Long weekend in Paris. To meet our friends, Cristina and Andreas, who came
from Frankfurt ! Had dinner at Chez Fernand and lunch at Le Frank at the
Foundation, with them. (we had dinner by ourselves at “Semilla” the second night - great food!)The Foundation…one of the last creations of Frank Gehry.
What an architect! Born in Toronto; Gehry lives in the US (Los Angeles,
I think). Have seen his groundbreaking Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao – remarkable! And his
remaking of the Ontario Art Gallery- splendid! I remember reading at the time
that he was born across from the AGO!...
Back to the Foundation. Bernard Arnault, a longtime philanthropist and the
chairman and CEO of the LVMH luxury goods group, decided to create it in the 90’s
and commissioned Gehry at the beginning of 2000’s to build this wonderful
structure (it was started in 2007, with an official opening that took place in
October 2014)!
The building right now is the attaction! There are galleries inside (11 of them, on 4 floors) and the works shown are admirable, but currently people come to see the building! The few pictures we took shown here try to convey its originality but fail to demonstrate its “grandeur”! He said he was inspired by a sailboat (there is a picture of that sailboat, the Suzanne, built in 1911 – you can see how!) and he built it on and surrounded it by water to create the impression that it is afloat- like a ship! He also took his inspiration from glass and metal structures of the 19c around the world, such as the Crystal Palace in London (build for that city’ Great Exhibition in 1851), and that city, such as the Grand Palais (built for that city’s International Exhibition in 1900, and still part of the landscape!).(I assume that the works of Victor Baltard would also have inspired him as well – but the 10 magnificent pavilions that he built in that style to house ‘Les Halles”. In the center of Paris, are no longer existing and have been demolished!)
This is how the “Architecture Digest” describes the museum core
in its review of the building: “…Underneath sits an assemblage of
irregular volumes, known as the Iceberg, containing 11 galleries for art. The
Iceberg is clad in luminous white panels of fiber-reinforced concrete, while
the Verrière (as Gerhy
referred to it) is held aloft by a network of steel trusses
and wood beams in a bravura feat of architectural acrobatics…”It sits at the edge of the “Jardin d’Acclimatation”,a natural park in the “Bois de Boulogne” inaugurated in 1860…
One can write about it long, but best is to go and see it!.
Paris, 28 March 2015
