Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [157]
Paralleling Cézanne’s growth as a painter toward abstraction through simplified volumes, Maillol predicated his sculpture on geometry. He cast aside the nineteenth-century lexicon of classical allegory and symbolism (and the exaggerated sentiment it sustained), seeking to express abstract truths through distilled mass, specifically, the female body. Already in 1896 a bronze such as La Vague reveals the characteristic sumptuous reserve that would mark Maillol’s subsequent work.
The Salon of 1905 proved a turning point in Maillol’s career. Amid the sensation created by the Fauves, Maillol’s La Méditerranée garnered André Gide’s praise and announced the themes that forty years’ work would amplify. Examples of many of Maillol’s monumental sculptures occupy a room on the south end of the museum’s second story. The artist called on the female figure to express a whole range of human thought: the fecundity of Pomone; grief for the dead of World War I; and homage to men as disparate as Cézanne, Debussy, and a French revolutionary, Auguste Blanqui. No Kate Mosses here; sturdy limbs and apple breasts characterize Maillol’s earthy women.
The most familiar face within the museum is also its creator, Dina Vierny. In 1934, the fifteen-year-old Russian-born Ms. Vierny became Maillol’s model and Egeria, inspiring a final decade of creativity: bronzes, sanguines, and oils—some of which are on view in the museum. Still others were produced by Maillol’s friends, for he was in the habit of lending Dina to them, as in the spring of 1941, when he sent her to his lifelong friend Matisse with the message: “I am lending you the inspiration for my work, you will render her in a single line.” The resultant drawings still hang in the museum. His gift for friendship indirectly cost him his life, when, at the age of eighty-three, he set off from Banyuls to visit Raoul Dufy. The car veered off the road, and Maillol died a few weeks later of his injuries.
The Musée Maillol’s very existence is a tribute to his model’s tenacity. As the residual legatee of the Maillol estate, Ms. Vierny set up the foundation, assembled the buildings to house the museum, and installed the works, orchestrating every detail down to the (exquisite) doorknobs and the (brilliantly conceived) lighting and framing.
Ms. Vierny is an unapologetic collector. The museum exhibits some of her French primitives and works by a number of Soviet painters—many of them artists her rue Jacob gallery represented in the postwar period. The rooms are also sprinkled with Degases, Redons, Picassos, and Duchamps.
In the mid-sixties Dina Vierny, not a woman to be gainsaid, gave the state eighteen of Maillol’s monumental sculptures to be displayed in the Jardin du Carrousel west of the Louvre. The area—only ten minutes’ walk away—has recently been replanted to great effect.
Musée National Eugène Delacroix
(6 rue de Furstenberg, 6ème / +33 01 44 41 86 50 / musee-delacroix.fr). Open daily 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. except Tuesdays.
Fondation Dina Vierny—Musée Maillol
(59–61 rue de Grenelle, 7ème / +33 01 42 22 59 58 / museemaillol.com). Open daily 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. except Tuesdays.
Saint-Denys-Du-Saint-Sacrement
(68 bis rue de Turenne, 3ème / +33 01 44 54 35 88).
Assemblée Nationale
(33 bis quai d’Orsay, 7ème / +33 01 40 63 99 99 / assemblee-nationale.fr).
Of Cobbles, Bikes, and Bobos
DAVID DOWNIE
AFTER MY RECENT profession of my fondness for stone, it should come as no surprise that I love the cobblestones of Paris. And as this piece attests, cobblestones are as much a part of Paris’s identity as the Eiffel Tower; old as the city itself, they are also a sign of change.
DAVID DOWNIE lives in Paris with his wife, the talented photographer Alison Harris. Together, they have collaborated on a number of books, including Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light (Broadway, 2011) and several Little Bookroom Terroir Guides, such as Food Wine: