Public Monuments

Art in Political Bondage 1870-1997

Sergiusz Michalski

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781780232355
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art général

Public monuments to significant individuals or to political concepts are all too familiar. But the notions underlying them are not so obvious. Sergiusz Michalski traces the history of the public monument from the 1870s, when erecting them became an artistic, political and social pre-occupation, to today when the distinction between public monuments and public sculpture is increasingly blurred.The author shows how, in its golden age – up until 1914 – the public monument served the purpose of both education and legitimization. The French Third Republic, for example, envisaged the monument as a symbol of bourgeois meritocracy. In more recent decades, the public monument has been charged with the task of commemorating and symbolizing one of humankind's most terrible catastrophes - the Holocaust. Today, although the artistic failure of countless European war memorials has signaled the beginning of the demise of the public monument in the West, it continues to flourish elsewhere, commemorating despotic leaders from Kim Il Sung to Saddam Hussein.

1 Democratic ‘Statuomania’ in Paris

On 15 August 1870, the ceremonial unveiling of an important monument was scheduled to take place on the Place de Clichy in Paris (illus. 2). The Emperor himself had promised to lend his presence to this significant state occasion. The monument constituted the first major commission of the city of Paris, then governed and being transformed with a firm hand by the famous Baron Haussmann. An imposing, free-standing allegorical-historical group – a novelty in the context of Parisian statuary of the period – was to present the spirited defence of the Barrière de Clichy, under the command of General de Moncey, against the troops of the anti-Napoleonic coalition at the end of March 1814. After seven years of deliberations and constant changes, the sculptor Amédée Doublemard had finally completed a three-figure group. General de Moncey stood before a towering personification of Lutetia (Paris), protecting her with sabre in hand, while, on her other side, a wounded young student, glowing with patriotic fervour, slowly sank to the ground.

Judged by the standards of mid-nineteenth-century allegorical art, Doublemard had hit upon an excellent solution, one which combined the figure of a real person with that of a social type and a personification, thus establishing an important triadic model for later statuary. In a move in keeping with the anti-Revolutionary ideology of the state, the artist created in the figure of the young student of the Ecole Polytechnique – an important institution of the Empire – a physiognomic substitution for the type of Revolutionary Parisian urchin immortalized by Hugo and Delacroix. The pyramidal form of the group followed a hallowed Academic scheme, but adroitly combined classicizing pathos with Romantic-style flowing movement. Looking towards the fortifications of Paris – whence the enemy had come – the statue nevertheless fits well into the Place de Clichy.

The ceremonial unveiling did not take place, however. In mid-August 1870, Napoleon III had already joined his retreating armies and the Prussians had just commenced their march towards Sedan. The siege of Paris two months later reflected the monument’s theme once again. A photograph taken in early 1871 shows the statue surrounded by cannons, as if striking a defensive pose.

The monument on the Place de Clichy thus had a singular fate: inaugurated not by an official ceremony but by a re-enactment of its historical narrative, it became by chance the first statue of the fledgling Third Republic, a state born amidst battle and cannon fire, which in turn was destined to create the most remarkable metropolitan agglomerate of political and historical monuments in human history. What is more, the fact that Doublemard’s work had come about because of a municipal commission (in view of Haussmann’s position somewhat nominal) set a pattern for most of the monuments which were later to grace the Third Republic’s capital.¹

MODEST BEGINNINGS

The first decade of the Republic’s existence, spanning the 1870s, hardly presaged such a course of events. In a demonstrative act of anti-iconoclastic restitution, the Republic restored the demolished Vendôme column (1875) and charged Gustave Courbet – who had been only marginally involved in the demolition² – with the costs, thus forcing the hapless painter into exile in Switzerland. Since the Tuileries palace, which had burnt down, was not rebuilt, and the reconstruction of the destroyed Hôtel de Ville went on until the 1880s, the column’s restoration was intended to symbolize the re-establishment of the ‘public moral order’. Even the fact that the restitution of Napoleon’s statue had by then taken on an undesirable Bonapartist ring was considered less important than the need to reverse its demolition by the dreaded Commune of Paris.

Of greater importance, with regard to the future, was the erection of an equestrian statue of Joan of Arc (1874),³ a notable work by Emmanuel Fremiet, on the Place des Pyramides (illus. 3). By the nineteenth century, the cult of Joan had become the rallying point of different factions of French conservatism,⁴ and Fremiet’s monument, the slightly Gothicizing ‘troubadour’ allure of which evoked reminiscences of Restoration art,⁵ provided the Right with a most welcome symbol. Contrary to June Hargrove’s suggestion, however, the monument did not appeal to all Frenchmen. When moderate Republicans celebrated the centenary of Voltaire’s death in 1878, the Right responded – Voltaire having created in his ‘Pucelle’ a biting satire of Joan – by organizing ceremonies of homage before her monument.

3 Emmanuel Fremiet, Joan of Arc, Place des Pyramides, Paris, 1874.

The original intentions of the patrons of this equestrian statue certainly went farther than to provide a focal point for conservative counter-demonstrations, however. When it was conceived in 1872, the entry into Paris of a legitimate Bourbon pretender – the then Count of Chambord, who upon investiture was to take the name of Henri V – seemed imminent. Bishop Dupanloup of Orléans, who was the driving force behind the Joan cult, was also the (albeit unsuccessful) chief mediator between the two main monarchical factions. Joan’s pose, and the role the statue was to play, can be understood properly only when we recall her mission: to liberate and enter French cities on behalf and in the service of her legitimate monarch. When, on a wintry February day in 1874, the equestrian statue entered the indifferent or hostile city of Paris, it assumed the function which Joan herself had had and signalled by her pose and by the gestures of the leader of an imaginary cortège the imminent arrival of King Henri V.

