SHAPING A PROGRAM ON ARCHITECTURE AND PRINT CULTURE AT THE INSTITUT NATIONAL D HISTOIRE DE L ART

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1 Émilie d Orgeix Architectural Historian, Senior Fellow, Dept of history of architecture, Institut national d histoire de l art (INHA), Paris Jean-Philippe Garric Scientific Advisor in Architectural History, Institut national d histoire de l art (INHA), Paris ICAM 15, Paris, session 4 2nd of June 2010 SHAPING A PROGRAM ON ARCHITECTURE AND PRINT CULTURE AT THE INSTITUT NATIONAL D HISTOIRE DE L ART Like many international libraries and research institutes, the National Institute of Art History in Paris is also faced with the dilemma of sharing and exhibiting its rare book holdings without a dedicated exhibition space. Compared to the 1.7 million holdings kept in the library including 300,000 rare books, the 60-meter square exhibition room located in the gallery Colbert is a modest display tool for the Jacques Doucet Collection [slide 2; view from the gallery]. Nevertheless, in spite of its small surface, this intimate and cozy space has proven to be fit to exhibit books and to attract the public. All temporary exhibitions shown in the gallery Colbert have been successful. Most of them included the display of architectural books and plates either set on cradles or framed. In addition, this intimate space has proven to be quite flexible for scheduling short term projects and exhibiting fragile items. Each exhibition is conceived as an opportunity to exhibit the library s holdings ranging from incunabula to contemporary artists books. [Slide 3: Louis Marin s exhibition] In fall 2007, a further step was also taken. The exhibition room was temporarily transformed into a library when it hosted the project of the American artist, Martha Rosler [Slide 4: MR s poster]. For two months, approximately 7,700 titles from the artist's personal collection were installed in the space and made available for consultation as a public library 1. [Slide 5: view of the exhibition]. In many ways, this installation revealed the private sphere of an individual and, at the same time, the mechanics of acquiring, accumulating, classifying and combining knowledge. The exhibition drew upon the origins of sharing books to make private collections public or semi-public. The installation of Martha Rosler s library in the gallery Colbert in 2008 was thus a meaningful performance. It inscribed her work into a long tradition of private endeavors that prompted the creation of the first French public library, the Bibliothèque royale, in 1722 in the hotel de Tubœuf at the corner of the Institute [Slide 6: hotel Tubœuf] and, two centuries later in 1919, the bequeathal of collector Jacques Doucet s collection of books on art and archeology to the university of Paris. Our presentation relates these issues about historical continuity and renewal in relation to the patrimonial collections of architectural books and the ways in which we share and display them in physical and virtual worlds. It focuses on three of our principal concerns. First, to establish a Filipovic, Elena. If You Read Here... Martha Rosler's Library, Afterall, 15, Spring-Summer (link to add)

2 Émilie d Orgeix, Jean-Philippe Garric ICAM 15, research program that will remain faithful to the spirit of a personal collection created by Jacques Doucet. Second, to use the holdings of the library as a mean to engage questions pertinent to current issues in architectural history and in the history of print culture. Finally, to make the collection publicly visible in lieu of the limited physical space allotted for exhibition at the National Institute. Concerning this last point, it is worth noting that the lack of space forced us to reflect on and to sketch out a series of alternate strategies to disseminate our program and collections. 1. Jacques Doucet and his collection of books on art and archaeology [Slide 7: photo de Doucet] Since the Jacques Doucet Collection at the National Institute has never been presented before at an ICAM conference, we will first discuss briefly the history and the particularities of this unique collection. Jacques Doucet ( ) was one of the leading Parisian fashion designers at the turn of the twentieth century. Upon the death of his father in 1898, he took over the position as head of a successful maison de couture located at rue de la Paix [Slide 8: Doucet stamp]. Initially a collector of eighteenth-century art and impressionist painting, Jacques Doucet gradually shifted his collecting interests to include books of art and archaeology as well as architecture books. The decisive moment was his purchase of the collection of twenty in-folios stamped with the arms of Louis XIV known as the Cabinet du Roy s collection comprising a series of urban, architectural and ornament plates by the king s engravers. From 1906 until the outbreak of WWI, Jacques Doucet, wisely advised by the art critic and librarian René-Jean, acquired the most important art books put up for sale. Doucet was also keen on sharing his collection. In 1904, he started to make his collection semi-public by allowing scholars and art critics to consult his books twice weekly. Each year, the library began to take up more space and he started to buy additional apartments to house it. By 1914, he owned five apartments in the 16th arrondissement, comprising 30 small rooms in total which were each conceived as a kind of studiolo or reading cabinet dedicated to grand classifications in art history. During all these years, Doucet continued to enrich his library by buying series of books on specific topics including one on Italian Antiquities purchased from the art dealer Robiteau in 1912 as well as complete libraries, or ready-made libraries, as Doucet called them, such as the important sales of Adolph Michaëlis and Edmond Foulc. When the library was donated to the University of Paris at the end of the war, it already comprised 100,000 books, 500 manuscripts, 150,000 photographs, 1,000 drawings, 10,000 engravings and about 2,000 volumes of engravings. Doucet s compulsive collecting is not surprising. As Werner Muenstenberger stated in his book titled Collecting: an unruly passion : Common measure does not exist for art collectors 2. It is now pertinent to address the spirit in which Doucet built up his collection under the influence of his librarian René-Jean. Doucet aspired to create a comprehensive library of Art and Archaeology. His collecting habits reflected a broad understanding of Art and Archaeology and, to some extent, his own trade as a fashion designer. While we cannot address here the intimate links between fashion and architecture during the fin-de-siècle, it is worth recalling that architects who designed clothes were more common than costume designers who collected architecture books. But, in the specific case of Doucet, Architecture as a category was not itself a criterion for selecting books. His particular vision led to the very unusual composition of architecture books 2 Muestenberger, Werner. Collecting: an Unruly Passion: Psychological Perspective. Princeton: Princeton U. Press

