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DOI Artikel:Linder Gaillard, Inge: Memory, tradition, 'patrimoine' and 'création': sacred art and architecture in late-20th-century France. An introduction
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49350#0618
597
INGĘ LINDER GAILLARD
Courtauld Institute, University of London
Memory, Tradition, ‘Patrimoine’ and ‘Creation’:
Sacred Art and Architecture in late-20th-Century
France. An Introduction
One of the characteristics of many debates or discussions in art history relating to
art in the West after the Second World War has been the notion that New York
‘stole’ the art world from Europę, and from Paris in particular.1 This notion and
its conseąuences are in the process of being reconsidered as Europeans seek value in
the artists and the art that has been produced over the last fifty years on the continent, and
as Americans look to the other side of the Atlantic to see how the art world there has
developed.
The French art scene is heavily implicated in these issues. What is known of it tends to
end, if not with the standard declination of cubism and other modern-‘isms’, then with the
late creations of the so-called modern masters in the years after the Second World War,
which in certain cases have become ‘cult’ destinations: Henri Matisse’s chapel of the
Rosary in Vence, north-west of Nice in Southern France (1951); Le Corbusier’s chapel of
Notre Damę du Haut at Ronchamp, north-west of Belfort at the foot of the Vosges in
eastern France (1955); and the chapel of Notre-Dame de Toute Grace at Assy in the French
Alps for which Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Georges
Rouault, and Jacques Lipchitz all created work, not to mention a younger generation which
includes Jean Bazaine and Germaine Richier (1940s-1950s). These contemporaneous ex-
amples have at least two things in common: they all involved artists and architects work-
ing for the Catholic Church of France, and they challenged Paris’s hegemony over art
within French borders. Without going into the intriguing story of how these ‘rebel’ artists
came to accept such commissions, it is elear that they had set an important precedent for
the generations of artists to come in the second half of the 20th century in France. For
indeed, if one is to attempt to answer the somewhat nai’ve but nevertheless urgent question
of where artists and architects have ‘disappeared to’ in France over the past forty years,
one of the principle answers is that art has ‘gone to church’. That is, many of those who are
considered the most important contemporary artists and architects in France have followed
the precedent of the modern masters and accepted commissions for her churches. They
have often invested themselves beyond all expectation - both their own and those of
1 This is in reference to S. GUILBAUT, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, Chicago 1983.
INGĘ LINDER GAILLARD
Courtauld Institute, University of London
Memory, Tradition, ‘Patrimoine’ and ‘Creation’:
Sacred Art and Architecture in late-20th-Century
France. An Introduction
One of the characteristics of many debates or discussions in art history relating to
art in the West after the Second World War has been the notion that New York
‘stole’ the art world from Europę, and from Paris in particular.1 This notion and
its conseąuences are in the process of being reconsidered as Europeans seek value in
the artists and the art that has been produced over the last fifty years on the continent, and
as Americans look to the other side of the Atlantic to see how the art world there has
developed.
The French art scene is heavily implicated in these issues. What is known of it tends to
end, if not with the standard declination of cubism and other modern-‘isms’, then with the
late creations of the so-called modern masters in the years after the Second World War,
which in certain cases have become ‘cult’ destinations: Henri Matisse’s chapel of the
Rosary in Vence, north-west of Nice in Southern France (1951); Le Corbusier’s chapel of
Notre Damę du Haut at Ronchamp, north-west of Belfort at the foot of the Vosges in
eastern France (1955); and the chapel of Notre-Dame de Toute Grace at Assy in the French
Alps for which Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Georges
Rouault, and Jacques Lipchitz all created work, not to mention a younger generation which
includes Jean Bazaine and Germaine Richier (1940s-1950s). These contemporaneous ex-
amples have at least two things in common: they all involved artists and architects work-
ing for the Catholic Church of France, and they challenged Paris’s hegemony over art
within French borders. Without going into the intriguing story of how these ‘rebel’ artists
came to accept such commissions, it is elear that they had set an important precedent for
the generations of artists to come in the second half of the 20th century in France. For
indeed, if one is to attempt to answer the somewhat nai’ve but nevertheless urgent question
of where artists and architects have ‘disappeared to’ in France over the past forty years,
one of the principle answers is that art has ‘gone to church’. That is, many of those who are
considered the most important contemporary artists and architects in France have followed
the precedent of the modern masters and accepted commissions for her churches. They
have often invested themselves beyond all expectation - both their own and those of
1 This is in reference to S. GUILBAUT, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, Chicago 1983.