The Grand Palais Exhibition Hall

sommaire juillet New WCs Euro June 29: .710 La Tour d’Argent Euro May 26: .715 An Unlikely Empress Rain Days: 12 Les Parfums de Rosine PARIS High Temp: 76°F/24°C Ecole Alain Ducasse Low Temp: 58°F/14°C What a Hoot notes Nat’l Holidays: July 14, Aug 15 July / August 2009 P Volume 18 Issue 6 Grand Standing By Amanda MacKenzie The Grand Palais is once again flexing its muscles and reasserting itself as an icon for the city or you and me, it’s a Right-Bank icon, mental masonry should put that myth to bed. Palais would host were to be “out there” at the and Paris just wouldn’t be Paris without Along with the Petit Palais across the street and forefront of modern trends; on the other, it was it. For Yves Saint-Geours, President of the Pont Alexandre III to the south, the Grand to provide the public with spectacle on an epic Fthe Etablissement Public du Grand Palais, it’s Palais connected Les Invalides with the Champs- scale. Sometimes it managed both simultaneous- an island. Rising above the swell of traffic along Elysées along the so-called “Republican Axis” ly. Barely had the lights gone out on the World’s the Champs-Elysées, it has its inlets, coves and and opened up a completely new perspective Fair before the Grand Palais was putting on the ports, all of them fascinating, some still a little within the city. It was the cornerstone of the world’s first motor show, the Salon de l’Auto, the uncharted and unfamiliar. And, Saint-Geours’ “new” Paris, at the dawn of a new century. And, first of many auto shows held under the great job is to make sure that we drop anchor “coupole” of the Grand Palais. (This show and explore. is now the Mondiale de l’Automobile, or Which, it seems, is precisely what we’re Paris Motor Show, currently held at Paris doing. After an 11-year closure prompted Expo.) When not sending shock waves by serious structural problems, the Grand through the art world (Matisse and the Palais re-opened for good just over two Fauvistes made their debut here in 1905), years ago. Since then, the great glasshouse the Grand Palais was rolling out huge alone has drawn in well over a million commercial crowd-magnet events, ranging people to exhibitions and events. Three from aviation and radio-telegraphy shows hundred percent more people visited the to equestrian and “ideal home” shows. In Grand Palais during the last six months of those early years, the Grand Palais dazzled, 2008 than during those same months in inspired and challenged with its many 2007. As an innovative venue for the arts offerings, and Parisians couldn’t get enough and technology, the Grand Palais is already of it. flexing its muscles and reasserting itself as Requisitioned as a military hospital an icon for the city—and for France. Yet, during World War I, the Grand Palais in a remarkably un-French development, served with honor. But things were never its new management structure now must pay as a hymn to the glory of the Republic, it was quite the same after the Nazis rolled in and its own way. It gets little help from state grants built to last—well, if not forever, at least until parked their trucks in the nave. After a couple or patronage. “The Minister of Finance likes us the sun set on the Colonial Empire. In this goal of lackluster attempts at pushing propaganda quite a lot,” observes Saint-Geours dryly (he and it has succeeded rather well. shows on the public, they gave up and shelled his 23-strong team are private-sector employees The Grand Palais was astounding on every it instead. There was serious damage, especially in all but name). Can this be the same Grand front. Bristling with columns and decorously when the straw from a circus menagerie being Palais that was once thought to be such a lost draped statuary, the building’s neo-classical sheltered inside the building caught fire. cause that it came within a hair of being demol- exterior was calculated to stir the heart of every By the early 60s, the Grand Palais’ future ished? patriot. But it was the nave, that stupendous looked increasingly doubtful. The building had More on that sacrilege later. The question 656-foot-long hangar crowned with glass, whose lacked unity ever since its west wing was con- worth asking is this: Why did France build such technological prowess and stylistic daring really verted in 1938 into the Palais de la Découverte, a behemoth in the first place? Surely it was not set pulses racing. Its sinuous steel pillars were a science museum. Thereafter, a sense of drift set just to astound those visiting the 1900 Exposi- at the cutting