette
Former Editor-in-Chief of UNESCO's Museum International magazine, Arthur guides small-group strolls to eleven different theme- and period-specific itineraries discovering "Paris Through The Ages," including "Smiling Architecture: Parisian Art Nouveau." For more information, contact him on: Armedv@aol.com. Nine of these tours have been published as convenient pocket map-guides, which you can view (and order securely) on www.media-cartes.fr (click on the British flag for English).
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