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As the 19th century was drawing to a close, | 0:00:16 | 0:00:20 | |
a luxurious, new style was taking Europe by storm. | 0:00:20 | 0:00:24 | |
This was the fin de siecle, | 0:00:26 | 0:00:29 | |
the glamorous, decadent but also anxious end to the 19th century, | 0:00:29 | 0:00:35 | |
and the style was Art Nouveau. | 0:00:35 | 0:00:39 | |
Merci. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:41 | |
Art Nouveau grew out of the dark, restless energies | 0:00:46 | 0:00:49 | |
of the industrial city. | 0:00:49 | 0:00:51 | |
In the age of Darwin and Freud, | 0:00:51 | 0:00:54 | |
it was fixated with nature, sensuality and sex. | 0:00:54 | 0:01:01 | |
In the space of a decade or so, | 0:01:01 | 0:01:04 | |
Art Nouveau went from being nowhere to everywhere. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:08 | |
Lapped up by the burgeoning middle classes of Europe, | 0:01:08 | 0:01:12 | |
it was mimicked and mass produced. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:15 | |
What began as a revolution in the name of truth, beauty and nature, | 0:01:15 | 0:01:20 | |
ended in derision, decadence and decay. | 0:01:20 | 0:01:24 | |
In this series, I'll be visiting the great cities of Europe, | 0:01:26 | 0:01:30 | |
where the work of visionaries like Emile Galle, | 0:01:30 | 0:01:33 | |
artists like Gustav Klimt and entrepreneurs like Arthur Liberty | 0:01:33 | 0:01:38 | |
blossomed all too briefly. | 0:01:38 | 0:01:40 | |
Paris at the end of the 19th century | 0:01:56 | 0:01:58 | |
loved its bullet-straight boulevards, | 0:01:58 | 0:02:01 | |
its imposing monuments and classically inspired architecture. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:07 | |
But beyond the grandeur, the population had exploded | 0:02:09 | 0:02:13 | |
from half a million to 2.5 million people by 1900. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:17 | |
Those elegant boulevards were gridlocked with horses, | 0:02:22 | 0:02:27 | |
carriages and crowds. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:29 | |
Things needed to change. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:31 | |
The city planners came up with a radical solution. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:35 | |
Le Metro, ladies and gentlemen! | 0:02:40 | 0:02:43 | |
Typically Paris, typically Art Nouveau. | 0:02:43 | 0:02:47 | |
The good citizens of Paris were shocked. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:52 | |
Entrances like bat wings, | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
sinuous metals, sensuous curves. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:59 | |
It was a bold declaration of the new art for the new century. | 0:02:59 | 0:03:03 | |
The first Metro entrances appeared just in time | 0:03:08 | 0:03:12 | |
for a massive celebration in Paris, | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
the World Fair of 1900. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:18 | |
It was when the city would show off its cutting-edge new style. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:22 | |
At the heart of the fair were two huge buildings, | 0:03:23 | 0:03:26 | |
standing opposite each other, the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:31 | |
This is Le Grand Palais. It's exquisite, isn't it? | 0:03:31 | 0:03:36 | |
It's beautiful, substantial, | 0:03:36 | 0:03:38 | |
one of the biggest and best exhibition spaces | 0:03:38 | 0:03:41 | |
you'll find anywhere in the world, never mind Paris. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:43 | |
You'd love it. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
Unfortunately, I'm not going there. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:48 | |
I'm going to Le Petit Palais, the small palace over here. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:53 | |
Perhaps they were boasting to their foreign visitors. | 0:03:55 | 0:03:59 | |
"In France, this, all 16,000 square metres of it, | 0:03:59 | 0:04:03 | |
"is what we call small." | 0:04:03 | 0:04:05 | |
Bonjour. Monsieur Chazal, je m'appelle Stephen. | 0:04:09 | 0:04:12 | |
Merci, monsieur. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:14 | |
'Gilles Chazal is director of the Petit Palais.' | 0:04:14 | 0:04:17 | |
Can you give me some idea of the sheer size of the exhibition | 0:04:20 | 0:04:24 | |
in terms of Paris? It was a great, big event, wasn't it? | 0:04:24 | 0:04:28 | |
It was an international exhibition. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:30 | |
It was of course a very, very famous event. | 0:04:30 | 0:04:32 | |
-It was from this place to La Tour Eiffel... -To the Eiffel Tower. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:36 | |
Yes, yes and along the River Seine. | 0:04:36 | 0:04:39 | |
It was absolutely incredible and it was a discovery for the public, | 0:04:39 | 0:04:45 | |
to look after artworks, but also engines and so on. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:51 | |
Also, it was a change of century, so it was a very great moment. | 0:04:52 | 0:04:57 | |
Designed to showcase the very best of modern art and industry, | 0:05:01 | 0:05:05 | |
the World Fair was France's manifesto for the 20th century. | 0:05:05 | 0:05:10 | |
There were moving walkways and a grand electricity hall. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:16 | |
Over 60 countries exhibited and 50 million people visited. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:21 | |
It was the party to end all parties, | 0:05:21 | 0:05:24 | |
and Art Nouveau was the guest of honour. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:27 | |
Around the city, the dramatic jewellery of Rene Lalique, | 0:05:32 | 0:05:38 | |
the organic forms of Emile Galle's glass | 0:05:38 | 0:05:43 | |
and the alluring femme fatales of Alfonse Mucha | 0:05:43 | 0:05:47 | |
dazzled the Paris crowds. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:50 | |
With all its marble and mosaics and gilt and glass, | 0:05:50 | 0:05:56 | |
this was an opulent luxury showroom for Art Nouveau, | 0:05:56 | 0:06:01 | |
but it was much more than that. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:03 | |
It also held up a dazzling mirror to French hopes and fears | 0:06:03 | 0:06:08 | |
at the turn of the 20th century. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:11 | |
Paris was overcrowded, filthy | 0:06:16 | 0:06:18 | |
and simmering with anti-Semitic tensions. | 0:06:18 | 0:06:22 | |
At the World Fair, Art Nouveau was at the height of its popularity, | 0:06:22 | 0:06:26 | |
and for a brief moment it seemed like an antidote | 0:06:26 | 0:06:29 | |
to the ugliness of the modern age. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:32 | |
But on the cusp of the 20th century, how did this upstart new style | 0:06:32 | 0:06:38 | |
threaten to upstage the conservative ranks of traditional French design? | 0:06:38 | 0:06:42 | |
It was only five years before the 1900 World Fair | 0:06:49 | 0:06:53 | |
that Art Nouveau had begun to emerge | 0:06:53 | 0:06:56 | |
from the licentious bohemian quarter of the city. | 0:06:56 | 0:07:00 | |
