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De sjunkna bågarna hos Ledoux, Boullée, Cellerier och Fontaine

1960; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 29; Issue: 1-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00233606008603621

1651-2294

Oscar Reutersvärd,

Historical and Literary Studies

English Summary The Sunken Arches of Ledoux, Boullée, Cellerier and Fontaine. As this title indicates, a group of architectural works under the epoch of the French Revolution seem to be the bearers of a common idea; they are all entrance arches and all give the impression of standing partly submerged or buried in the ground. We have here a series of events never understood contemporaneously and their meaning never noticed even by authorities of later days. We come into contact with an episode in the history of architecture which was too complicated and unique to gain understanding—and which deserved a better fate than to fall into oblivion. Contemporaries never managed to attain comprehension of the working ideas of this movement. They were confronted with works of architecture which contained more than the senses were accustomed to register, and accordingly did not register; namely, a literary, poeticizing quantum of significance. In order to apprehend this, a special stage of instruction would have been required. But the movement was failed by the theorists of the day; no Père Laugier stepped forward to contribute to the alterations in architectural vision so necessary, no Quatremère de Quincy revealed himself to point out the profound and often difficult to analyse compositions which were incorporated in the figures of construction and which were directed toward the intelligence and imagination of the beholder. All too late personal representatives of this movement began to vest in word their intentions and present their metaphorical method. When Ledoux and Boullée were ready to publish their manifestos, the great age of the cult of ideas was past and new ideals began to affect man. The first monument in our series is the entrance arch that Ledoux built in 1780 in front of the Maison de Thélusson in Paris (fig. 1). From the beginning it was an object of discussion and disapproval on account of its disproportion, the pillars which lifted up the arch being abnormally short. Also the double bridgeways running from the arch to the palace four meters above the level of the garden became subject to the same wonder: "Est‐ce une Bastille? Est‐ce une carrière?” cried ironical voices in face of this sight. When Ledoux's famous construction was demolished in 1823, hardly anyone had understood the architect's idea, neither his arch nor his bridgeway. Even to‐day experts raise objections to the disproportion of the Arc de Thélusson and do not reckon with a purport or meaning thereby. However, according to our interpretation, it represents a porta triumphalis partly buried in the earth; it rises also de facto from the level of the sunken garden (fig. 3). As an inspiration Ledoux seems to have had the triumphal arch of the Circus of Maxentius, which was left standing unexcavated in the eighteenth century, pathetically suggestive of its age (fig. 4). It is problematical to try to establish what thoughts Ledoux wished to instill in this allegory: a sunken arch. Certainly it was a bolder idea than only a sic transit; it was some rebellious opinion corresponding with the sophisticated tone in Marie de Thélusson's salon. Very likely the arch could be regarded as a quiet contribution to the architectural debate of the times. Ledoux of course fought with burning zeal the eclecticism which for want of ideas copied at large the great models of classical antiquity. He confronted this with his own Utopian programme, extreme in his demands: the traditional ideals annulled and a radical new architecture shaped and adjusted to the people of to‐morrow. In his pre‐functionalism he indicated the way towards possibilities to be pursued and carried into effect in the future—in the sunken arch he showed an architecture which was completed once and belonged to the past. Not with a single word did his contemporaries acknowledge or intimate the idea behind the Arc de Thélusson's disproportions, but a few of Ledoux's young adepts seem to have had keener eyes and give us a few hints. One of them was a young pupil at the Academy of Architecture in Paris, Péchade, pupil of Jardin. In May 1781, a year after the erection of the Arc de Thélusson, he won the competition for the entrance to a naval arsenal. His winning proposal showed an arch which directly followed Ledoux's and which was set on the bottom of the sea, raising itself out of the water and forming a vault over the passing ships (fig. 5). Another of Jardin's pupils, the young Danish architect Peter Meyn, sent home sketches for naval arsenals at the same time. In three of them are arches of the Arc de Thélusson type standing partly submerged in the water (fig. 6). Also in other works by Ledoux from the same time, entrance arches appear standing planted or rooted in the ground—or in the water. For both a Utopian sheep‐farm in La Roche Bernard (fig. 7) and a shopping centre in the model town of Chaux, he planned four vaulted entrance gatehouses submerged in an encircling moat and serving about like lowered drawbridges. In the previous examples the buildings had actually stood in submergence. In the following, the scheme of submergence was not “motivated” by such sinking; instead, by their very form do these arches give the impression of being partly buried in the ground. Such was the case with the entrance vault in Ledoux's project for a commercial centre on rue Saint‐Denis in Paris (fig. 8). Here there is no surrounding moat; but the arches appear to be standing in an imaginary one, their solidly compressed forms giving evidence of a strong illusion of sinking. The metaphorical method was driven to sublime heights by Boullée. And with him we find ourselves on sure ground; he has in express terms proclaimed the “sinking” motif and its significance. By its proportions his architecture ensevelie convinced people that sepulchral temples and cemetery buildings standing partly in the ground seemed to belong to the region of graves. A real paradigm is his Monument Funéraire a building pressed against the earth, set in a cemetery wall (fig. 9). Of great interest in this connection is his Entrée d'un Cimetière: again we have a sunken entrance arch (fig. 11). Even Boullée himself assigned great importance to this project; it was the initial work of his “sunken” architecture. With this, he decided for the first time the proportions which were to produce the illusion of a partly buried body of construction. Ten years after Ledoux erected the Arc de Thélusson, Paris received still another arch of the same type. In honor of the national federal manifestation of July 14, 1790, the Champ de Mars was to be turned into a gigantic festival place. J.‐J. Ramée was commissioned to erect L'Autel de la Patrie in the centre and around this Cellerier was to build a structure able to seat a hundred thousand spectators and one hundred and sixty thousand participants on parade. The two architects produced a composition with a magnificent contrast effect. Ramée set up an altar on a podium high over the head of the masses and Cellerier built a circus of the Roman hippodrome type with gallery stands pressed toward the ground (fig. 12). The triumphal arch, again a sunken arch (fig. 13), evoked the strongest effect, as it rose alongside the Seine. The concordances with the Arc de Thélusson are many, the most conspicuous being the wholly Doric conception and the abnormally short pillars supporting the vaults. But Cellerier was one of Ledoux's closest pupils and in all probability was well acquainted with his teacher's idea concerning Maison de Thélusson, alluding to a Roman circus. Surely the ironical spectators were right when they cried out at Ledoux's bridgeway: “Is this supposed to be a racecourse?” Possibly Cellerier's allegorical thought was dialectically related to Ledoux's; the federalists, signifying the new power, "plus grands que ces Romains si fiers” would march out in triumph on the field the Romans once called Campus Martius. Twenty years later, about 1810, Napoleon commissioned Percier, Fontaine and Cellerier to transform the territory at Quai d'Orsay into a splendid science centre and replace Cellerier's temporary circus with a stable marble building in better keeping with the imperial style. Fontaine worked out a project which on all important points seems to retain his colleague's ideas. The theme of submergence is maintained. On the same spot as the former arch, a new arch was erected, its forms obviously pressed down and contrasting with Chalgrin's lofty triumphal arch which at this time was raised on the Colline de Chaillot, and with Fontaine's own Arc du Carrousel (fig. 14). Napoleon's magnificent project remained a paper plan; it fell with its instigator when the emperor abdicated. The motif of submergence was not to appear again in profane architecture. However, in sepulchral art it was employed for still some time. In the cemeteries of Europe during the earlier part of the nineteenth century, temples, tombs and monuments were built which seemed to descend from the world of the living down into the realm of the dead.