{design} – Page 257 – { feuilleton }

Villa d’Este

Detail of the Water Organ (1902).

Samples from a set of pictures at LUNA Commons of the wonderful water gardens at the Villa d’Este, Tivoli, Italy. Among the 164 items in the collection are plans, engravings, and photographs old and new. I’m partial to the older photos, most of which seem to be photogravure reproductions whose temporal distance and technical shortcomings only add to the mystique of the place.

Alley of the hundred fountains (1997).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Gertrude Käsebier’s crystal gazer
• The Door in the Wall
• Paris II: The River Fountain

David Lynch window displays

Two of the stunning displays created from sketches by David Lynch for the Galeries Lafayette department store, Paris. The series is entitled Machine-Abstraction-Women, and I don’t think Mr Lynch would mind too much having his description of the works translated in an extruded manner from French to English:

I was always fascinated by the spectacle of the women in front of the windows of the department stores. By designing the fronts of the Lafayette Galleries, I wanted to show all the identities which coexist at the woman of the 21st century. With the reflection of glass which returns the floutée image of the passers by, this set of parallel universes approaches my films, where the same actress interprets several characters. I drew very abstract decorations. Landscapes cubists populated of sculptures, wheels, pieces of furniture, of vidéos, sounds. I see these windows like a labyrinth, a street museum where to move through indices. A window, it is a transparent door on the unknown. (More.)

Much as I like Lynch’s films, I’ve never been very taken with his paintings, they always seem to lack the powerful quality he achieves in other media. But I like these a great deal and it’s a shame this is a one-off commission for a store. He’s also produced an attendant series of lithograph works, I See Myself.

• David Lynch aux Galeries
• David Lynch en vitrine

Previously on { feuilleton }
• David Lynch in Paris
• Inland Empire

Eduardo Paolozzi’s Jet Age Compendium

Detail from the cover of Ambit # 40, 1969.

A teenage enthusiasm for Pop Art meant I was familiar with the paintings and collages of Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005) long before I became aware of his association with sf magazine New Worlds, and his friendship with JG Ballard. Paolozzi was famously credited on the masthead of New Worlds as “Aeronautics Advisor”, a listing which impressed the relevant authorities when Brian Aldiss petitioned for an Arts Council grant and saved the magazine from collapse. Paolozzi’s work was featured in New Worlds now and then, and he provided a cover for issue 174, but it was to Ambit magazine one had to turn to see regular work by the artist.

New Worlds #174, Aug 1967.

My favouritism towards New Worlds has always led me to see Ambit as NW-lite; frequent NW contributor JG Ballard was Ambit‘s fiction editor, and both stood to the side of the British literary scene, although Ambit editor Martin Bax didn’t share Michael Moorcock’s preference for pursuing generic or experimental means to Romantic or visionary ends. Quibbles aside, it’s good to see Paolozzi’s work for the magazine is now the subject of an exhibition, The Jet Age Compendium, at Raven Row, London, and also a book, The Jet Age Compendium: Paolozzi at Ambit from Four Corners Books. If you can’t see the former, the latter is priced £12.95 which strikes me as very reasonable.

The Jet Age Compendium runs until 1 November 2009. For an insight into the artist’s interests and attitudes, there’s a great Studio International interview here from 1971 with Paolozzi and Ballard talking to art critic Frank Whitford.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Sculptural collage: Eduardo Paolozzi
• Revenant volumes: Bob Haberfield, New Worlds and others

Temples for Future Religions by François Garas

Temple à la Pensée, dédié à Beethoven, vue en cours de construction (1897).

Another artist discovered whilst searching for something quite unrelated. The Musée d’Orsay are custodians of this drawing by François Garas (1866–1925), and they also have the most substantial appraisal of his career.

François Garas remains a mysterious architect, whose artistic pantheon included Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as John Ruskin, Richard Wagner, Jean Carriès and Edouard Manet. He obtained his diploma in 1894, and until 1914 regularly exhibited utopian architectural projects at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux Arts. His career started with the exhibition Architects’ Impressions in 1896 at the Le Barc de Bouteville gallery, alongside his fellow architects Henri Sauvage, Henry Provensal and Gabriel Guillemonat. This exhibition, accompanied by a rebellious booklet by the architect Frantz Jourdain, wanted to get rid of “the mental slavery produced by the exclusive study of Greek and Roman architecture, and by a knowledge of nothing but the Italian Renaissance”. This drawing featured in the exhibition; then it was seen again, the same year, in an exhibition by the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, as part of a collection entitled Artists’ Interiors.

From 1897, Garas exhibited increasingly oneiric projects at the Salon – “temples for future religions”, dedicated to Beethoven, Wagner, Life, Death and Thought. While his companions from the early days were designing social housing, Garas continued along the same fanciful path, then disappeared from the architectural scene without any of his projects ever having been built.

Temple à la Pensée, dédié à Beethoven, vue perspective depuis l’arrière du temple (1897).

Temple à la Pensée, dédié à Beethoven, visions du temple, clair de lune (1900).

The museum has several pages of various plans and sketches for these Temples for Future Religions, and also some quasi-Gothic designs for “Artist’s interiors” which would benefit from being seen at a larger size. Among his other works are a series of very diffuse pastel studies which look more like Claude Monet drawing the ruins of Angkor than architectural designs.

Un temple pour les religions futures (1901).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Exposition Universelle publications
• Exposition cornucopia
• Return to the Exposition Universelle
• The Palais Lumineux
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• Exposition Universelle, 1900
• The Palais du Trocadéro
• The Evanescent City

The art of George Barbier, 1882–1932

Les Chansons de Bilitis (1922).

I’ve posted examples of George Barbier’s Art Deco drawings before but online examples of his work outside the world of fashion illustration have been difficult to find. The Bunka Women’s University Library corrects that with a collection of high-quality scans which include a book about the artist, George Barbier, Étude Critique (1929) by Jean?Louis Vaudoyer. There’s also his adaptation of the Sapphic classic by Pierre Loüys, Les Chansons de Bilitis, from 1922. The drawings there lack the customary ardour of other adaptations but they’re marvellously elegant nonetheless, with some beautiful page designs.

Note: these books can’t be linked to individually, you need to follow the links from “Art Deco illustrated books” in their site menu.

Nijinsky (1913).

Poèmes en Prose (1928).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Decorative Age
• Images of Nijinsky