3 Émilie d Orgeix, Jean-Philippe Garric ICAM 15, within the broader scope of his collection of art books. Architecture in his collection is seen through the eyes of a man who dressed actresses and women for parties, theater, public outings, and the lively social life of the turn of the Twentieth century. It reflects the interests of a man involved in the temporal problems associating with creating a style. Architecture thus competes with the artistic process of inventing ornament, jewels and ephemeral decors. It is a collection in which books on ornament, gardens, perspective, ideal cities, interior design, festival architecture and theatrical décor dominate. This particular emphasis, which is less perceptible now that the library s collections have been significantly enriched, remains nonetheless pivotal in defining our research program. This inflection challenged the canonical definition of the architecture book at the very limits of architecture itself. Moreover, it has challenged us to un-judge the book by its cover. It also required us to reflect on how to refine the blurred frontiers between the very definition of the architecture book in relation to ornament, decoration, graphic composition, scenography and interior design. [Slide 9: poster of the INHA s study day on Architecture books] 2. Shaping a Bibliographical program on French Architecture books The program on architectural books established by the Department of Studies and Research at the national Institute of Art history dates from 2003, three year after the founding of the Institute. It was conceived by Alice Thomine and Olga Medvedkova who where, at the time, respectively scientific advisor and fellow in the history of architecture department. The first stage of the 4-year bibliographical program aimed at establishing the history, the provenance and the composition of the Jacques Doucet Collection of architecture books which had been integrated and merged with more recent acquisitions [Slide 10: view of the database standard fiche]. This work bridged a considerable gap within the INHA s architecture book collection. It was paired with a program on books published by the former students of the Ecole des Beaux-arts based on the library s collection of the school. Conceived in collaboration with the academic community, these two programs both backed-up by File-maker databases, included seminars and conferences on the history of print culture in relation to architectural collecting and the creation of private and public libraries in Europe. They both prompted a substantial renewal of interest in the history of architectural collections and libraries which still echoes today within the French academic community 3. [Slide 11: architectural libraries / La construction savante]. Since late 2007, the Institute s program has entered a new stage of development guided by the double belief that the goals of the first phase of research had been successfully reached and that the merging of the Doucet and the ENSBA programs could revitalize our research agenda. Envisioning the Doucet and the Ensba corpus as a microcosm from which to analyze the mechanics of intellectual and artistic production had generated insiders views. By contrast, gathering and merging all information we had on French architecture books into a single research tool, even if heterogeneous and fragmentary, would reopen the dialogue about the fertile project of establishing the first bibliography of French Architecture Books. A word must be said here about the publication of French architecture books which largely exceeds in number those of other European nations. 3 Jean-Philippe Garric, Valérie Nègre et Alice Thomine-Berrada. La construction savante. Les avatars de la littérature technique. Paris: Picard INHA, 2008 ; Olga Medvedkova, Bibliothèques d architecture. Paris : Alain Beaudy INHA, 2009.