In 1895, Montmartre, | 0:07:09 | 0:07:11 | |
the playground on the edge of the French capital, | 0:07:11 | 0:07:15 | |
had become a magnet for artists | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
looking for inspiration and excitement. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:21 | |
Degas and Toulouse Lautrec painted the local prostitutes and dancers, | 0:07:21 | 0:07:26 | |
and they became emblems of the city's sexual freedom. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:30 | |
Decadent, licentious, drug-fuelled, absinthe-soaked - | 0:07:51 | 0:07:57 | |
there was a downside, as well, of course, | 0:07:57 | 0:07:59 | |
but it was here in Montmartre that the artists of the day, | 0:07:59 | 0:08:03 | |
the avant-garde artists earned their stripes. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:06 | |
Of all the artists who set the scene for Art Nouveau, | 0:08:14 | 0:08:18 | |
Charles Baudelaire was the most subversive. | 0:08:18 | 0:08:22 | |
In 1857 he shocked Paris to its breeches | 0:08:22 | 0:08:26 | |
with his first volume of poetry, Les Fleurs Du Mal. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:31 | |
It's all there in the title, really, isn't it? | 0:08:31 | 0:08:33 | |
The Flowers Of Evil. | 0:08:33 | 0:08:35 | |
He was fascinated by the dark side of nature... | 0:08:39 | 0:08:43 | |
..and human nature. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:47 | |
Sex, death, vampires, lesbians, | 0:08:50 | 0:08:55 | |
and all this at the same time as Anthony Trollope | 0:08:55 | 0:08:59 | |
was writing Barchester Towers. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:02 | |
It was in the back-street drinking dens and hash joints of Paris | 0:09:23 | 0:09:28 | |
that Baudelaire's ideas about nature and art | 0:09:28 | 0:09:32 | |
were handed down to Art Nouveau designers. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:36 | |
Louise, what is Baudelaire telling us about nature? | 0:09:36 | 0:09:40 | |
He embraces all that's artificial, you know, | 0:09:40 | 0:09:44 | |
he vaunts the merit of artificiality over nature, | 0:09:44 | 0:09:47 | |
and that's the beginnings of decadentism, if you like, | 0:09:47 | 0:09:50 | |
a rejection of naturalism and of its values. | 0:09:50 | 0:09:54 | |
Is that because science and industry was giving us so much, | 0:09:54 | 0:09:57 | |
one day we could tweak nature if it suited us? | 0:09:57 | 0:10:01 | |
Yeah, there's a desire to improve on nature. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:04 | |
To take it, to work on it, | 0:10:04 | 0:10:05 | |
and to do something better and something different. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:08 | |
And this leads us into decadence, it leads us into Art Nouveau. | 0:10:08 | 0:10:11 | |
The dancers and performers from Paris' nocturnal world | 0:10:12 | 0:10:18 | |
embodied these dangerous new ideas. | 0:10:18 | 0:10:20 | |
Like moths to a flame, Art Nouveau designers were drawn to these women. | 0:10:22 | 0:10:27 | |
And none was more nocturnal than the divine Sarah Bernhardt. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:34 | |
She was Art Nouveau's ultimate muse. | 0:10:34 | 0:10:37 | |
Bernhardt was celebrated as the greatest actress of her day, | 0:10:40 | 0:10:45 | |
as much by herself as anyone else. | 0:10:45 | 0:10:47 | |
The word bohemian could almost have been invented for her. | 0:10:47 | 0:10:50 | |
Amongst her many lovers she counted crowned heads of Europe. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:56 | |
It's even said she slept in a coffin, | 0:10:56 | 0:10:59 | |
believing that playing dead might improve her tragic roles. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:03 | |
Baudelaire would have been proud of her. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
Just look at Sarah there, reclining on her chaise longue with her fan, | 0:11:08 | 0:11:13 | |
her eyes imploring, no, demanding, | 0:11:13 | 0:11:16 | |
that you give her your full attention. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
And that dog at her feet represents fashionable Parisian society, | 0:11:19 | 0:11:24 | |
writers, poets, artists for whom Sarah was a muse. | 0:11:24 | 0:11:29 | |
But look deep into Fido's eyes. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:32 | |
I think he's seen things in the boudoir | 0:11:32 | 0:11:35 | |
no animal should be exposed to. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:37 | |
Sarah was about to play a new role | 0:11:45 | 0:11:49 | |
in the Paris debut of Art Nouveau. | 0:11:49 | 0:11:53 | |
It was Christmas Day 1894. | 0:11:53 | 0:11:56 | |
Sarah needed a poster to advertise her new play, Gismonda. | 0:11:56 | 0:12:01 | |
But who to turn to? | 0:12:01 | 0:12:04 | |
Alfonse Mucha was a Moravian artist | 0:12:04 | 0:12:07 | |
who'd worked his way across Europe to study art in Paris. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:11 | |
He really wanted to be a fine artist, not a commercial one, | 0:12:11 | 0:12:15 | |
but he was living hand to mouth. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
Then he was approached to create the Gismonda poster. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:22 | |
He put his ambitions on hold and got to work. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
This is Mucha later in life, | 0:12:26 | 0:12:29 | |
but today it's his grandson John and John's wife Sarah | 0:12:29 | 0:12:33 | |
who take up the story. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:35 | |
The first poster of Art Nouveau. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:41 | |
Well, it's the first poster that Mucha did for Sarah Bernhardt, yes. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:46 | |
This is indirectly the first step | 0:12:46 | 0:12:51 | |
to actually make art available to the general public, | 0:12:51 | 0:12:56 | |
you no longer have to be rich. | 0:12:56 | 0:12:58 | |
How did it come about? | 0:12:58 | 0:13:00 | |
It came about | 0:13:00 | 0:13:01 | |
in a most extraordinary way, | 0:13:01 | 0:13:04 | |
because what happened was that Mucha, | 0:13:04 | 0:13:07 | |
who was a struggling artist at the time, | 0:13:07 | 0:13:09 | |
was doing a favour for a friend, | 0:13:09 | 0:13:11 | |
he was correcting some proofs at the printers, | 0:13:11 | 0:13:14 | |
and it was at Christmas time so everybody else was off on holiday, | 0:13:14 | 0:13:17 | |
and suddenly the manager of the printers came rushing in. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:20 | |
Sarah Bernhardt had said she had to have a new poster | 0:13:20 | 0:13:23 | |
for her re-presentation of Gismonda in the new year | 0:13:23 | 0:13:26 | |
and she wanted it now. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:29 | |
So there was no-one else to ask, so Mucha got the ask. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:33 | |
So the printer went on holiday, came back from holiday | 0:13:33 | 0:13:36 | |
and said "Where's the poster?" | 0:13:36 | 0:13:38 | |
And Alphonse presented this and the printer had a fit. | 0:13:38 | 0:13:42 | |
Why did he have a fit, John? | 0:13:42 | 0:13:44 | |
He'd never seen anything like this, nothing. | 0:13:44 | 0:13:47 | |
