The Lavirotte Building, an apartment building at 29 Avenue Rapp in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, was designed by the architect Jules Lavirotte and built between 1899 and 1901. The building is one of the best-known surviving examples of Art Nouveau architecture in Paris. The facade is lavishly decorated with sculpture and ceramic tiles made by the ceramics manufacturer Alexandre Bigot. Lavirotte was awarded the prize for the most original new facade in the 7th arrondissement in 1901.
The architect, Jules Lavirotte, had already built two buildings in the same neighborhood of the 7th arrondissement; a private residence at 12 Rue Sédillot (now a school) and an apartment building at 3 Square Rapp, where he had his own apartment on the fifth floor. Both of these buildings had some of the fantasy and art nouveau elements for which Lavirotte was famous, but none were as exuberant as the new building. Some sources, including the Base Mérimée, the official list of French historic monuments, state that the building was owned by Alexandre Bigot, a chemistry professor turned entrepreneur who was the first in France to manufacture glazed ceramic tiles, an ancient technique he borrowed from China. However, the construction permit shows the building was owned by Lavirotte and Charles Combes, and there is no evidence that Bigot ever lived there. [1] Nonetheless, the building did become a very effective showcase of the glazed earthenware tiles that he developed, which were later used in other notable Art Nouveau buildings. The ceramic tiles and sculpture turned the building into a work of art, a large piece of sculpture.
Lavirotte used several innovations in the construction of the building. Some of the walls were built with an early form of reinforced concrete. The bricks were hollow; once they had been put in place, metal wires or rods were run through them to secure them and then they were filled with concrete. In addition, Lavirotte built the walls in two layers with an air space between, to provide more effective soundproofing.
A team of craftsmen was responsible for the construction and decoration; The ironwork was made by Dondelinger; the sculptural decoration, designed by Lavirotte, was done by Théobald-Joseph Sporrer, Firmin Michelet and Alfred-Jean Halou. The sculpture around the front doorway was by Jean-Baptiste Larrivé. [2]
The Lavirotte building was listed as an historic monument in 1964. [3]
Like his contemporary, Hector Guimard, Lavirotte was catapulted to fame when the building was a winner in the Paris competition of new facades of 1901. The competition had been created to encourage Paris architects to break away from the model for apartment buildings created by Georges-Eugène Haussmann during the reign of Napoléon III, which later critics found monotonous. In giving the award to Lavirotte, the jury declared, "the ensemble of the facade, which produces a very agreeable effect, certainly contributes to the decoration of the grand boulevard on which it is constructed. [4] Lavirotte won the prize two more times, for the Ceramic Hotel in 1905.
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The facade of the ground floor and first floor are relatively simply decorated compared with the upper floors. The centerpiece is the extravagant doorway, framed with statues of Adam and Eve, a woman's head (said to be the wife of Lavirotte, the painter Jane de Montchenu), and vegetal designs. The doors are decorated with wrought iron lizards.. The windows of the first floor are richly sculptured. The upper floors are entirely faced with glazed and colored ceramic tiles, with lavish sculptural decoration, vegetal and animal themes, curved windows, curling wrought iron railings and picturesque balconies.
Some observers claim to have found many erotic elements in the facade, including Adam and Eve, and a multitude of phallic symbols in the decoration, including the sculptures over the top-floor windows, sculpture, and the sculpted iron lizards on the doors (a term in Parisian argot for a male sexual organ), as well as in the shape of the front door, which they claim are in the form of the female sexual organ (See external links below). However, others see simply decoration.
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The interior of the building features much art nouveau decoration, but is more subdued than the exterior. The vestibule is decorated with curved archways supported on marble columns, with short stairways leading to an apartment (now a dentist's office) on one side and to the main stairway on the other. The stairway is the central decorative of the interior; the entrance has a door decorated with wrought iron and glass, and the railing of the stairway is made up of undulating iron work in exotic vegetal forms. The ground floor also features finely-crafted stonework and sculptural detail. The walls of the stairway are decorated with art nouveau floral designs in subdued browns, golds and reds. At the top of the stairway, another smaller stairway leads to the rooftop terrace. A covered passage on the street level leads to a small interior courtyard, which is more simply decorated than the facade, but has sculpted art nouveau lintels around the windows.
