Unaligned

An invisible line runs down the centre of Paris and through the Observatoire in the 14th arrondissement, marking the point zero of France. Beaten to the prestige of being the centre of the world by the Greenwich meridian in London, it has left Paris feeling slightly askew. A fraction off of this line, overlooking the Observatoire, is a curious anomaly in itself – a building which never knew what time to set its foot in, and which stands as a monument to a similarly unaligned individual.

What makes us different from the others? A child often craves similarity and hopes not to stand out from classmates, but if an accident or illness strikes and leaves lasting traces, the child knows that they must adapt to a world where they will always be seen as a kink in that safe line of normality. How the child deals with this determines the route their life will take.

Xavier Haas was born in Paris in 1907 to hotel owning parents. Two sisters quickly followed and life was idyllic until illness struck Haas when he was only 6 years old. He had contracted Poliomyelitis when on a trip to Alsace, and soon realised that he would be condemned to a life of health problems and physical suffering. A year after this incident, the First World War broke out and the father was sent off to battle. He would survive – just – but would never be the same afterwards having been gassed in the trenches.

The house where Haas was born with the construction his parents had built behind.

Amidst this suffering, Haas discovered art. His Uncle, a talented but depressive artist, lived on the ground floor of his building and the young boy would often spend time with him. Haas had problems walking but he decided that he would excel with his hands, and become an illustrator, sculptor and engraver. After his education in Paris, he spent much time in Brittany where he struck up a lifelong friendship with another artist, Xavier de Langlais.

A portrait of Haas by his friend Xavier de Langlais.

The parents of Xavier Haas supported him in his chosen career and decided to construct a building that would enable him both to work and give him a steady income. It would also prove to be his lasting monument in Paris. The construction at 12 Rue Cassini was entrusted to the architect Charles Abella* in 1930, and the result is a curious but fascinating mixture of forms and styles, completed by an extraordinary sculptured frieze by Xavier Haas himself.

The building was designed as a place where artists could live and work, and was built alongside the house where Haas had been born. It is seven stories high, with bay-window fronted studios and an incredible twisting tower of Babel staircase. It is a building that is very much caught on the cusp of modernism (in its forms and the fact that the functions are so clear) and the neo-classical (Abella chose a kind of pebbledash stone exterior rather than bare concrete), and certainly stands out from other structures in the vicinity.

Haas took a studio in the building and added the frieze at the entrance. For one who was so physically weakened, the creation is a muscular show of force and a robust celebration of art. The art deco styled figures - solid, winged deities - and the extravagant swirls and decorations make it a very powerful work.

Haas would create other works, notably in Brittany, but his influence would be felt more in other areas. He was behind the setting up of an organisation known as the Paralysés de France, and contributed to their magazine called ‘Faire Face’. He continued creating, but ill-health would catch up with him and he died in 1950 aged only 43. His friend, de Langlais, who had often painted portraits of him during his life, sketched him as he lay on his deathbed. It is a quickly scratched picture of calm repose, but Haas would probably want to be remembered more for something else - the vigour of his remarkable sculpture which ensured that he would always stand out from the crowd.

*Charles Abella was not a prolific architect and only designed two buildings in Paris (the other is another similarly curious mix of styles on the Avenue Hoch). However, his name is associated today with one of the most prestigious architectural competitions in France – the Grand Prix d'Architecture de l'Académie des Beaux-Arts. The first prize is known as the Prix Charles Abella, and is awarded to promising young architects.

Defense d'Afficher

The strictest laws should be carved in stone not scribbled on thin sheets of brown paper, but fortunately in France this particular message is also written out clearly on walls up and down the country. "Défense d'Afficher: Loi du 29 Juillet 1881". What is this mysterious law though, and why do we see it displayed in the public space so often?

The first thing to note is that it is a law which still exists very much today. If ever you spot this particular piece of text chiselled out on a wall in the country, it will probably be on a public sector building, more often than not a school. What does the message mean though? 'Défense' in this sense means 'it is prohibited to', and 'afficher' relates to the sticking up of advertising posters. The law therefore was introduced to limit the places where such posters could be placed. This though was far from being the principal subject of this particular law.

