Histoires de Portes

Last Tuesday morning I fell head over heels in love. The circus was in town so I went over to take pictures of the animals. Afterwards, as I was walking home thinking what funny creatures elephants are, I glanced up and BAM! It was, as they say in French, un coup de foudre. Love at first sight.

I’ve always been a sucker for good looks and this time was no different. But usually that initial euphoria is quickly followed by disappointment because it’s damn near impossible to find good looks and smarts in the same package. And in the long run, it's intelligence that matters most to me.  But this was the first time I had fallen in love in France and it crossed my mind that maybe a French love affair would be different. Maybe this time there would be some substance beneath that handsome exterior. And with that my decision was made...This one was coming home with me.

We’ve been together for nearly a week now and I'm completely satisfied. All of my expectations have been exceeded. In fact, it seems that Histoires de Portes was written expressly for me.

All the Forgotten Faces

When we first visited Bordeaux I was struck by the number of carved masks that highlight the buildings around town. But when Bruce suggested I buy a book on the subject, I just scoffed. "No way," I thought. "They’re just like all Classical ornament -- pretty, but essentially meaningless." (What an architectural snob, huh?) But recently it occurred to me that a post on these masks would be just perfect for the last gasp of summer. The subject wasn’t too heavy and it provided an opportunity for lots of interesting photos. A fluff piece before tackling heavier subjects like Gothic cathedrals once the weather cools off.

But as I walked around taking pictures, I realized that the masks were much more varied than I had expected. They were even sort of intriguing. And when I started reading about them I learned that not  only do these sculptural elements have a history of their own, but that they also provide a visual testament to the city’s development. So much for this being a fluff piece...

A female figure with a crown that appears to represent the
city's ancient walls. Her face is surrounded by three
crescent moons - the symbol of Bordeaux, also known
as the Port de la Lune because of her location on a
crescent-shaped bend in the Garonne River. 

Classical Gas

Have you noticed anything odd about this blog? Has it occurred to you that I live in Bordeaux, one of the most beautiful cities in France; that I blog about architecture; and that I’ve promised, several times in fact, to write about the architecture of Bordeaux. But, so far, I haven’t been true to my word. I always seem to be distracted by some other subject. Sure, one of my first posts was on the Palais Galien, Bordeaux’s only Roman ruin. And I did a little piece on the boot scrapers around town. And there was something on Corbu in the ‘burbs. But so far I’ve studiously avoided writing about the Classical architecture for which Bordeaux is justly famous.

Now why do you suppose that is? I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the past couple of weeks, as I continued to put off that long-promised post. And I finally realized that the answer is a complete no-brainer --- 18^th century classical architecture may be beautiful, but it’s so rational and ordered that, to me, it’s just plain boring. 

The Bourse and the Fountain of the Three Graces

Art Nouveau Paris: A tour of Auteuil

Man, oh man. I’m just all over the place with this blog. A few weeks ago I started on the subject of Gothic architecture and promised to describe its history and development. Then the weather heated up and that topic seemed way too heavy for the dog days of August. Instead I gave you a taste of Bordeaux’s Classical architecture with the promise of more to come.

Since that last post we’ve been to Paris, and now I’m going to change the subject yet again. But I promise, I will get back to Gothic churches and Classical Bordeaux.   In the meantime we spent a day trekking around Auteuil, a well-heeled suburb in the southeastern part of the city that was a laboratory for the development of 20^th century architecture. Today I’d like to show you some spectacular Art Nouveau buildings and in the next post I’ll go back to the earlier topics. And I’ll try not to get sidetracked this time, although I have to admit that I'm really anxious to write about the fortified mills of the Entre-deux-Mers region.

Wild Horses...The Monument to the Girondins

It’s nearly 100 degrees in Bordeaux and it’s August, so most of France is on vacation. Restaurants are closed, the streets are empty and the only thing Bruce and I can do is sit around our un-airconditioned apartment and sweat.

Because it’s so hot I decided that it’s probably not the best time to be writing about heavy subjects like the evolution of Gothic architecture. So for the next few weeks I’m going to take a break from posts that demand a lot of concentration. Instead, I’m just going to show you some of Bordeaux’s gorgeous architecture.

Gothic Architecture: Let There Be (More) Light

Before I dive into Gothic architecture I’d like to say a very warm thank you to Cindy Bogart of The Daily Basics and Lynn McBride of Southern Fried French for the super article on Archi-trouve that appeared this week on The Daily Basics. Cindy’s website covers food, travel, wine, book and culture – all the things we love – and it’s a great, ever-changing resource. Lynn is an American living in Burgundy. Her blog provides a unique look at expat life (with some wonderful recipes) and she has a particular interest in languages. Bruce and I both picked up a few tips from her new book How to Learn a New Language with a Used Brain. Check it out on Amazon. Thanks again to both for promoting Archi-trouve.

After our trip to Burgundy this spring I wrote a series of posts on Romanesque architecture, currently my favorite style. (Confession: my favorite architectural style changes every two or three years and has ranged from Greek Revival to Art Nouveau. I think my preference is as much a reflection of where I live physically as where I'm 'at' emotionally.)

But before I came to appreciate the subtleties of Romanesque I loved Gothic architecture for its dramatic, light-filled spaces.  I even spent a hellish year in a doctoral program at the University of Florida so I could understand the structural and architectural innovations that produced some of the most spectacular buildings of all time. (Unfortunately, my aversion to Gainesville overwhelmed my love of Gothic.)

Church of Saint Ouen, Rouen 

Rage Against the Machine for Living: Corbu in Pessac

When I was studying architecture in the late 70s, modernism was all the rage. The Bauhaus. Mies. Gropius. And of course, the Swiss-French architect Charles-Edouard Jenneret, better known as le Corbusier.

While all of my classmates happily constructed boxes with flat roofs, I struggled to design something (anything!) that I thought was beautiful. But semester after semester I failed. I had no feeling for modern architecture and at the time there was no other philosophy for me to base my designs on. There was no “post-modernism, ” no “New Urbanism.”  For years, I believed that I simply lacked the requisite creativity to be an architect.

But later, studying historic preservation, I came to realize that the problem wasn’t entirely my lack of talent; some of it was due to the constraints of modern architecture itself. I couldn’t relate to “Less is more.” I believed, perhaps too literally, that more was more. “Ornament and Crime?” I thought ornament was beautiful. “The house is a machine for living in”? Really? What kind of bereft-of-joy lives are lived in machines, for heaven's sake?

And regarding Corbusier, I completely agreed with the French political activist Gilles Ivain when he said, “I do not know what this individual – ugly of countenance and hideous in his conceptions of the world – is repressing to make him want to crush humanity under ignoble heaps of reinforced concrete... His power of cretinization is vast. A model by Corbusier is the only image that brings to my mind immediate suicide.”

You get the idea.  I really didn’t like modern architecture.

So imagine my surprise when I visited the Quartiers Modernes Frugès, a model ‘city’ designed by Le Corbusier in the 1920s, and I didn’t hate it. I even, somewhat reluctantly, admired it.