It combined elements of Baroque with vegetal and floral patterns, and highly ornamental ironwork. The architectural critic Gilles Plum wrote in 2014: "The building of Jules Lavirotte is a rare example of free composition pushed to the limits, with expensive materials giving rich plastic effects." [2]
Art Nouveau is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and flowers. Other characteristics of Art Nouveau were a sense of dynamism and movement, often given by asymmetry or whiplash lines, and the use of modern materials, particularly iron, glass, ceramics and later concrete, to create unusual forms and larger open spaces. It was popular between 1890 and 1910 during the Belle Époque period, and was a reaction against the academicism, eclecticism and historicism of 19th century architecture and decorative art.
Hector Guimard was a French architect and designer, and a prominent figure of the Art Nouveau style. He achieved early fame with his design for the Castel Beranger, the first Art Nouveau apartment building in Paris, which was selected in an 1899 competition as one of the best new building facades in the city. He is best known for the glass and iron edicules or canopies, with ornamental Art Nouveau curves, which he designed to cover the entrances of the first stations of the Paris Metro.
Victor Pierre Horta was a Belgian architect and designer, and one of the founders of the Art Nouveau movement. He was a fervent admirer of the French architectural theorist Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and his Hôtel Tassel in Brussels (1892–93), often considered the first Art Nouveau house, is based on the work of Viollet-le-Duc. The curving stylized vegetal forms that Horta used in turn influenced many others, including the French architect Hector Guimard, who used it in the first Art Nouveau apartment building he designed in Paris and in the entrances he designed for the Paris Metro. He is also considered a precursor of modern architecture for his open floor plans and his innovative use of iron, steel and glass.
French Renaissance architecture is a style which was prominent between the late 15th and early 17th centuries in the Kingdom of France. It succeeded French Gothic architecture. The style was originally imported from Italy after the Hundred Years' War by the French kings Charles VII, Louis XI, Charles VIII, Louis XII and François I. Several notable royal châteaux in this style were built in the Loire Valley, notably the Château de Montsoreau, the Château de Langeais, the Château d'Amboise, the Château de Blois, the Château de Gaillon and the Château de Chambord, as well as, closer to Paris, the Château de Fontainebleau.
Jules Aimé Lavirotte was a French architect who is best known for the Art Nouveau buildings he created in the 7th arrondissement in Paris. His buildings were known for his imaginative and exuberant decoration, and particularly for his use of sculpture and glazed ceramic tiles on the facades, made in collaboration with leading sculptors and the ceramic manufacturer Alexandre Bigot. He was three times awarded prizes by the city of Paris for the most original facades, for the Lavirotte Building at 29 Avenue Rapp (1901), for the Ceramic hotel, 34 Avenue de Wagram (1904), and for the building at 23 avenue de Messine in 1907.
Henri Sauvage was a French architect and designer in the early 20th century. He was one of the most important architects in the French Art nouveau movement, Art Deco, and the beginning of architectural modernism. He was also a pioneer in the construction of public housing buildings in Paris. His major works include the art nouveau Villa Majorelle in Nancy, France and the art-deco building of the La Samaritaine department store in Paris.
Alexandre Bigot was a French ceramicist. He was primarily a ceramics manufacturer, producing the designs of many artists and architects of the French-Belgian Art Nouveau movement, including: Jules Lavirotte, Hector Guimard, Louis Majorelle, Henri Sauvage, Henry van de Velde, Auguste Perret, Andre Arfvidson, Anatole de Baudot and more.
The Villa Majorelle is a house located at 1 rue Louis-Majorielle in the city of Nancy, France, which was the home and studio of the furniture designer Louis Majorelle. It was designed and built by the architect Henri Sauvage in 1901-1902. The villa is one of the first and most influential examples of the Art Nouveau architectural style in France. It served as a showcase for Majorelle's furniture and the work of other noted decorative artists of the period, including ceramist Alexandre Bigot and stained glass artist Jacques Gruber. It is now owned by the city of Nancy, and is open to the public certain days for tours by reservation.
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The city of Paris has notable examples of architecture of every period, from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. It was the birthplace of the Gothic style, and has important monuments of the French Renaissance, Classical revival, the Flamboyant style of the reign of Napoleon III, the Belle Époque, and the Art Nouveau style. The great Exposition Universelle (1889) and 1900 added Paris landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower and Grand Palais. In the 20th century, the Art Deco style of architecture first appeared in Paris, and Paris architects also influenced the postmodern architecture of the second half of the century.
The Maison Coilliot is an Art Nouveau house located in Lille, France, designed by Hector Guimard and completed in 1900. It became a listed building on 16 March 1977.