Sarah Bernhardt wanted to see it, so it was rolled up | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
and the printer took it to Sarah Bernhardt. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:52 | |
Alphonse was depressed because, you know, | 0:13:52 | 0:13:54 | |
he thought he'd made a terrible mistake. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:56 | |
Almost immediately, a message came back from Sarah Bernhardt | 0:13:56 | 0:14:01 | |
that she wanted to see Mucha, so he went to her boudoir, | 0:14:01 | 0:14:03 | |
with a very heavy heart, | 0:14:03 | 0:14:05 | |
because he thought he was going to get a bollocking, | 0:14:05 | 0:14:08 | |
and this is in Alphonse's own words, I mean, true historical fact, | 0:14:08 | 0:14:12 | |
she got up, embraced him and said, | 0:14:12 | 0:14:15 | |
"Mr Mucha, you have made me immortal." | 0:14:15 | 0:14:18 | |
You know, she might have been in her 50s | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
and have done all sorts of things, but when she was on stage, | 0:14:21 | 0:14:24 | |
she was this woman with a vision, with a purity in her heart. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:28 | |
What Mucha did was that he saw Sarah Bernhardt | 0:14:28 | 0:14:33 | |
and he made her look the way she felt and wanted to be seen. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:38 | |
And that's what he's communicating, | 0:14:38 | 0:14:40 | |
is who she saw herself as. | 0:14:40 | 0:14:43 | |
Then she immediately signed him up for a six-year contract. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:46 | |
This was like a lightning from blue sky. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:50 | |
Mucha's Gismonda captured the moment. | 0:15:01 | 0:15:05 | |
The nouvelle woman was born. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:07 | |
He crowns the divine Sarah with stylised flowers. | 0:15:09 | 0:15:14 | |
Using pale muted shades rather than bold primary colours, | 0:15:16 | 0:15:20 | |
he revolutionised poster design. | 0:15:20 | 0:15:23 | |
The poster appeared on the 1st January 1895 | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
on the streets of Paris. | 0:15:31 | 0:15:34 | |
It caused a sensation from the get-go. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:37 | |
This was the first public declaration of the new art | 0:15:37 | 0:15:40 | |
in the French capital. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
The public went wild for the poster. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:46 | |
As quickly as Gismonda was put up, she was taken down again. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:50 | |
Bill stickers were followed and bribed to hand her over. | 0:15:50 | 0:15:54 | |
Mucha became an overnight success. | 0:15:54 | 0:15:57 | |
He moved to a swanky new studio, | 0:15:58 | 0:16:01 | |
where he experimented with the new art of photography. | 0:16:01 | 0:16:05 | |
And he took this wonderful series of photographs of his models. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:10 | |
His new women have definitely burnt their corsets, haven't they? | 0:16:12 | 0:16:16 | |
They stare back at you, brazen and proud of their bodies. | 0:16:16 | 0:16:22 | |
He produced this book, Documents Decoratifs, | 0:16:25 | 0:16:29 | |
a bible which later spread Mucha's style around France and Europe. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:35 | |
Well, these are a bit more candid than those Sarah Bernhardt pictures. | 0:16:37 | 0:16:41 | |
They're beautiful, graphically ahead of their time, | 0:16:41 | 0:16:46 | |
and also, I suppose one has to say, quite risque for the 1890s. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:53 | |
Some of these girls are very demure, | 0:16:53 | 0:16:55 | |
they seem to merge with the wildlife they're pictured alongside, | 0:16:55 | 0:17:00 | |
the flowers, but others, like this, dare I say it, hussy here, | 0:17:00 | 0:17:05 | |
definitely have a bit of "come into the garden, Claude," about them. | 0:17:05 | 0:17:10 | |
What my mother might have called a bit forward. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:16 | |
Champagne, | 0:17:28 | 0:17:30 | |
cigarettes, | 0:17:30 | 0:17:33 | |
Mucha discovered that sex could sell anything. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:37 | |
It could even sell holidays on the newly-developed Riviera. | 0:17:37 | 0:17:41 | |
And the selling point was the nouvelle woman, | 0:17:42 | 0:17:45 | |
the icon of Art Nouveau. | 0:17:45 | 0:17:48 | |
The growing middle class was learning to love spending its money | 0:18:04 | 0:18:08 | |
in bars and restaurants | 0:18:08 | 0:18:10 | |
and the new department stores that were springing up everywhere. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:12 | |
It was spend, spend, spend. | 0:18:12 | 0:18:15 | |
There was a plethora of new products on the market, | 0:18:15 | 0:18:18 | |
and every one of them needed to be advertised. | 0:18:18 | 0:18:21 | |
In the new age of mass advertising, mass production | 0:18:23 | 0:18:27 | |
and mass consumption, Art Nouveau was itself mass produced. | 0:18:27 | 0:18:31 | |
Mucha made Art Nouveau de rigueur, fantastique, formidable. | 0:18:35 | 0:18:40 | |
Wow, or even, mon dieu! | 0:18:49 | 0:18:53 | |
What about this place? | 0:18:53 | 0:18:55 | |
When Georges Fouquet inherited | 0:18:58 | 0:19:01 | |
his father's exclusive jewellery business in 1895, | 0:19:01 | 0:19:05 | |
he wanted some of that Mucha magic. | 0:19:05 | 0:19:07 | |
He started designing jewellery with him, | 0:19:07 | 0:19:10 | |
and commissioned Mucha to create a shop | 0:19:10 | 0:19:13 | |
that would indulge his clients' taste for Art Nouveau luxury. | 0:19:13 | 0:19:17 | |
Can we go back in time? | 0:19:20 | 0:19:22 | |
It's Paris, you're a man of means, you've got a few bob, or francs, | 0:19:22 | 0:19:26 | |
and you want to impress that special person in your life. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:30 | |
Well, this is where you come, this jewellery shop, | 0:19:30 | 0:19:33 | |
for that piece, that rock, for a special occasion. | 0:19:33 | 0:19:37 | |
Maybe a birthday, a Valentine, an anniversary. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:41 | |
But over the decades, what is quite clear | 0:19:41 | 0:19:44 | |
is that the shop itself, the jewellery shop, is the true gem. | 0:19:44 | 0:19:48 | |
It's the gift that goes on giving. | 0:19:50 | 0:19:52 | |
In this shop, Mucha used the full Art Nouveau palette, | 0:19:53 | 0:19:58 | |
curves inspired by the natural world, | 0:19:58 | 0:20:01 | |
feathers, gilt, finery. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:05 | |
Every inch of it decorative and sensual. | 0:20:05 | 0:20:10 | |
Sex and Art Nouveau were intimate, promiscuous bedfellows. | 0:20:10 | 0:20:15 | |
Look at the figure up here. | 0:20:15 | 0:20:17 | |
A beautiful, almost classical pose at first, but then notice, | 0:20:17 | 0:20:22 | |
her arms are behind her head, emphasising her splendid bust, | 0:20:22 | 0:20:27 | |
and even a modern haircut. | 0:20:27 | 0:20:30 | |
She is the femme fatale, a classic symbol of Art Nouveau. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:36 | |