However, through his constant refusal to accept the tricolore, the Pretender, a narrow-minded bigot, had by 1875 lost all chances of reversing the Republic. His entry into Paris – for which decorative carriages bearing the new royal monogram had already been constructed – never took place. This context may explain the fact that in the 1880s and later, the statue lost much of its appeal in conservative circles. When the sculptor Paul Dubois was commissioned to model another equestrian statue of Joan for Reims cathedral (1889–95), he chose (in accordance with the changed political climate) another motif: Joan’s heavenly vision. Evidently, the bellicose aspects of the Paris statue were no longer judged palatable, a change evidenced also by the fact that a replica of the Reims statue was erected in 1897 on the Place St-Augustin in the metropolis.⁶

At the end of the 1870s, after the demission of President MacMahon, the Republic stabilized itself politically and gained a sense of its task as well as its destiny. With a marginalized Right licking its mostly self-inflicted wounds, the Republic turned towards the arduous task of establishing an ethos of its own, and that embraced the fields of self-representation and political propaganda. The year 1879 constituted a turning-point in this respect. That was when the first signs of a Republican tradition began to appear. Alphonse Thiers, who had died two years earlier, was the first politician of the Third Republic whose busts – from 1879 on – graced many an official building. From 1879/80, préfectures and mairies were decorated by official busts of the Republic, which public opinion preferred to address as ‘Marianne’.⁷ This popular cultic designation – admirably studied by Maurice Agulhon – was restricted to busts or painted images. Thus, when the City Council of Paris decided in early 1879 to proclaim a competition for a great statue of the Republic, it used the official designation ‘Monument to the French Republic’.

A TALE OF TWO ‘RÉEPUBLIQUES’

The 90th anniversary of the French Revolution had provided the external stimulus for the City Council’s decision. Unofficially, a thematic link to the events of 1789–92 – but not to the Jacobine terror which followed – was stipulated. The monument in question was to be erected on the Place de la République. The results of the competition were no doubt representative of the state of statuary art in France. By a slim majority, a Neoclassical République with three stiff seated personifications, submitted by the brothers Leopold (sculptural segments) and Charles Morice (architectural segments), carried the day. A vociferous minority opinion among the jury members claimed precedence for the second prize, a submission by the ex-Communard Jules Dalou. Dalou had just returned from exile in England and proposed a monument consisting of an attractive mélange of late Baroque and realistic elements.

Paradoxically, Dalou’s project encountered opposition from both the Left and the Right. Both resented his stylistic dependency on Carpeaux and thought the project too overt a reference to the frivolous debauchery of the 1860s, exemplified by the latter’s Dance. The classicizing inclinations of the Left – though many Leftists rejected the idea of public monuments as such – and the neo-Gothic penchant of the Right were at odds with the neo-Rococo and -Baroque style of Napoleon’s failed regime. Going further, the contest between the Morice brothers and Dalou implied the need to choose between a static (the former) and a highly dynamic (the latter) conception of a public monument.

The Morices’ statue, unveiled in 1883,⁸ showed the Republic in a pose reminiscent of the (not yet unveiled) Statue of Liberty by Bartholdi, the torch’s place being taken by an outstretched olive branch (illus. 4). This was a most appropriate symbol for the French Republic of the 1875–85 interlude, when a generally pacific inclination and a placid foreign policy seemed to have quenched any thoughts of revenge for Sedan and the amputation of Alsace-Lorraine. Leopold Morice decided to surround the main statue with personifications of the Republic’s slogan, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. He did this in a way which seemed to stress their links with the medieval system of the three theological virtues. Six bronze tablets affixed to the base presented a meticulously balanced choice of scenes from the years 1789–92, before Robespierre’s seizure of power. The only unconventional element was provided by a lion in the foreground, which guarded – as a living, functioning symbol of democracy – not the habitual coat of arms but the simile of a ballot box (illus. 5). The 23-m-high monument harmonized perfectly with its surroundings. Although accepted by Parisians of the time, it proved unable to inspire a deep attachment in later decades. Somehow, the choice of the Morice brothers seemed too facile.

4 Leopold and Charles Morice, Monument to the Republic, Place de la République, Paris, 1879–83.

The City Council and competition jury must have realized this, because half a year later they took what, judged by the standards of modern statuary competitions, was a unique decision. In early 1880, it was decided to erect a second monument to the Republic on the adjacent Place de la Nation and to use the project of Dalou. Since Dalou’s conception was totally different, it was felt that the nominal duplication would not lead to thematic redundancy.

Dalou dressed his Republic⁹ – in marked contrast with Morice’s – in a Phrygian cap, thus establishing solid left-wing credentials from the outset and pointing to the statue’s Revolutionary heritage (illus. 6, 7). He showed the Republic marching on a globe, her hand extended in a gesture of protection which somewhat resembled the holding of reins. Where Morice had presented a Republic suing for peace, Dalou demonstrated – by means of a truly Baroque iconographic formula – that republicanism as a form of government had a universal value – this despite the fact that France was by then the sole republic on European soil. The Republic claimed the same archetypal position on the globe which Christian iconography had reserved for Christ, the Virgin Mary or personifications of Religion and Faith.

The globe was fixed onto a chariot pulled by two lions. The Republic’s protective gesture, by simultaneously implying the holding of entirely imaginary reins, stressed her directing role. Compositionally, this gesture found a visual response in the raised torch of the figure of Freedom, which sat daringly on a lion. Freedom looked, half-jubilantly, half-questioningly, at the Republic. It was she who by the splendidly polyvalent gesture of her hand gave Freedom his prerogatives while determining the limits of liberty. Labour – shown in the realistic form of an apron-clad worker with a hammer – and Justice accompanied the Republic on both sides of her chariot, while Peace, amidst signs of abundance, completed the cortège....