edge of modernity at a moment in. Immense as it was, the Grand Palais’ nave tion Universelle? It’s true that the Grand Palais when art nouveau was just hitting its stride; had become a tight squeeze for burgeoning was a French riposte to the Crystal Palaces of some point out that the pillars even anticipated modern motor shows, and fielding replacement London (1851) and New York (1858), both of art deco. Undoubtedly, during the seven-month events became a challenge. Its art-nouveau which have long since vanished. It’s also true run of the World’s Fair, it was the Grand Palais arabesques and curlicues became unfashionable, that it took more metal to build the Grand as much as any of the fair’s attractions that almost to the point of absurdity. Palais than the Eiffel Tower, which was meant brought 50 million people flocking to Paris. Who could blame Minister of Cultural to eventually be dismantled. But the Grand From its inception, the Grand Palais had an Affairs André Malraux if he began to seriously Palais was never intended to be a fly-by-night ambitious dual mission. On the one hand, the consider demolishing the Grand Palais? (He showcase—a half-mile stroll around its monu- contemporary art and design shows the Grand even drafted the great (continued on page 7) Grand Standing, continued from page 1 the public at large. And we have to do that in a film and interactive installations from all 27 EU building that has a certain age.” nations, plus a long string of guest countries. For Le Corbusier to design a replacement.) In To date, the Grand Palais has pulled off Saint-Geours, there is a certain neatness in the the end, however, state procrastination set in, some impressive coups. This February, the nave continuity of the Grand Palais’ tradition. How which did more to spare the monument from provided a fitting setting for the auction of the fitting, after all, that the monument that ushered demolition than did public protest. And so, the Yves Saint-Laurent/Pierre Bergé estate. For three in the age of the motor car in 1901 should be Grand Palais might have limped on indefinitely days, the public thronged in free of charge to making art from digital technology, the medium as a second-tier exhibition space. That is, if it salivate over the beloved couturier’s exquisite through which most of us, one way and another, hadn’t been for that rivet, the one that in 1993 collection before the 700-odd treasures were now live out our lives? popped off and dropped 148 feet from the nave’s turned over to Christie’s for auction to the On a more mundane level, the Grand Palais glass-and-structural-steel roof onto a Jean-Paul world’s elite. The proceedings attracted inter- has also set a precedent by turning the renova- Gaultier snuff box being exhibited. Other rivets national media coverage and put a spotlight tion of its facades to commercial advantage. In dangerously followed suit, and the building was on the Grand Palais. Though it was a one-time 2008, it became the first historic monument unceremoniously closed. Government stud- event, it was consistent with other regular big in Paris to exploit its scaffolding screens for ies revealed serious structural problems. The events that populate the Grand Palais’ calendar: corporate advertising. Such revenue counts Grand Palais’ oak foundation piles were rotting. the Biennale des Antiquaires, the Antiquarian given that extensive renovations still lie ahead Groundwater had drained away over the years Book Fair, FIAC (Foire Internationale d’Art and that all the work is to be self-funded. (the nearby Seine’s water level had lowered) Think you know the Grand Palais? You’ve and exposed the piles to air. The “island” only scratched the surface. The building’s was sinking under its 9,400-ton metal intricate logic has come as a revelation weight. even for the man in charge: “The moment “It was the times that saved the you climb the great art-nouveau staircase Grand Palais,” says Saint-Geours, the man and you discover that beyond there’s an appointed in 2007 to take charge of its immense room—the natural conclusion renaissance. “I firmly believe if all this had of everything that’s gone before it—that’s happened 30 years earlier, the building when things begin to fall into place. The would have been demolished. You couldn’t public hardly knows this monument,” he say it became fashionable again—that concludes. “We’re gradually re-conquering would be stretching it—but there came it and joining it up, so we can reveal the to be an appreciation of it.

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