Page 32 - Studio Internationa - March 1971

Commentary on high upon le plateau Beaubourg. The idea of ever found fault with it. Above all, the function
a twentieth-century museum found favour with was fixed: a string orchestra might not be
John Russell great persons who saw in its fulfilment a playing every day among the potted plants, as it
memorial to themselves, more lasting than played at the opening of the recent exhibition of
bronze and a good deal larger than anything modern British art in that same National
that a bronze foundry can cope with. The space Gallery, but it would be there in spirit.
was there; the collections were there, though at Things do move on, of course, and I won't
present widely scattered; the incentive was say that the Glenn Miller Sound or its French
there, since it is in the interest of France as a equivalent will be programmed into the
whole that there should be one single place to Beaubourg museum. But the idea of a capitalized
which the interested visitor would be drawn upper-case Modern Museum is running into
irresistibly. Nothing of consequence has been trouble everywhere: or, more exactly, it is
done, in these matters, since the great outburst having growth-problems. It has growth-problems
of architectural mismanagement which marked of style, and growth-problems of content, and
the Paris Exhibition of 1937; and although neither batch can be solved easily. There is
André Malraux is no longer in the government trouble within, and trouble without. That there
France now has a President who knows a great is a generation-gap at the younger end of the
deal about art and has committed himself to the scale goes without saying; but there is a
erection of a modern museum on the Beaubourg generation-gap at the other end, too. The
site. Modern Museum concept was formed in New
A world-wide competition is in progress to York in the late 192os by people of a particular
find the right design for the new building. kind, age, and class; and, broadly speaking,
Architects from all countries are being invited those people and their equivalents in other cities
to submit, first a brief general idea, and later an have stayed with the concept ever since. They
elaborated programme and a scale-model. An were born with the century, more or less, just
international jury has been appointed, and the as Roland Penrose was born with the century
notional final project is intended to fulfil every in England. Most of them had inherited
imaginable demand which could be made upon fortunes which have been kept together without
it. Sir Frank Francis, lately Director of the overmuch difficulty; in making the museums
British Museum, will be there to see fair play they were favoured both by a tax-structure
for the art-library; Willem Sandberg, for half a which gave them a relatively comfortable ride
lifetime the animator of the Stedelijk Museum and by societal patterns which ensured that
in Amsterdam, will be there to advise on the patronage of the Museum, like patronage of
The problem of le plateau Beaubourg is not one social contacts which he knew so well how to `the Symphony', gave the kind of prestige which
that comes within the stunted purview of the establish in Holland; Philip Johnson will be in England was conferred by a lifetime of
English art-world. But it is, none the less, a there to encourage and warn from his unpaid service on the Bench.
matter of more than Parisian interest. The experiences at the Museum of Modern Art in The creation of the Modern Museum—or of
plateau Beaubourg is a patch of land immediately New York and elsewhere. The average age of the one in New York, at any rate—also
east of Les Halles, in the 3rd arrondissement of the jury is undoubtedly high, and several of its depended on a most delicate and reciprocal
Paris. For centuries it has been one of the most members are of a distinctly imperious turn of relationship between the Museum and its
disreputable places in Europe, an area of mind; but to anyone who knows the ways of benefactors. During the formative decade
crapulous and lazarded houses given over to officialdom there is every sign of a genuine (1929-39) the Modern Museum was still
prostitution of a vigorous but relatively readiness to listen and learn, and in general to foraging in territory not yet marked out by
unremunerative sort. As of now, much of it has do the best that can be done for a city which is history. Almost every new acquisition was
been or is being razed to the ground. With the still one of the three or four supreme human negotiated by Alfred Barr and his colleagues in
departure of the ventre de Paris to Rungis and achievements in its kind. an atmosphere which could be polluted at any
and the consequent destruction or—let us hope — Forty years ago there would have been moment by uncertainty or disbelief. The person
re-allocation of the market buildings there arises argument, certainly, about what such a building who had it in mind to buy a Mire) on Tuesday
an urbanistic opportunity of a kind too often let should look like, and perhaps even more could turn out on Wednesday to have settled
slip. In 1854 Baltard submitted his definitive argument about what should be in it. But it is for a Louis XV painted bergère. The exposed
project for the iron-framed market-buildings very unlikely that there would have been nerve of the century was present in its art, and
which have stood ever since as a masterpiece of argument about whether it should come into it was also present in the museum-patron
secular non-residential architecture; since they existence at all. People might disagree about relationship; and that relationship, like all
lost their original function a year or two ago the what was good art, at any given time, but they others, did not stay still. What is happening in
Halles in general, and Baltar's buildings in would not dispute that the best place for the our own decade is that the relationship so
particular, have become the centre of a new best art was in a museum. The best art came in carefully nurtured over forty years has quietly
kind of informal, high-spirited, un-commercial the form of paintings that hung flat on the wall petered out. The founders of the Modern
activity. It was there, for instance, that and sculptures that sat still on a plinth. You Museum are pushing seventy. What began as
`Orlando Furioso' was presented and Parisians got the art, and you built the building, and you a humane adventure has become a burden, in
by the thousands fought one another to hired the guards and opened the doors, and material terms, and in many cases it has become
participate: in a spectacle which did honour to that was it. The art would last for ever, in a burden in emotional terms also : for it is a fact
the notion 'of 'street theatre'. physical terms, and the building had walls of life that the greater the commitment to a
As Paris has no modern museum-building thicker than any that had been seen since certain kind of art in youth, the greater the
worthy of the name, and as Le Corbusier's Vauban went out of business. It might be sense of loss and frustration when other kinds
projected museum at the western extremity of `modern' to look at, but then again it might not: of art come along and supplant it.
the city is never likely to be brought to fruition, the National Gallery in Washington is based on In a stable (or a static) society this would be
it was natural that eyes should be turned from a Roman plan, but nobody in Washington has no problem. 'Like father, like son' would apply.

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