And imagine presenting your femme fatale with this Fouquet brooch. | 0:20:36 | 0:20:40 | |
Now, that would put a smile on her face. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:43 | |
In its early days, Art Nouveau was still the preserve | 0:20:55 | 0:20:59 | |
of the rich bohemian elite of the city. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:02 | |
Amongst them was an ambitious and talented young designer | 0:21:03 | 0:21:08 | |
who would embrace the new style and revolutionise jewellery design. | 0:21:08 | 0:21:12 | |
When the great society jeweller Rene Lalique | 0:21:15 | 0:21:17 | |
was beginning his career in Paris in the 1870s, | 0:21:17 | 0:21:21 | |
jewellery wasn't about design. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:23 | |
It was all about the bling, about the rocks. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:26 | |
And not just any rocks - diamonds. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:29 | |
Diamonds as big as the Ritz in Paris. | 0:21:29 | 0:21:32 | |
Lalique changed all that. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:37 | |
He's probably better known today for his glass designs, | 0:21:38 | 0:21:41 | |
but he trained as a goldsmith | 0:21:41 | 0:21:43 | |
and built his reputation on his pioneering Art Nouveau jewellery. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:48 | |
These days, you have to go to museums to see his precious pieces. | 0:21:48 | 0:21:53 | |
'Philippe Thiebault is curator in chief at the Musee d'Orsay, | 0:22:00 | 0:22:04 | |
'and he has the key to the Lalique jewel box.' | 0:22:04 | 0:22:08 | |
-Hello, Philippe, I'm Stephen. -Nice to meet you. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:10 | |
Very nice to meet you. | 0:22:10 | 0:22:12 | |
I see you have an interesting object in your hand. | 0:22:12 | 0:22:14 | |
'Before Lalique, valuable jewellery was produced by artisans | 0:22:14 | 0:22:19 | |
'from precious metals and gemstones. | 0:22:19 | 0:22:21 | |
'The bigger the rocks, the more desirable and valuable the piece. | 0:22:21 | 0:22:26 | |
'Lalique turned all that on its head.' | 0:22:26 | 0:22:29 | |
So it's a piece by Lalique, it's a hairpin in horn. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:41 | |
Horn? So that's cheap... | 0:22:41 | 0:22:43 | |
It's very, very cheap, | 0:22:43 | 0:22:45 | |
and it's a characteristic of the art of Lalique, | 0:22:45 | 0:22:49 | |
because Lalique was not very fond of expensive material. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:55 | |
When he chose materials, it was not for the price of the material, | 0:22:55 | 0:22:59 | |
but for the colour, the texture of the material. | 0:22:59 | 0:23:02 | |
So with Lalique, it wasn't the gemstones in the jewellery, | 0:23:02 | 0:23:06 | |
it was the design, that's what added the value. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:09 | |
Yes, yes. It's a very naturalistic piece, you know. | 0:23:09 | 0:23:12 | |
It is engraved to imitate, to suggest, the angelica. | 0:23:12 | 0:23:17 | |
It's a plant, you know. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:19 | |
And here you have little diamonds | 0:23:19 | 0:23:23 | |
to suggest the reflections of the sun on the plant. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:28 | |
-Right. -It's a very lovely piece. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:31 | |
And the gentleman who bought this from Lalique, | 0:23:31 | 0:23:34 | |
he would be buying this for his wife? | 0:23:34 | 0:23:36 | |
-Maybe not, maybe not. -Well, this is Paris. | 0:23:36 | 0:23:40 | |
Many men went to Lalique, | 0:23:40 | 0:23:45 | |
and they asked for jewels for a lady. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:52 | |
"Can you make something for my special friend," that kind of thing? | 0:23:52 | 0:23:56 | |
Yes, yes. | 0:23:56 | 0:23:57 | |
What about Lalique, how did he feel about women himself? | 0:23:57 | 0:24:01 | |
Lalique, I think... | 0:24:01 | 0:24:02 | |
We know that Lalique did love many women during his life, | 0:24:02 | 0:24:09 | |
had many mistresses in Paris and London, everywhere, | 0:24:09 | 0:24:13 | |
and it's the reason why he is a good designer of jewels, | 0:24:13 | 0:24:19 | |
because I think he loved very much women. | 0:24:19 | 0:24:22 | |
Some of his pieces are erotic. | 0:24:22 | 0:24:27 | |
We have a box, and you will see at the centre, a naked woman, | 0:24:27 | 0:24:32 | |
and she opens her cloak... | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
-Her cloak? -Yes. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:37 | |
And so around her, you have young men, also naked. | 0:24:37 | 0:24:42 | |
They are completely dazzled by the nudity. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:46 | |
Are they? They're falling away, the shock, thrilled. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:49 | |
It's like a goddess, you know. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:51 | |
She is like a butterfly, or maybe like a bat. | 0:24:51 | 0:24:56 | |
Because bats and butterflies were very appreciated | 0:24:56 | 0:24:59 | |
by the artists of Art Nouveau. | 0:24:59 | 0:25:01 | |
Lalique created dramatic jewellery about women, for women. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:12 | |
His world, like so much of Art Nouveau, is a no-man's land, | 0:25:16 | 0:25:22 | |
where the woman reigns supreme. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:25 | |
Lalique's fascination with natural forms of all kinds wasn't unusual. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:32 | |
Collecting and categorising nature was the great obsession of the time. | 0:25:34 | 0:25:39 | |
To study insects close-up, Lalique came here to Deyrolle, | 0:25:45 | 0:25:49 | |
the cabinet of curiosities, in the St Germain district of Paris. | 0:25:49 | 0:25:54 | |
This extraordinary bestiary is really a trophy cabinet | 0:25:56 | 0:26:00 | |
of what was going on in the late 19th century. | 0:26:00 | 0:26:04 | |
There was an explosion in international travel, | 0:26:04 | 0:26:07 | |
in collecting, in taxidermy, in botany. | 0:26:07 | 0:26:11 | |
This kind of stuff was brought home by gentlemen in their swag bags. | 0:26:11 | 0:26:15 | |
In the middle of the 19th century, | 0:26:17 | 0:26:19 | |
Darwin's radical new theories about evolution | 0:26:19 | 0:26:22 | |
and man's place in the natural world | 0:26:22 | 0:26:25 | |
exploded established beliefs. | 0:26:25 | 0:26:28 | |
Nature, savage nature, red in tooth and claw. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:39 | |
This was a new battleground between religion on the one hand | 0:26:39 | 0:26:42 | |
and science on the other. | 0:26:42 | 0:26:44 | |
For designers, it was a badge of modernity, | 0:26:44 | 0:26:47 | |
a new way of understanding the world. | 0:26:47 | 0:26:50 | |
They brought nature into Paris. | 0:26:51 | 0:26:54 | |
But they did so on new terms. | 0:26:55 | 0:26:58 | |
For designers like Lalique, nature was there to be embellished. | 0:26:59 | 0:27:05 | |
The lily was there to be gilded. | 0:27:05 | 0:27:08 | |
