The Architecture of the Beaux-ArtsAuthor(s): David Van ZantenSource: JAE, Vol. 29, No. 2, Describing Places (Nov., 1975), pp. 16-17Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools ofArchitecture, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1424477 .Accessed: 07/11/2014 05:24

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Taylor & Francis, Ltd. and Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Inc. are collaborating withJSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to JAE.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.52.64.244 on Fri, 7 Nov 2014 05:24:43 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

16

THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE BEAUX-ARTS The follow ing remarks on the Beaux-Arts have been prepa-red by David Van Zanten, a member of the art history faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, who participated with Arthur Drexler in organizing The Architecture of the Beaux-Arts show now open through 4 January at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The remarks, it should be noted, were prepared under Van Zanten's own aegis.

The drawing above is Emmanuel Brune's notion of a staircare for the "Palace of the Sovereigns," 1863. Courtesy of MOMA.

The drawing on page 29 is Charles Garnier's study for the decoration of the Arc de Triomphe for the funeral of Victor Hugo, 1885. Courtesy of MOMA.

The Capital study on the inside front cover is also courteSy of MOMA.

A ny American architect growing up after World War I has probably felt two great architectural presences around him. First, that of the frontier, with vast spaces, con- stant growth into those spaces and things made quickly, flimsily, and soon abandoned. Second, that of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts which-when brought to the United States around 1900-caused us to create monu- mental buildings, boulevards and even whole city centers like monadnocks among the chaos of American ticky-tacky; construc- tions vast in scale and incredibly permanent in their masonry (steel-stiffened) construc- tion. Both of these have remained strangely mysterious to us. We try, on the one hand, to find some accommodation with the frontier while, on the other hand, admitting that the most convincing architecture of our personal experience is that of the ruins of this "Beaux-Arts" ideal.

The secret of Beaux-Arts architecture, we are told, was its understanding of architec- tural composition. Georges Gromort in his lectures at the Ecole defined composition thus:

The role of composition per se is to bind to- gether, to make effective (mettre en oeuvre) the scattered parts, to make of them a whole. This is, above all, the matter of linkage. This will create, in order to lead one to the various parts-to these rooms, to these libraries, to these audito- ria-a whole network of vestibules, of staircases, of covered and open courts, of corridors which we designate with the word circulations .... It is the more or less graceful articulation of this network which determines to a great extent the building's appearance. (Essai sur la theorie de I'architecture, 1946, pp 143-146, Gromort's ital- ics.) That is to say, composition did not have to do with the creation de novo of the func-

This content downloaded from 193.52.64.244 on Fri, 7 Nov 2014 05:24:43 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

tioning parts of a building, but rather with the presentation of those parts to the viewer's eyes. And this presentation was meant to make these elements orderly, impressive and immediately comprehensi- ble. Particular emphasis was placed upon the promenade architecturale, the sequence of visual tableaux experienced as one passes through a building along well-defined axes of vestibules, courtyards, staircases and corridors. "Beaux-Arts" composition was, in a word, the study of architectural nicety.

There were, of course, a number of impor- tant assumptions determining the terms of this study of architectural nicety, most importantly that the building would be realized in masonry. Gromort wrote:

The architect has always been, until now at leasb. a man who works (traitait) stone, as a goldsmith works gold .... If an edifice pretends to elevate

itself to what can trully be called Architecture, it must be built like the Parthenon entirely in marble, or like so many buildings since entirely in good quality stone or entirely in brick, or-if you wish-entirely in concrete.... The nature or even the rarity of the stone is not what counts primarily, it is unity. One wishes that the mate- rial be noble because that is how it presents itself to us, but this nobility can only be conferred by working it, by the visible trace of the hand of man. (pp 125-126, Gromort's italics.)

Form and articulation in the Beaux-Arts system was in terms of the assembling and the working of stone. Openings were bridged with arches, spaces roofed with the undulating surfaces of vaults, supports were made massive piers assembled from hard stones meant to carry great loads of ma- sonry. Ornament was cut into these surfa- ces, the students studying the effects in laboriously graded ink wash drawings, the shadows worked up with the precision of

chisel blows.

The Ecole des Beaux-Arts taught a specific manner of planning (for "composition" meant planning rather than design) in a specific technology in the context of a specific economic, social and professional milieu. The beauty of the system was the balance maintained in its heyday between these factors, producing a series of magnifi- cent monuments both in France and in the United States. Today that system has re- ceded into the past, the equivalent in archi- tectural education of the Greek temple and the Gothic cathedral in building. Fifty years ago we had to free ourselves from being hypnotized by a pattern of teaching that society and technology rendered anachro- nistic, but now that that has been accomp- lished the time has come to contemplate and admire what the Beaux-Arts managed to accomplish in its own time. 17

This content downloaded from 193.52.64.244 on Fri, 7 Nov 2014 05:24:43 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Article Contentsp. 16p. 17

Issue Table of ContentsJAE, Vol. 29, No. 2, Describing Places (Nov., 1975), pp. 1-32Front Matter [pp. 2-3]LettersPrologue [pp. 1]A Sacred Place [pp. 4-5]Toward an Analysis of Dwelling Claim [pp. 6-9]Architectural Photography [pp. 10-15]The Architecture of the Beaux-Arts [pp. 16-17]Symbol Power [pp. 18-21]Mountain Villages of Southern Tunisia [pp. 22-25]Sketching: A Computational Paradigm for Personalized Searching [pp. 26-29]Bootstrap Essence-Seeking [pp. 30-32]Back Matter