BRIEF TOUR OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PARKWAY
Including City Hall (French Second Empire style), Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Barnes and Rodin museums. An émigré from Lyon, Paul Philippe Cret (1876-1945) planned this wide avenue lined with statuary, trees and museums, while French architect Jacques Gréber (1882-1962) landscaped it.
Constructed from 1917 until the 1930s, much of the Parkway was modeled after Paris’s Champs-Elysées, creating a grand boulevard that once overlapped with several gritty neighborhoods. Cret and Gréber also collaborated on the Rodin Museum.
PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART
Tour of Léger: Modern Art and the Metropolis
Restaurant:
Bistrot La Minette
623 S 6th St.
(215) 925-8000
http://goo.gl/maps/pF4kl
Chef Peter Woolsey pays great respect to the traditional dishes that he creates and honors the classical French methods required to achieve unparalleled bistrot cuisine, drawn from the various regions of France. The restaurant was painstakingly designed by Peter and John Woolsey and Peggy Baud Woolsey. Original art (including a suite of art nouveau-inspired paintings by Peter’s mother, Bette, that grace the private dining salon), and furnishings evoke the flavor of France’s celebrated culinary regions.
STROLL LA PLACE CLICHY AND MONTMARTRE
Léger was inspired by the place Clichy: “The vivid hues of primary reds, yellows, and blues contrasting with vibrant greens, purples, and grays allude to both the glare of street lighting and the dazzle of modern advertisements on the Place Clichy.” Also famous for its demimonde, nearby Montmartre was the avant-garde center where Picasso kept his studio. Léger frequented Montmartre both before and after WWI, and it retains some early-20th century flavor, with famous cafes and cabarets remaining: Moulin Rouge, Brasserie Wepler.
Brasserie Wepler
14, place de Clichy
1 45 22 53 24
http://goo.gl/maps/dxc72
A favorite artist’s haunt in Léger’s time, not to mention Henry Miller, who would praise it in “Quiet Days in Clichy.”
Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris
11 Avenue du Président Wilson
1 53 67 40 00
http://goo.gl/maps/FkrRb
Fernand Léger, Les Disques, 1918, o/c, 94 ½ x 71 in.
LE CORBUSIER STUDIO 24 rue Nungesser et Coli
01 42 88 75 72
http://goo.gl/maps/ru1jx
Metro : Exelmans
Studio designed by Le Corbusier for the artist Amedée Ozenfant 16th arrondissement (near Metro: Porte d’Auteuil, Jasmin, Exelmans): Robert Mallet-Stevens' architecture explores all different variations of modernist language; in this work he displays a huge catalogue of windows, volumes and formal
compositions.
The rue Robert Mallet-Stevens is a landmark “modern street” with all buildings designed in the 1920s by the architect, designer and production designer for which it’s named (1886-1945). It is composed of four housing blocks that create a private dead-end crossing; ateliers at the ground floor (Mallet-Stevens' office is now an art gallery open to the public).
FONDATION LE CORBUSIER
Villa LaRoche-Jeanneret,
8, Square du Docteur Blanche
01.42.88.75.70
http://goo.gl/maps/ogTOr
Maison LaRoche is the Corbusier Museum.
Built of reinforced concrete in 1928-31 by Le Corbusier and his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret. It was a manifesto of Le Corbusier’s "five points" of new architecture, and is one of the most easily recognizable and renowned examples of the International Style. The house was originally built as a country retreat on behest of the Savoye family, and was later seized by the Nazis.
CENTRE GEORGES POMPIDOU
19 Rue Beaubourg
1 44 78 12 33
http://goo.gl/maps/VTpq3
Tour with Ariane Coulondre, curator and Christian Derouet, Léger catalogue contributor and former chief curator.
Works by Fernand Léger include:
Etude pour les disques dans la Ville, 1920; gouache
Composition a la main et aux chapeaux, 1927; 97 ¾ x 73 Element mécanique, 1924, oil on canvas, 57 ½ x 38 in., Charlot Cubiste, 1924, painted wood, 9 x 13 x 2 ½ in.
Leopold Survage, Colored Rhythm: Studies for the Film, 1913, graphite and ink on paper
Amédée Ozenfant, le pot blanc, o/c, 59.6 x 69.5 in.
The Pompidou is lending seven works by Léger and others by Le Corbusier, Francis Picabia, Man Ray
Léger studio in Montparnasse:
86, Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs
http://goo.gl/maps/hhDDJ
The façade is evident from the street. In 1924 Léger, with Ozenfant, founded the Académie de l’Art Moderne at Léger’s studio at in Montparnasse. (Just off Bl. Montparnasse, near Bl. Raspail)
LA RUCHE (THE BEEHIVE)
15th arrondissement near the Passage Dantzig
http://goo.gl/maps/Qs8aU
Built by Gustave Eiffel, it contained studios of Léger, Chagall, Archipenko, and Brancusi before World War I. Metro: Convention (Near Porte Versailles); (Metro Convention) close by Porte Versailles.