Swarms of insects, clouds of butterflies, birds, bats, | 0:27:28 | 0:27:34 | |
they all buzzed and flapped around Lalique's work. | 0:27:34 | 0:27:37 | |
In fact, if it hadn't all looked so beautiful, | 0:27:37 | 0:27:40 | |
it might have been like a Hitchcock film. | 0:27:40 | 0:27:42 | |
This is the art of metamorphosis. | 0:27:45 | 0:27:49 | |
Birds, insects and women dissolve in and out of each other | 0:27:49 | 0:27:54 | |
in weird and wonderful ways. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:56 | |
Nature's sensuous, but sinister. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:01 | |
It's blue skies and bumblebees one minute, | 0:28:01 | 0:28:04 | |
and bats at bed-time the next. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:07 | |
Lalique may have used cheap materials, | 0:28:16 | 0:28:19 | |
but his jewellery was lavish and dramatic - | 0:28:19 | 0:28:22 | |
perfectly designed for the dim electric lights | 0:28:22 | 0:28:26 | |
of Paris' nocturnal world. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:28 | |
This is the world-famous restaurant Maxim's. | 0:28:30 | 0:28:34 | |
Sarah Bernhardt and the literary crowd | 0:28:34 | 0:28:36 | |
partied here till the early hours. | 0:28:36 | 0:28:40 | |
Entrepreneur Eugene Cornuche redesigned it in Art Nouveau style | 0:28:40 | 0:28:44 | |
in 1899 for the World Fair. | 0:28:44 | 0:28:48 | |
He knew that Art Nouveau, famous artists | 0:28:48 | 0:28:51 | |
and a ready supply of courtesans could turn his investment into gold. | 0:28:51 | 0:28:56 | |
Today it has the feel of an upmarket bordello. | 0:28:56 | 0:29:01 | |
They say every man who came here arrived with a woman, | 0:29:01 | 0:29:05 | |
but it was never his wife. | 0:29:05 | 0:29:07 | |
You can practically hear the violins soaring away, | 0:29:12 | 0:29:16 | |
the booming laughter and gossip of the politicians | 0:29:16 | 0:29:19 | |
and the artists and actors and painters who came here, | 0:29:19 | 0:29:23 | |
and the tinkling laughter of their new muses or courtesans. | 0:29:23 | 0:29:28 | |
Pierre Andre, thank you so much for letting me see Maxim's. | 0:29:36 | 0:29:40 | |
You are very welcome in this incredible place. | 0:29:40 | 0:29:43 | |
-It is incredible, isn't it? -It is. | 0:29:43 | 0:29:45 | |
With its mirrors and gilt, | 0:29:45 | 0:29:48 | |
the spiral staircase. | 0:29:48 | 0:29:51 | |
It is a symbol of what we call in France La Belle Epoque. | 0:29:51 | 0:29:54 | |
It really represents | 0:29:56 | 0:29:59 | |
such a dream in people's minds | 0:29:59 | 0:30:04 | |
that it stays from that time, | 0:30:04 | 0:30:09 | |
and it's still today the same. | 0:30:09 | 0:30:11 | |
Maxim's was Art Nouveau. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:14 | |
Is there a sense that the normal rules didn't apply? | 0:30:15 | 0:30:19 | |
-Once you stepped over the doorway of Maxim's... -Absolutely. | 0:30:19 | 0:30:23 | |
The only rules correct in such a place | 0:30:24 | 0:30:29 | |
was elegance and glamour. | 0:30:29 | 0:30:34 | |
In Maxim's, many times we had writers, novelists... | 0:30:34 | 0:30:39 | |
Like Marcel Proust, did he come here? | 0:30:39 | 0:30:42 | |
-Of course, he came many, many, many times. -Sarah Bernhardt? | 0:30:42 | 0:30:45 | |
And Sarah Bernhardt, who was one of our best clients. | 0:30:45 | 0:30:48 | |
It was really the place where you had to come to see and be seen. | 0:30:48 | 0:30:52 | |
It showed exactly all the taste they had at that period, | 0:30:52 | 0:30:59 | |
and the best was all around Art Nouveau. | 0:30:59 | 0:31:04 | |
Maxim's sensuous curves | 0:31:08 | 0:31:11 | |
and women in their gardens of Eden - | 0:31:11 | 0:31:14 | |
they play on the idea of innocence, purity, and, of course sin. | 0:31:14 | 0:31:19 | |
There are mirrors absolutely everywhere in here. | 0:31:21 | 0:31:24 | |
It's like a hall of mirrors from a circus. | 0:31:24 | 0:31:27 | |
Or maybe something a bit seedier, a bit kinkier, | 0:31:27 | 0:31:31 | |
a little bit more sinister. | 0:31:31 | 0:31:33 | |
In 1899, Maxim's typified | 0:31:38 | 0:31:40 | |
much of the Art Nouveau that was being created. | 0:31:40 | 0:31:45 | |
Fashionable and extravagant, | 0:31:45 | 0:31:47 | |
it had come to represent fin-de-siecle decadence and excess. | 0:31:47 | 0:31:52 | |
But there is another side to this story. | 0:31:56 | 0:32:00 | |
If you think that Art Nouveau | 0:32:03 | 0:32:05 | |
is all exquisite vases and curly furniture, | 0:32:05 | 0:32:09 | |
well, you couldn't be more wrong. | 0:32:09 | 0:32:11 | |
Amongst the Art Nouveau designers at the 1900 World Fair, | 0:32:14 | 0:32:18 | |
at least one felt that the new style had a more serious mission. | 0:32:18 | 0:32:23 | |
His stand featured a working furnace, | 0:32:26 | 0:32:29 | |
and surrounding it, a display of glass vases. | 0:32:29 | 0:32:33 | |
They were all dedicated to a cause | 0:32:33 | 0:32:36 | |
which exposed a seismic rift in French society. | 0:32:36 | 0:32:39 | |
The designer behind this display was Emile Galle. | 0:32:40 | 0:32:44 | |
Emile Galle was the troubled genius of Art Nouveau, | 0:32:50 | 0:32:54 | |
he was creative, an innovator, an entrepreneur. | 0:32:54 | 0:32:58 | |
He was also a passionate believer and campaigner for social justice. | 0:32:58 | 0:33:04 | |
That, in the end, would cost him dearly. | 0:33:04 | 0:33:07 | |
Emile Galle is one of the most fascinating characters to emerge | 0:33:10 | 0:33:14 | |
in the story of the French arts in the latter part of the 19th century. | 0:33:14 | 0:33:18 | |
He was absolutely a man of his time, and in that respect, | 0:33:18 | 0:33:23 | |
is a key figure in the story of Art Nouveau. | 0:33:23 | 0:33:25 | |
Philippe, what sort of a man was Galle? | 0:33:25 | 0:33:30 | |
Very complex personality, | 0:33:30 | 0:33:31 | |
a poet, one might say, a philosopher, a dreamer, | 0:33:31 | 0:33:35 | |
who found his medium, particularly in glass. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:39 | |
A man with very diverse interests, | 0:33:39 | 0:33:43 | |
he was a great botanist, he had a strong political agenda, | 0:33:43 | 0:33:48 | |
he was a liberal with a tremendous social conscience. | 0:33:48 | 0:33:53 | |
Emile Galle was also an industrialist, | 0:33:53 | 0:33:56 | |
who built from an inherited family business | 0:33:56 | 0:34:00 | |
a very substantial and successful | 0:34:00 | 0:34:04 | |
glass, furniture and ceramics factory. | 0:34:04 | 0:34:08 | |
With his master craftsmen, Galle created stunning prototypes, | 0:34:11 | 0:34:16 | |
while on the workshop floor, designs were mass produced | 0:34:16 | 0:34:20 | |
for a hungry market across France. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:23 | |
Art and industry went hand in hand. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:26 | |
So he was experimenting to develop different techniques, | 0:34:35 | 0:34:39 | |
colouring and texturing the glass, | 0:34:39 | 0:34:41 | |
creating effects within the mass of the glass, | 0:34:41 | 0:34:44 | |
layering colours and cutting back with acid | 0:34:44 | 0:34:48 | |
or engraving to achieve cameo and other effects. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:53 | |
He ended up really being capable of making pieces of glass | 0:34:53 | 0:34:59 | |