The Loi du 29 Juillet 1881 is in fact more closely associated with the freedom of the press. It is only the third chapter that concerns the displaying of posters on walls, and yet this short addition to the bill has ensured that it remains one of the most visible laws in France today. The text is the following;

"Dans chaque commune, le maire, désignera, par arrêté, les lieux exclusivement destinés à recevoir les affiches des lois et autres actes de l'autorité publique" (In each town, the Mayor will decide, by decree, the places which will be used exclusively to display papers describing laws and other acts of public authority).

In more revolutionary times, the public authorities needed to ensure that laws were clearly visible and understood by the people, and also to ensure that unofficial messages were kept off the city walls. It also became an offense to damage any such officially displayed texts, and tearing one today could still get you a stiff fine.

At election times you will still see metal boards set up in front of public buildings where candidates can freely post the messages they wish to promote. A law therefore which is over 130 years old and which still applies, but a law which also has a deep legacy in another sphere; the press. The French press has a well-deserved reputation for respecting the privacy of public figures, but in many respects that situation can be directly traced back to this law.

The law gave the press unprecedented freedom to print what they wanted, but at the same time dictated that journalists and editors would become legally responsible for the stories they wrote. This meant that if an article was printed which was seen as inciting people to act unlawfully, or which could be seen as defamation, the journalist and editor would subsequently be tried and punished. No longer could the government repress newspapers they didn't like or prosecute for 'crimes of opinion', but the greater responsibilities given to press people has ensured that even today they err on the side of caution before publishing.

Truly a law which has left a lasting trace on the face of French society!

Eulogy for the Phone Booth

It's still standing. Somehow. There's not a shard of glass left on the structure and the doors were removed a long time ago. It's no longer a shelter, no longer a square metre of space you could go to talk without distractions and yet it is still functional. Pick up the receiver and after a silent second the repetitive purr of the dial tone still sounds in your ear. Listen carefully though and you'll hear the final breaths of the condemned. The booth knows that it is finished, carrying a sickness that nobody wants to treat. Soon it will be taken away and buried.

It had a good life. We all have memories of important conversations we have had on public payphones, perhaps talking to loved ones from afar whilst the windows of the booth steamed up around us. Now it is obsolete. We have moved on. We communicate from miniature phone booths in our pockets or on other forms of social media, and no longer want to buy cards and queue in the cold before making an important call.

"What would the cinema have been like without me?" it asks. It gave anonymity to the wicked and trapped the innocent. It was the principal character in a film not even ten years ago, but that may as well be ancient history today. It's a washed up old actor now and nobody would give it creedence anymore. Younger, smaller characters have taken over, rapid and mobile and completely disposable. There will be no comeback.

"Look at me" it asks, "take one last long look for soon I will be gone and you won't even remember that I existed. You certainly won't remember what I looked like".

"I will always remember you" I say, "but I don't want to remember you like this".

But is it Art?

In the town where I grew up there was a shop called ‘But is it Art’ that sold objects and trinkets that were loosely related to the subject of art. It was one of the better shops in town, a place you always looked first when birthdays and Christmas came around, but I don’t think anybody was ever able to answer the question with a positive or a negative.

The same question popped into my mind recently when I decided to visit the ‘Né Dans La Rue’ (Born in the Street) exhibition at the Fondation Cartier. The idea of the show is to tell the history of graffiti and street art from its beginnings in New York up until today, with several new specially commissioned pieces displayed both inside and outside the building. The exhibition is an incredibly rich one, and a visitor could spend hours looking through the documents and watching the fascinating films that accompany the show, but I’m not sure that they would be able to answer the question afterwards either.

Nevertheless, if you are planning a trip to Paris before the end of the year (the show ends on November the 29th) this is one exhibition you really should try to catch. The photos that I have included here are all from the perimeter of the building as photography inside the show is strictly forbidden. However, thinking back now, it is not the artwork inside the show that sticks in my mind, but the socio-historic elements, and these would be very difficult to catch in coloured pixels anyway.

