Art & Design | Art Review
The Virtual Splendor of Paris’s Glass House
Discovering the existence of the Maison de Verre
in Paris can be a major aesthetic epiphany. When you see a photograph
of this translucent structure in glass, steel and expanses of glass
brick — completed in 1932 — the impression is of startling modernity,
something very much of its time yet strikingly ahead of it, too, like
Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” or Duchamp’s “The Large Glass.”
Tucked into a courtyard on the Left Bank and invisible from the street, the Maison de Verre
is among the first large homes made entirely of industrial materials
whose structure is starkly exposed. Steel I-beams — parts of which are
painted red in different ways — cut through its flexible spaces. It has
numerous mechanical and moving parts, including sliding walls and a
horizontal dumbwaiter, some of which seem excessive, but it also
involves a great deal of handcrafting, like perforated metal screens
that, at least from photographs, contribute a medieval aspect. There is
nothing quite like it in the world.
But
if the Maison de Verre (House of Glass) becomes fixed on your list of
landmarks, the man who designed it is virtually unknown in the United
States. He was Pierre Chareau (1883-1950), an energetic and ambitious
French designer of custom furniture and interiors who never trained in
architecture, his first love. He would collaborate on most of his
projects, Maison de Verre included, with a self-effacing Dutch architect
named Bernard Bijvoet.
“Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design,”
a delightful, virtual-reality-enhanced examination of the designer’s
work at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan, should greatly diminish his
obscurity, even as it reveals a great talent that was not without flaws.
The exhibition is at once a portrait, an archive and a collection of
intriguing objects, most notably around 180 pieces of furniture designed
by Chareau, but also a trove of art he collected with his wife, Dollie,
whose role in his career emerges with a new clarity here.
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The
show has been organized by Esther da Costa Meyer, a professor of the
history of modern architecture at Princeton University, who has overseen
an exceptionally informative, readable catalog. The architects Diller Scofidio & Renfro
designed the presentation, whose changing display methods almost seem
to set it in motion. It comes with a virtual-reality gallery that places
us in four Chareau interiors, including the double-height grand salon
of the Maison de Verre. In addition, a mesmerizing digital slide show
creates the illusion of moving from the street outside into and back out
of the house layer by layer as it is being drawn, built and furnished.
On the analog side, the design’s most inspired element is a single
enormous vitrine that extends into three galleries through horizontal
slots in the walls. It creates a welcome sense of openness along the
show’s sometimes twisty path.
Chareau
was born in Bordeaux, where his father was a wine merchant, and his
mother was descended from Sephardic Jews. In 1899 he went to work at the
Paris branch of Waring & Gillow, British furniture manufacturers.
After World War I he set out on his own, and during the 1920s and early
’30s he had a flourishing career, mostly designing furniture and
interiors for wealthy clients. This ground to a halt when the Depression
hit France in 1932. The second blow was the German invasion of France
in 1940; Chareau fled to New York, where he lived for a decade, dying
penniless and overlooked.
He
loved working with rich or unexpected materials — rare woods or
alabaster. He also liked to work with skilled artisans, especially Louis
Dalbet, a virtuoso ironsmith who would collaborate on the Maison de
Verre. Chareau’s most fervent supporters were a small coterie of
cultivated, upper-middle-class professionals, many of whom were related,
notably the Bernheims, the Flegs and the Dalsaces.
Jean
Dalsace, a gynecologist, and his wife, Annie Bernheim Dalsace,
commissioned the Maison de Verre around 1925 and would live on the two
upper floors with Jean’s medical practice on the ground floor. The house
remained in the family until 2005, when it was purchased and
painstakingly restored by Robert M. Rubin, a Wall Street financier turned architecture patron and cultural historian.
The
show begins with a witty fantasy: six short filmed vignettes quickly
conjure a luxurious interwar dwelling like those enjoyed by Chareau’s
clients. Projected onto blazing white paper, these silent shadow plays
show Chareau furniture being used by actors — all in silhouette. It is a
bit slick, but it quickly sets the period mood and makes the furniture
mysterious. In the dining room, a maid polishes silver. In the living
room, a man on a sofa smokes a cigar. A butler who moves among the
screens brings him a drink. Elsewhere, a frustrated young writer at a
desk rises and paces past a daybed on an adjacent screen.
When
you walk around the screens, the shadowy furniture emerges in three
dimensions with a kind of ta-da. You begin to see how Chareau’s designs
oscillate between lightening and refining familiar styles, like Art
Deco, with subtle angles and pinches and works of rougher, more forceful
originality. His more innovative side is visible, for example, in a
semicircular bookcase harboring a round table that can swing out on a
mechanical arm.
The
bulbs of his La Religieuse (The Nun) floor and table lamps are shaded
by shards of alabaster that are both Cubistic and wimplelike, held
together by bits of welded iron, courtesy of Dalbet. The dining room
furniture stands out for its eccentricity, especially a cabinet that
resembles a solid block of walnut burl and is outfitted with two wide
bands of patinated iron (Dalbet again) that provide legs, wall
attachments and a big exposed hinge. It looks like something the
Minimalist sculptor Carl Andre might have concocted as a lark.
A
narrow gallery displays some of the Chareaus’ art collection, which
they sold piece by piece to survive in New York. A rather clunky pair of
early collages by Picasso with elements cut from a single piece of
paper covered with sawdust fits the blunter side of Chareau’s
sensibilities. A magical Max Ernst painting of five glass vases
containing flowers speaks to his use of transparency.
Photographs
of a Long Island house in East Hampton that Chareau designed attest to
his ingenuity on a shoestring budget; it is cobbled together from a
Quonset hut and a wall of windows from a greenhouse. Designed as a
summer house for the Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell,
it was a rare commission during Chareau’s American exile. The house,
tragically, was demolished in 1985.
The
virtual-reality treat comes toward the end. Against black walls, four
spare displays capture Chareau’s ecumenical love of tradition and
experimentation. Each display has a swivel stool to sit on and V.R.
goggles for viewing. Suddenly you see each ensemble in its original
interior, based on vintage photographs but rendered in bracing living
color. Turning in the seat, you can enjoy a 360-degree view and glimpse
adjacent rooms. The Maison de Verre’s double-story grand salon makes the
most memorable impression — while also revealing that the Dalsace
family had a protomodern Biedermeier dining room set.
The
Maison de Verre hovers over this show like a sheltering presence,
visible in photographs and architectural drawings, and is most present
in the digitalized slide show. The slides pause at certain points and
films flanking the screen show a man and a woman in that particular part
of the house, including the bathroom. At one point the woman opens a
curved metal closet door with some effort; elsewhere, she lowers a metal
cover to reveal a mirror and demonstrates how a bidet swivels out from
the wall. These last two especially are more gratuitous flourishes than
conveniences.
An
unwelcome thought flashed across my mind: too many moving parts, too
much metal. But so what? Maybe most masterworks that change history are
imperfect. The riotous “Demoiselles” and unfinished “Large Glass”
certainly are. Like the Maison de Verre, their imperfections indicate
unexplored possibilities, taken up by others.
Continue reading the main story
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