of a technical complexity that had never been achieved before. | 0:34:59 | 0:35:03 | |
Engraved with quotations and dedications, | 0:35:11 | 0:35:14 | |
his exhibition pieces go way beyond the purely decorative. | 0:35:14 | 0:35:18 | |
The magic of them is that as well as being virtuosities of glassmaking, | 0:35:21 | 0:35:27 | |
they are always imbued with this magical poetic quality | 0:35:27 | 0:35:34 | |
which is his signature. | 0:35:34 | 0:35:37 | |
He would evoke nature, he would evoke the cycle of life. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:45 | |
He would draw you into a piece of glass | 0:35:50 | 0:35:53 | |
and somehow you could become lost in it. | 0:35:53 | 0:35:57 | |
And you would be as enthralled as if you were looking up at the stars. | 0:36:01 | 0:36:06 | |
You sort of lose a sense of scale within his pieces. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:10 | |
He was truly an artist. | 0:36:10 | 0:36:15 | |
Galle's view of nature was a complex but also a very honest one. | 0:36:30 | 0:36:35 | |
Yes, he could do blue skies and dragonflies, | 0:36:35 | 0:36:39 | |
but he also appreciated what was rank, decaying, dying. | 0:36:39 | 0:36:44 | |
He'd have been just as happy here on an overcast autumn afternoon | 0:36:44 | 0:36:48 | |
as he would have been at the height of summer. | 0:36:48 | 0:36:52 | |
Like Baudelaire, Galle was trying to find a new language | 0:36:56 | 0:37:00 | |
that could express the realities of modern life and death. | 0:37:00 | 0:37:04 | |
I've come to the Ecole de Nancy museum in Galle's home town. | 0:37:10 | 0:37:14 | |
At the end of the 19th century, | 0:37:17 | 0:37:19 | |
Nancy became a power house of Art Nouveau design. | 0:37:19 | 0:37:23 | |
In 1901, Galle formed an association of local designers. | 0:37:26 | 0:37:30 | |
They included the furniture designer Louis Majorelle | 0:37:30 | 0:37:34 | |
and glass designers Antonin and Auguste Daum. | 0:37:34 | 0:37:39 | |
Today they're big names in their own right, | 0:37:39 | 0:37:42 | |
but Galle was the true visionary. | 0:37:42 | 0:37:45 | |
Now, this is your real Galle McCoy. | 0:37:54 | 0:37:57 | |
This is the stuff that everybody loved, his lamps. | 0:37:57 | 0:38:01 | |
Obviously echoing the flowers in the field, the bloom up here, | 0:38:01 | 0:38:05 | |
but what's very interesting about it is he was trying to show nature | 0:38:05 | 0:38:09 | |
as she really was, not just spring, not just bounty, | 0:38:09 | 0:38:13 | |
but also autumn when everything dies and dries up. | 0:38:13 | 0:38:17 | |
So beneath these buds of poppies about to burst, | 0:38:17 | 0:38:21 | |
at the bottom of the plant, these tendrils, these withered pieces | 0:38:21 | 0:38:26 | |
of the plant, the leaves clinging to it, won't be here much longer, | 0:38:26 | 0:38:31 | |
soon to be blown away. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:33 | |
One of the vases that Galle exhibited at the 1900 World Fair | 0:38:38 | 0:38:43 | |
is here at the museum. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:44 | |
It is called Les Hommes Noirs, The Dark Men. | 0:38:48 | 0:38:51 | |
A collaboration with the artist Victor Prouve, | 0:38:53 | 0:38:56 | |
it tells a story of injustice that threatened to destabilise | 0:38:56 | 0:39:00 | |
the government and the country's fragile peace | 0:39:00 | 0:39:03 | |
at the turn of the century. | 0:39:03 | 0:39:05 | |
This vase was dedicated to one man, Alfred Dreyfus. | 0:39:07 | 0:39:12 | |
In 1895, Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer, | 0:39:27 | 0:39:31 | |
was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason on the basis | 0:39:31 | 0:39:35 | |
of documents that had been faked. | 0:39:35 | 0:39:38 | |
In a humiliating ritual, his badges of rank were torn from him | 0:39:42 | 0:39:48 | |
and his sword was broken. | 0:39:48 | 0:39:50 | |
Dreyfus, we know that he screamed, "I am innocent," | 0:39:55 | 0:39:58 | |
but it was so loud nobody could hear him, you know. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:01 | |
So this small man was just standing alone against | 0:40:01 | 0:40:06 | |
all the anti-Semitic screams, you know, "Death to Dreyfus," | 0:40:06 | 0:40:10 | |
"Death to the spy, death to the traitor, death to the Jew." | 0:40:10 | 0:40:14 | |
It was really a very, very violent moment he had to go through. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:18 | |
The anti-Semitism that had been simmering for decades in Paris | 0:40:23 | 0:40:27 | |
now exploded. | 0:40:27 | 0:40:29 | |
The daily anti-Semitic paper La France Juive stoked the hatred. | 0:40:30 | 0:40:36 | |
This whole Dreyfus affair cast a very long shadow here in France, didn't it? | 0:40:36 | 0:40:40 | |
Yes, it did. | 0:40:40 | 0:40:42 | |
The concern was the Dreyfus affair came to such a point | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
that they thought France would be threatened, | 0:40:45 | 0:40:48 | |
the republic, the democracy, or the republic... | 0:40:48 | 0:40:51 | |
Really? It could bring down the whole government? | 0:40:51 | 0:40:54 | |
Exactly. It came to such a climax of anger and passion. | 0:40:54 | 0:40:58 | |
The streets in Paris became very animated with the Dreyfus case. | 0:40:58 | 0:41:02 | |
So it really divided everybody. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:03 | |
It split the whole country. | 0:41:03 | 0:41:05 | |
Some artists took a stand. | 0:41:05 | 0:41:09 | |
The novelist Emile Zola famously attacked the government | 0:41:09 | 0:41:12 | |
with his open letter, J'Accuse. | 0:41:12 | 0:41:15 | |
Les Hommes Noirs was Galle's J'Accuse in glass. | 0:41:17 | 0:41:21 | |
The dark men symbolise French hypocrisy and injustice. | 0:41:22 | 0:41:26 | |
The words on the case ask, "From where do you come?" | 0:41:30 | 0:41:36 | |
"We come from beneath the earth." | 0:41:36 | 0:41:38 | |
When Galle returned to Nancy after the 1900 World Fair, | 0:41:47 | 0:41:52 | |
he paid a high price for his defence of Dreyfus. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:56 | |
He was ostracised by his neighbours and friends, | 0:41:56 | 0:41:59 | |
and his business suffered. | 0:41:59 | 0:42:01 | |
He was defending an innocent against the army, against the church | 0:42:01 | 0:42:07 | |
and against the justice. | 0:42:07 | 0:42:10 | |
Since he was involved in this Dreyfus affair, | 0:42:10 | 0:42:13 | |
he had lost a lot of customers, the business was not working very well, | 0:42:13 | 0:42:19 | |
so maybe he was a bit upset about the future for his wife | 0:42:19 | 0:42:25 | |
and his daughters, and the future of the factory. | 0:42:25 | 0:42:28 | |
As he was the only one who was designing for his factory, | 0:42:28 | 0:42:34 | |
what would happen next? | 0:42:34 | 0:42:36 | |
What would become of Galle? | 0:42:36 | 0:42:38 | |
Do you think, later in his life, Galle regretted the position | 0:42:40 | 0:42:44 | |
he took over the whole Dreyfus affair? | 0:42:44 | 0:42:46 | |
It's hard to tell, but he was so deeply always involved | 0:42:46 | 0:42:51 | |
in those cases that he was defending. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:55 | |
So I think he regretted it only on the commercial side | 0:42:55 | 0:43:00 | |