I have never been to New York and remember little of the 1970s, but I was an impressionable teenager when the shockwaves of this movement arrived in the suburbs and small towns of England in the 1980s. I was fascinated therefore to see the collection of tag sketchbooks which were similar to those friends of mine kept, and hear the music again that was so tightly linked to this world. I never got involved, feeling that I would simply be mimicking somebody else’s culture, and I still feel today that this is creation that you have to live.

Was it the intention of the curators to organise the exhibition in this way? Walking around, looking at the hand-sketched cards advertising rap events and films showing people spraying tags at these same shows, it is impossible not to see this as anything other than a complete integrated movement. As a juxtaposition, films also show the New York of the early 70s, a bankrupt city where immigrant groups had been left to fend for themselves in the tough city centre, and a place the rich only ever visited when working.

Tagging was therefore a way to show people in power that there were others who existed and who also had a voice. This becomes even clearer in the film ‘Pixo’ which centres on gangs in Sao Paolo in Brazil today. They have developed a new form of tagging known as Pixaçao which is almost a language in itself. One illiterate youth in the film is shown struggling with printed text on a poster, but then quickly translating all the pixaçao messages written on surrounding walls.

These are all powerful messages. A notebook from one tagger lists how and where other taggers had been killed in action (crushed by trains or shot mostly!), whilst a full subway maintenance worker outfit in a glass container shows how the taggers disguised themselves in order to reach their train canvases. Where was the art though? It was one of the most interesting sociological exhibitions I had visited in a long time, but when I entered the room where the contemporary ‘inspired by graffiti’ creations stood, I couldn’t help but feel that they seemed weak and diluted against the vibrancy of the originals.

‘But is it art?’ I asked myself again before taking the staircase up to the shop. I had come full circle, finding myself again in a place where objects have price tags. I bought a t-shirt, a cute one for a child which was covered in the tags of some of the featured artists. A tag, a label, Cartier. I don’t know if it is art, but what shows acceptance more than capitalist consumption?

Né dans la Rue
Fondation Cartier pour l'art Contemporain
261 Boulevard Raspail, 75014
Until November 29th

If you are interested in urban creation, you can also download my free Street Art walk.

The Secret Garden

It is said that if left alone, nature would reclaim an abandoned city in a matter of months. In such a dense city as Paris though, nature struggles to break through the stone and the smallest gaps are quickly plugged by ingenious constructions. The Cartesian French have always preferred to tame and control the exuberance and vigour of the wild, trimming grass to millimeter precise lines, and creating parks that are little more than geometric tableaux. How refreshing therefore on a hot August day to find a thriving garden of fruit and flowers carved out amongst concrete and bitumen.

The garden is the Jardin Partagé Leroy Sème in the 20th arrondissement, one of several such spaces in the city that have been given over to associations. For around 20 Euros a year, subscribers here can access the garden at will and plunge hands into the city soil, planting, pruning and plucking. The result of their work over the four years that the garden has been in existence is a profusion of flowers, vegetables and fruits, the buzz of bees and a backdrop of birdsong.

The history of the site bordering the Rue des Pyrenées is an inspiring one. The garden today runs alongside a small cluster of charming houses and looks a little like a tiny village which has slowly been swallowed up by the expansion of the city, but this rural scene only exists today thanks to the efforts of a group of local residents. In the early 90s, a project was on the table to level the ground here and build upwards of 130 apartments, a plan that may have succeeded if the residents group had not pointed out the fact that the terrain is an unstable one, and that any construction would severely damage all surrounding properties.

Although major construction had been seen off, it took another long battle to finally get the site protected and to install the shared garden here, and it wasn’t until 2005, 13 years after the residents began their protests, that the garden was finally opened. Today anybody can wander through the gate and watch the gardeners at work, or talk to members of the association and share a coffee with them around their powder blue shed. There are even deckchairs and benches where you can relax and watch butterflies flutter by.

Although it is little more than a pocket sized English country garden, this space, along with other similar projects around the city, helps Paris to refill her lungs and gives nature a place to stretch out her shoots and branches once more.


Note: This garden features briefly in my Street Art walk. Download a free copy if you haven't already done so!