The architecture of Paris created during the Belle Époque, between 1871 and the beginning of the First World War in 1914, was notable for its variety of different styles, from neo-Byzantine and neo-Gothic to classicism, Art Nouveau and Art Deco. It was also known for its lavish decoration and its imaginative use of both new and traditional materials, including iron, plate glass, colored tile and reinforced concrete. Notable buildings and structures of the period include the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Gare de Lyon, the Bon Marché department store, and the entries of the stations of the Paris Metro designed by Hector Guimard.
The Castel Béranger is a residential building with thirty-six apartments located at 14 rue de la Fontaine in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. It was designed by the architect Hector Guimard, and built between 1895 and 1898. It was the first residence in Paris built in the style known as Art Nouveau.
The Art Nouveau movement of architecture and design first appeared in Brussels, Belgium, in the early 1890s, and quickly spread to France and to the rest of Europe. It began as a reaction against the formal vocabulary of European academic art, eclecticism and historicism of the 19th century, and was based upon an innovative use of new materials, such as iron and glass, to open larger interior spaces and provide maximum light; curving lines such as the whiplash line; and other designs inspired by plants and other natural forms.
The Gorky Museum is an architectural landmark of the "Moderne" style, the Russian term for Art Nouveau. It was built in Moscow in 1900–02 by the architect Fyodor Schechtel. It is also known as the Ryabouchinsky House, for the young Russian industrialist and art collector who built it. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Ryabouchinsky family emigrated to France. In 1931 the Soviet government offered the house to the writer Maxim Gorky and his family. It was his home until his death in 1936. The widow of Gorky's son continued to live in the house until her death in 1965. It then became the Gorky Museum, dedicated to his life and work. It is located in the historic center of Moscow, at 6 Malaya Nikitskaya. Admission is free.
The Linke Wienzeile Buildings are two apartment buildings in Vienna constructed by Otto Wagner in 1898-99 in the Vienna Secession style. They are both lavishly decorated with colorful tiles, sculpture and wrought iron. One house, at 40 Linke Wienzeile, has a facade covered with majolica, or glazed earthenware tiles in floral designs, is popularly known as the Majolica House. The second, at 38 Linke Wienzeile, is called the Medallion House, for the bronze medallions on the facade. It also features sculpted angels on the roof. A third building nearby, at 3 Köstlergasse, was the town residence of Wagner for a time.
The Art Deco movement of architecture and design appeared in Paris in about 1910–12, and continued until the beginning of World War II in 1939. It took its name from the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925. It was characterized by bold geometric forms, bright colors, and highly stylized decoration, and it symbolized modernity and luxury. Art Deco architecture, sculpture, and decoration reached its peak at 1939 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, and in movie theaters, department stores, other public buildings. It also featured in the work of Paris jewelers, graphic artists, furniture craftsmen, and jewelers, and glass and metal design. Many Art Deco landmarks, including the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Palais de Chaillot, can be seen today in Paris.
The Art Nouveau movement of architecture and design flourished in Paris from about 1895 to 1914, reaching its high point at the 1900 Paris International Exposition. with the Art Nouveau metro stations designed by Hector Guimard. It was characterized by a rejection of historicism and traditional architectural forms, and a flamboyant use of floral and vegetal designs, sinuous curving lines such as the whiplash line, and asymmetry. It was most prominent in architecture, appearing in department stores, apartment buildings, and churches; and in the decorative arts, particularly glassware, furniture, and jewelry. Besides Guimard, major artists included René Lalique in glassware, Louis Majorelle in furniture, and Alphonse Mucha in graphic arts, It spread quickly to other countries, but lost favor after 1910 and came to an end with the First World War.
The whiplash or whiplash line is a motif of decorative art and design that was particularly popular in Art Nouveau. It is an asymmetrical, sinuous line, often in an ornamental S curve, usually inspired by natural forms such as plants and flowers, which suggests dynamism and movement. It took its name from a woven fabric panel called "Coup de Fouet" ("Whiplash") by the German artist Hermann Obrist (1895) which depicted the stems and roots of the cyclamen flower. The panel was later reproduced by the textile workshop of the Darmstadt Artists Colony.
Art Nouveau in Milan indicates the spread of such artistic style in the city of Milan between the early years of the 20th century and the outbreak of the First World War. In the Lombard capital, art nouveau, called StileLiberty in Italian, found—thanks to its close relationship with the rampant industrial bourgeoisie of the time—a fertile ground for its rapid development, during which it oscillated between the influences of French Art Nouveau, German Jugendstil and eclecticism.
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