because of the lack of orders, of commands, | 0:43:00 | 0:43:04 | |
that came after the Great Exhibition in 1900. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:08 | |
But when he was quoting authors like Victor Hugo, | 0:43:08 | 0:43:11 | |
he said, "Art is like a weapon to defend your ideas." | 0:43:11 | 0:43:18 | |
Soon after the World Fair, Galle found out | 0:43:21 | 0:43:24 | |
that he had another battle to fight. | 0:43:24 | 0:43:26 | |
Galle was about to die, he knew he was dying, | 0:43:29 | 0:43:32 | |
so he put a lot of this sadness, | 0:43:32 | 0:43:36 | |
this melancholia, in all his creations. | 0:43:36 | 0:43:39 | |
This is the very last piece of furniture that he produced | 0:43:39 | 0:43:43 | |
in his factory before he died, and it made really a very strong effect | 0:43:43 | 0:43:47 | |
on the people here. | 0:43:47 | 0:43:49 | |
What do you think he's trying to say in this? | 0:43:49 | 0:43:53 | |
It's dawn and it's night-time, the bed, but you could look at it | 0:43:53 | 0:43:58 | |
particularly as the work of a dying man, | 0:43:58 | 0:44:01 | |
as about life and death, in fact. | 0:44:01 | 0:44:04 | |
Yes, that's it, exactly. | 0:44:04 | 0:44:05 | |
Galle used the symbols of the butterflies | 0:44:05 | 0:44:09 | |
and they represent, with the central egg, they represent birth, | 0:44:09 | 0:44:14 | |
the beginning, and they are full of hopes. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:17 | |
But then at the end of the day, they are dead. | 0:44:17 | 0:44:21 | |
And on your back, you can see just above your head, | 0:44:21 | 0:44:25 | |
this night butterfly, the sphinx, | 0:44:25 | 0:44:29 | |
which is slowly falling above you, and it means death. | 0:44:29 | 0:44:34 | |
He is dying and his wings are closing on your head. | 0:44:34 | 0:44:38 | |
It has to make you think of what you make of your life, I think. | 0:44:38 | 0:44:43 | |
Tragically, Galle didn't live to see Dreyfus exonerated in 1906. | 0:44:49 | 0:44:54 | |
He died two years earlier, but in the last years of his life | 0:44:57 | 0:45:00 | |
he'd created some of his most powerful and moving pieces. | 0:45:00 | 0:45:05 | |
Galle had exposed a fault line in French life | 0:45:12 | 0:45:15 | |
at the turn of the century, | 0:45:15 | 0:45:18 | |
but there was a lot more where that came from. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:20 | |
With the population explosion came crime, overcrowding, poverty. | 0:45:22 | 0:45:28 | |
There was disquiet on the streets of Paris, | 0:45:34 | 0:45:36 | |
and the city needed to find new solutions. | 0:45:36 | 0:45:40 | |
For a young architect who was out to make a bit of a name for himself, | 0:45:46 | 0:45:50 | |
a bit of a splash, the time was ripe for trying something utterly different. | 0:45:50 | 0:45:56 | |
Hector Guimard was a young architect with an ego as big as his talent. | 0:45:59 | 0:46:04 | |
Important projects came his way when he was still in his 20s, | 0:46:04 | 0:46:09 | |
and in 1896, when Guimard was not yet 30, he designed the building | 0:46:09 | 0:46:14 | |
that would cement his reputation for bravura, style and ambition. | 0:46:14 | 0:46:20 | |
His mission was to create not just a radically different | 0:46:20 | 0:46:24 | |
sort of building, but a template for a new form of communal living. | 0:46:24 | 0:46:28 | |
Sebastien Cord is an architect himself | 0:46:37 | 0:46:40 | |
and a resident of Castel Beranger, Guimard's most celebrated building. | 0:46:40 | 0:46:46 | |
To see the real Guimard magic you have to get inside the curly gates | 0:46:46 | 0:46:50 | |
to the communal courtyard within. | 0:46:50 | 0:46:54 | |
-So you see the courtyard? -Stunning, yeah. | 0:46:54 | 0:46:56 | |
Guimard was really young when he built this. | 0:46:56 | 0:47:00 | |
-Security code? -Yeah. | 0:47:02 | 0:47:04 | |
How long have you lived here? | 0:47:07 | 0:47:09 | |
About five years. | 0:47:09 | 0:47:12 | |
Must be fantastic, since you're in the business of architecture, | 0:47:12 | 0:47:15 | |
to live here. Look at that! | 0:47:15 | 0:47:18 | |
From here you can see the building is asymmetrical, | 0:47:19 | 0:47:23 | |
a crime against architecture in classically proportioned Paris. | 0:47:23 | 0:47:27 | |
Your eye doesn't get bored of it | 0:47:28 | 0:47:30 | |
because there are different contours to it. | 0:47:30 | 0:47:32 | |
That's interesting in the work of Guimard. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:37 | |
It's architecture and art with curving lines. | 0:47:37 | 0:47:40 | |
And the glass up there is beautiful, isn't it? | 0:47:40 | 0:47:43 | |
Is that all original? | 0:47:43 | 0:47:45 | |
Yes. | 0:47:45 | 0:47:46 | |
'Guimard said the logic of nature is impeccable, | 0:47:46 | 0:47:49 | |
'and at Beranger, his visual language is the sea. | 0:47:49 | 0:47:53 | |
'The windows repeated on every floor are stained into voluptuous waves.' | 0:47:53 | 0:47:58 | |
I love these kind of sponge-like bits of stone, | 0:47:59 | 0:48:02 | |
they look like sea sponges, don't they? Is that the idea? | 0:48:02 | 0:48:06 | |
We call it mouliere in French. | 0:48:06 | 0:48:09 | |
'Red brick, anathema to traditionalists, | 0:48:13 | 0:48:16 | |
'butts up against whole stones and engineered stone too.' | 0:48:16 | 0:48:21 | |
Very different to the other buildings I've been seeing in Paris, | 0:48:23 | 0:48:27 | |
the kind of Haussmann buildings, isn't it? | 0:48:27 | 0:48:29 | |
Yes. | 0:48:29 | 0:48:31 | |
'It's Guimard's signature ironwork that gives the building | 0:48:31 | 0:48:34 | |
'its Art Nouveau character and wit.' | 0:48:34 | 0:48:37 | |
It's incredible. | 0:48:38 | 0:48:39 | |
'Why the long face? | 0:48:39 | 0:48:41 | |
'These sea horses press their noses to the walls for good reason.' | 0:48:41 | 0:48:45 | |
It has a structural function also. | 0:48:46 | 0:48:49 | |
-Does it? It's holding the wall up. -Yes. -That's good to know. | 0:48:49 | 0:48:53 | |
I believe another unusual thing is that all the apartments | 0:48:56 | 0:49:01 | |
are roughly the same size? | 0:49:01 | 0:49:03 | |
-It wasn't big apartments for the rich. -Exactly. | 0:49:03 | 0:49:05 | |
Every level have the same height. | 0:49:05 | 0:49:09 | |
You don't have the rich at the first level | 0:49:09 | 0:49:13 | |
and the poor people at the top. | 0:49:13 | 0:49:17 | |
'Really breaking with tradition, Guimard dared to create | 0:49:19 | 0:49:23 | |
'an apartment block that ignored the social hierarchy of Paris. | 0:49:23 | 0:49:27 | |
'At first, the neighbours called this Castel Deranger, | 0:49:30 | 0:49:34 | |
'and when you step in to the building's vestibule, you can kind of see why.' | 0:49:34 | 0:49:38 | |
That's incredible. It's really like a cave, isn't it? | 0:49:38 | 0:49:43 | |
Yes, it's designed like a grotto. | 0:49:43 | 0:49:45 | |
It's a masterpiece of the building made by Guimard. | 0:49:45 | 0:49:50 | |
Just the gateway is remarkable. | 0:49:50 | 0:49:52 | |
It's marvellous. Really original, in fact. | 0:49:52 | 0:49:56 | |
It's like a harp. | 0:49:56 | 0:49:58 | |
A harp? | 0:49:58 | 0:49:59 | |
These are the strings and you can kind of pluck them. | 0:49:59 | 0:50:04 | |
That's rather beautiful, isn't it? | 0:50:04 | 0:50:06 | |
