The Architecture of the Beaux-Arts

Author(s): David Van Zanten

Source: JAE, Vol. 29, No. 2, Describing Places (Nov., 1975), pp. 16-17
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools of
Architecture, Inc.

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE BEAUX-ARTS

The follow ing remarks on the Beaux-Arts have
been prepa-redby David Van Zanten, a member
of the art history faculty at the University of
Pennsylvania, who participated with Arthur
Drexler in organizing The Architecture of the
Beaux-Arts show now open through 4 Januaryat
the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The
remarks,it should be noted, were preparedunder
Van Zanten's own aegis.

The drawing above is Emmanuel Brune'snotion

of a staircare for the "Palaceof the Sovereigns,"
1863. Courtesy of MOMA.
The drawing on page 29 is Charles Garnier's
studyfor the decorationof the Arc de Triomphe
for the funeral of VictorHugo, 1885. Courtesyof
MOMA.

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The Capital study on the inside front cover is

also courteSyof MOMA.

ny Americanarchitectgrowingup after

World War I has probably felt two great

architecturalpresences around him. First,
that of the frontier, with vast spaces, constant growth into those spaces and things
made quickly,flimsily, and soon abandoned.
Second, that of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
which-when brought to the United States
around 1900-caused us to create monumental buildings, boulevards and even
whole city centers like monadnocks among
the chaos of American ticky-tacky;constructions vast in scale and incrediblypermanent
in their masonry (steel-stiffened) construction. Both of these have remainedstrangely
mysterious to us. We try, on the one hand,
to find some accommodation with the
frontier while, on the other hand, admitting
that the most convincing architectureof our
personal experience is that of the ruins of
this "Beaux-Arts"ideal.

The secret of Beaux-Arts architecture,we

are told, was its understandingof architectural composition. Georges Gromort in his
lectures at the Ecole defined composition
thus:
The role of composition per se is to bind together, to make effective (mettre en oeuvre) the
scatteredparts, to make of them a whole. This is,
above all, the matter of linkage. This will create,
in order to lead one to the various parts-to
these rooms, to these libraries, to these auditoria-a whole network of vestibules,of staircases,
of covered and open courts, of corridors which
we designate with the word circulations.... It is
the more or less graceful articulation of this
network which determines to a great extent the
building's appearance. (Essai sur la theorie de
I'architecture,1946, pp 143-146, Gromort'sitalics.)

That is to say, composition did not have to

do with the creation de novo of the func-

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tioning parts of a building, but rather with

the presentation of those parts to the
viewer's eyes. And this presentation was
meant to make these elements orderly,
impressive and immediately comprehensible. Particular emphasis was placed upon
the promenade architecturale, the sequence
of visual tableaux experienced as one passes
through a building along well-defined axes
of vestibules, courtyards, staircases and
corridors. "Beaux-Arts" composition was,
in a word, the study of architectural nicety.
There were, of course, a number of important assumptions determining the terms of
this study of architectural nicety, most
importantly that the building would be
realized in masonry. Gromort wrote:
The architect has always been, until now at leasb.
a man who works (traitait) stone, as a goldsmith
works gold .... If an edifice pretends to elevate

itself to what can trully be called Architecture,it

must be built like the Parthenon entirely in
marble, or like so many buildings since entirely
in good quality stone or entirely in brick, or-if
you wish-entirely in concrete.... The nature
or even the rarityof the stone is not what counts
primarily, it is unity. One wishes that the material be noble becausethat is how it presents itself
to us, but this nobility can only be conferred by
working it, by the visible trace of the hand of
man. (pp 125-126, Gromort's italics.)
Form and articulation in the Beaux-Arts
system was in terms of the assembling and
the working of stone. Openings were
bridged with arches, spaces roofed with the
undulating surfaces of vaults, supports were
made massive piers assembled from hard
stones meant to carry great loads of masonry. Ornament was cut into these surfaces, the students studying the effects in
laboriously graded ink wash drawings, the
shadows worked up with the precision of

chisel blows.
The Ecole des Beaux-Arts taught a specific
manner of planning (for "composition"
meant planning rather than design) in a
specific technology in the context of a
specific economic, social and professional
milieu. The beauty of the system was the
balance maintained in its heyday between
these factors, producing a series of magnificent monuments both in France and in the
United States. Today that system has receded into the past, the equivalent in architectural education of the Greek temple and
the Gothic cathedral in building. Fifty years
ago we had to free ourselves from being
hypnotized by a pattern of teaching that
society and technology rendered anachronistic, but now that that has been accomplished the time has come to contemplate
and admire what the Beaux-Arts managed
to accomplish in its own time.

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17