4 Émilie d Orgeix, Jean-Philippe Garric ICAM 15, Recently coordinated national projects such as the publication of British Architectural Books and Writers by Eileen Harris and Nicholas Savage under the umbrella of the RIBA have no equivalent in France 4. The main reference available today remains the volume on French architectural books published as part of the highlights of the Mark J. Millard Collection by the National Gallery in Washington Exhibiting by disseminating Stemming from this state of research, we have based our research program on merging together the complementary collections of three major Parisian libraries: the INHA, the ENSBA [the Beauxarts School] and the CNAM [library of the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts]. This enlarged database comprises about 3,500 entries providing data and cross-information on French architectural books from 1512 to Obviously incomplete and still very much in-progress, the database is not conceived as a future comprehensive end-product. For us, it is a flexible backbone for mapping an array of smaller collective research projects on architecture books. Conceived as an expandable tool, it is gradually implemented by adding clusters of catalogued books exploring hypothesis, issues, topics, and authors, types of books, case studies, monographic works and publishing houses. The project currently includes two exhibitions projects in the Gallery Colbert 1- The first exhibition project is on Festival Architecture Books [Slides 12 and 13 : Loyseleur de Villiers et Vredeman de Vries, Hans, La ioyevse & magnifique entrée de Monseigneur Françoys..., Anvers, Christophe Plantin, 1582]. It is based on Jacques Doucet s collection of rare book collection about festivals, royal entries and funeral ceremony which represents one of the strongest assets of Doucet s original collection. The collection has been subject to a thorough research program. The 1,000 books were all catalogued and 35 of them were integrated in the library s online resource. The exhibition, scheduled for next September, will display the collections of festival books through new perspectives that examine them according to their relationship, for example, with war and warfare. 2- The architect and the Studio (exhibition project and catalogue). Following the festival books exhibition, we will present in fall 2011 another exhibition titled: The Architect and the Studio [slides 14 and 15; photograph s of BA s Studio]. It explores the dynamics established between tutors and students in the frame of the École des Beaux-Arts and other institutions of learning such as the École des Ponts-et-Chaussées and the École Polytechnique. The show aims to sketch the mechanics of artistic creation in the frame of complex and normative environments. Primarily dedicated to manuals, teaching handbooks graphic models sheet it will present large scales drawings and manuscript documents issuing from the Beaux-Arts School collection associated with teaching books and manuals. Like our other projects, the exhibition will be the occasion 4 Eileen Harris; Nicholas Savage. British Architectural Books and Writers Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Dora Wiebenson; Claire Baines. The Mark J. Millard Architectural Collection: French Books: Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. Washington: National Gallery of Art

5 Émilie d Orgeix, Jean-Philippe Garric ICAM 15, to conduct research on the topic and to establish a catalogue of books pertaining to the training of the architect. In addition to these more traditional exhibition projects, we also try to explore possible alternate strategies to disseminate our research and findings. This mainly consists in developing partnerships with institutions and sharing our collection virtually through online resource and open archives. I will give a few examples to show the way we operate: 3- Translation and Architecture Books was the theme chosen for a day-long symposium organized with the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts. It offered the opportunity to scour the corpus of architecture books translated from or into French. Besides prompting the acquisition of books by the library such as Francesco Algarotti s Saggi sopra le belle arti that we already possessed in Italian and that the library bought in its French translation Essai sur les Beaux-Arts. This is also the case of Pierre Patte Essai sur l architecture théâtrale, for which the library only possessed the French edition and that we bought in its Italian version. The program created a partnership with the Online Resource Department of the Institute that we formalized with the digitalization of a series of books made available on the Institute s portal. 4- Rural architecture [Slides 16 et 17: Histoire d une ferme by Alfred Giron and House for lodging animals by Johann August Heine] is an-going project in collaboration with the department of architecture at the Ministry of Culture which aims at documenting books on rural architecture published from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Besides providing an opportunity to gather a team of European scholars to work on the topic; it also gave us the opportunity to establish a bibliography of books to be catalogued. The program also includes a website with texts, articles, a bibliography and a selection of on-line fundamental publications selected from the bibliography. 5- And last, the project on Percier and Fontaine aims to renew the research on the architects Charles Percier ( ) and Pierre François Léonard Fontaine ( ) by establishing a repertoire of sources which include their publication as well as the 8,000 drawings by Percier at the Institut de France and documents scattered among private and public, French and Foreign institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago. Although the work of Percier and Fontaine belongs to many fields such as book design, urban planning, architecture or garden design, they considered themselves as architects. According to them, architecture should deal with all the various scales of the design project, from furniture to urban composition. Consequently, sculpture, interior decoration and more broadly speaking ornament, occupied a central position in most of their production. The first stage of the program included Jean-Philippe Garric s re-edition published in 2009 of the very rare hand-washed version of their book Les Palais de Rome which was in the library holdings. To surpass the modesty of engravings, Percier and Fontaine proposed, as an alternative, examples carefully executed in hand-wash and watercolor. This version in color reveals the true ambition of Percier and Fontaine. The publication of the book provided us with the occasion to organize a series of small exhibitions of the original volume held in the library [Slide 18: cover]

6 Émilie d Orgeix, Jean-Philippe Garric ICAM 15, Conclusion In closing, the scale and the flexibility of the current program, while lacking the spectacular results of a comprehensive publication on French architecture books, nevertheless avoids the pitfalls of a long-lasting and overly ambitious project. It also evades the somewhat schematic and artificial interpretations associated with large-scale projects that too often favor a series of highlights. The progressive integration of the items in the online database of the institute is essential for further refining interpretations and the flexibility of the program allows more lithe as well as extended research with collaborators. Thanks to the development of online resources and to the support of partnership, allows us to meet our missions which are not the ones of an Architecture Museum but the one of a Research Center with a unique architecture library.