Maybe not the way I'm doing it, but it could be. | 0:50:06 | 0:50:08 | |
'All the geometry of the structure is submerged in iron curves | 0:50:10 | 0:50:14 | |
'and undulating plaster, as if the building itself were made of water.' | 0:50:14 | 0:50:20 | |
So these are meant to look a bit like trees, are they? | 0:50:22 | 0:50:25 | |
Yeah, it's like trees going from the grotto. | 0:50:25 | 0:50:28 | |
It's like a piece of a garden but also with water... | 0:50:28 | 0:50:32 | |
Like an undersea garden. | 0:50:32 | 0:50:35 | |
It's quite strange. | 0:50:35 | 0:50:37 | |
-Yes, it's like Neptune's garden. -Yes. | 0:50:37 | 0:50:40 | |
'For many years, the full beauty of this weirdly wonderful entrance | 0:50:40 | 0:50:44 | |
'was hidden under countless coats of gloss paint. | 0:50:44 | 0:50:49 | |
'Sebastian's just completed the painstaking task of returning | 0:50:49 | 0:50:53 | |
'Castel Beranger to how Guimard intended it to be.' | 0:50:53 | 0:50:56 | |
That's great, isn't it? Yes. | 0:50:58 | 0:51:02 | |
It's a pleasant way to enter in the building. | 0:51:03 | 0:51:08 | |
It is. | 0:51:08 | 0:51:10 | |
Pardon, monsieur. | 0:51:20 | 0:51:21 | |
'As the space where residents would meet and greet each other, | 0:51:21 | 0:51:24 | |
'it's the heart of Guimard's masterplan for convivial urban living.' | 0:51:24 | 0:51:29 | |
Here she is with her French bread. | 0:51:29 | 0:51:30 | |
That's what we should have done. | 0:51:38 | 0:51:39 | |
I didn't kiss you. Maybe later! | 0:51:39 | 0:51:42 | |
-Let's see how things go. -After! | 0:51:42 | 0:51:44 | |
OK, after you. | 0:51:44 | 0:51:46 | |
'Guimard moved in here himself, enjoying his bachelor lifestyle | 0:51:46 | 0:51:51 | |
'and his celebrity. | 0:51:51 | 0:51:53 | |
'A tireless self-publicist, | 0:51:53 | 0:51:56 | |
'he sent out postcards of himself at home with his watery Art Nouveau.' | 0:51:56 | 0:52:01 | |
With an award under his belt for Beranger, Paris was his oyster. | 0:52:06 | 0:52:11 | |
As the city was preparing for the 1900 World Fair, | 0:52:14 | 0:52:18 | |
he landed the commission that would make him immortal. | 0:52:18 | 0:52:21 | |
The city was in gridlock. | 0:52:23 | 0:52:25 | |
The Metro, a new railway fit for a new century was being built - | 0:52:25 | 0:52:29 | |
under the ground. | 0:52:29 | 0:52:31 | |
And Guimard was asked to design the Metro entrances | 0:52:31 | 0:52:35 | |
to add a final decorative flourish to this fantastic new-fangled way | 0:52:35 | 0:52:40 | |
of getting about. | 0:52:40 | 0:52:42 | |
He was a controversial choice, | 0:52:45 | 0:52:47 | |
but in time, Parisians warmed to his flamboyant version of Art Nouveau. | 0:52:47 | 0:52:54 | |
This is Port Dauphine, Guimard's finest surviving Metro station. | 0:53:20 | 0:53:26 | |
It's en route to the Bois de Boulogne, | 0:53:26 | 0:53:28 | |
the woods on the outskirts of Paris, and that seems rather appropriate, | 0:53:28 | 0:53:33 | |
because emerging from the station is like leaving a thicket of iron trees. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:38 | |
Guimard brought nature and art into the very heart of the modern city. | 0:53:40 | 0:53:44 | |
Salvador Dali described his designs as | 0:53:46 | 0:53:49 | |
"those divine entrances to the Metro by grace of which one can descend | 0:53:49 | 0:53:54 | |
"into the region of the subconscious." | 0:53:54 | 0:53:57 | |
Guimard's station, which is actually metallic and dense and brittle, | 0:54:03 | 0:54:09 | |
in this wooded setting, shape-shifts into a giant moth or bug | 0:54:09 | 0:54:15 | |
with its gossamer wings, its many, spindly limbs | 0:54:15 | 0:54:19 | |
and those questing, probing antennae. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:24 | |
He chose cast iron to create drooping stalks and rising branches. | 0:54:27 | 0:54:34 | |
And glass, a vulnerable material for a busy urban structure, | 0:54:34 | 0:54:39 | |
seems to be draped over the iron skeleton. | 0:54:39 | 0:54:42 | |
Guimard designed 141 station entrances, | 0:54:45 | 0:54:49 | |
each on a variation of four basic templates, | 0:54:49 | 0:54:54 | |
as well as a loose interpretation of the letter "M" for Metro. | 0:54:54 | 0:54:59 | |
The Metro entrances, redefining the city, | 0:55:03 | 0:55:06 | |
seemed like the portals to the future. | 0:55:06 | 0:55:09 | |
But when the 1900 exhibition was all packed up, the harsh light of the 20th century started to dawn. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:17 | |
This dining room was designed for an apartment in Nancy in 1902 | 0:55:29 | 0:55:34 | |
by Eugene Vallin, an associate of Emile Galle. | 0:55:34 | 0:55:38 | |
I've got a theory that this wasn't made by men. | 0:55:40 | 0:55:42 | |
I think it's the work of a species of hyper-evolved bee. | 0:55:42 | 0:55:47 | |
I mean, look at the curves everywhere. | 0:55:47 | 0:55:49 | |
It's as though they looked at what we did with metal and straight lines | 0:55:49 | 0:55:52 | |
and rejected it and everything was masticated out of royal jelly. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:57 | |
Bit freaky for you? Bit acid trippy? | 0:55:58 | 0:56:01 | |
Well, consider, it would be lovely to come here to dinner once, | 0:56:01 | 0:56:05 | |
maybe for a week. | 0:56:05 | 0:56:07 | |
But every day? You would start to feel like Kafka, | 0:56:07 | 0:56:10 | |
who, shortly after this was created, would pen Metamorphoses. | 0:56:10 | 0:56:15 | |
And that was the problem - it was too curly, too decorative, | 0:56:23 | 0:56:27 | |
too dark, too much. | 0:56:27 | 0:56:29 | |
When it arrived in the dining rooms of the middle classes, | 0:56:29 | 0:56:32 | |
the Bohemian elite lost their taste for it. | 0:56:32 | 0:56:35 | |
Like all fashions, Art Nouveau became a victim of its own success. | 0:56:35 | 0:56:40 | |
Like a fickle lover, the city that had once embraced the style | 0:56:45 | 0:56:50 | |
turned against it in the 1920s. | 0:56:50 | 0:56:53 | |
The wonderful Fouquet jewellery shop was dismantled, | 0:56:53 | 0:56:56 | |
and was reconstructed in the Musee Carnivalet in Paris | 0:56:56 | 0:57:00 | |
just 23 years ago. | 0:57:00 | 0:57:02 | |
Even the iconic Metro entrances didn't escape the cull. | 0:57:03 | 0:57:07 | |
Port Dauphine is one of just three glass entrances that have survived. | 0:57:10 | 0:57:14 | |
Sadly, when Art Nouveau dramatically fell out of fashion, | 0:57:17 | 0:57:21 | |
all the others were ruthlessly hacked down. | 0:57:21 | 0:57:24 | |
79 original Guimard designs have been lost, | 0:57:28 | 0:57:32 | |
and Art Nouveau was forgotten until the last decades | 0:57:32 | 0:57:35 | |
of the 20th century. | 0:57:35 | 0:57:37 | |
Today the Metro and Paris go hand in hand again | 0:57:39 | 0:57:44 | |
and the city treasures its Art Nouveau heritage. | 0:57:44 | 0:57:47 | |
The old love affair has been rekindled. | 0:57:50 | 0:57:53 | |
Next time, the roots and hidden gems of Art Nouveau in British cities, | 0:57:59 | 0:58:05 | |
set against a backdrop of scandal and depression, | 0:58:05 | 0:58:08 | |
when artists and designers were on the front line | 0:58:08 | 0:58:11 | |
of sexual and social change. | 0:58:11 | 0:58:14 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:37 | 0:58:40 |