The garden of ulysses: ferdinand Bac, modernism and the afterlife of myth

摘要

Ferdinand Bac's three Mediterranean gardens constructed between 1913 and 1925 are more than a chapter in the history of horticultural design. They are the product of an existential conflict that reflects one of the central cultural dilemmas of the age for designers of all sorts as well as for writers: the problem of epigonism. How was one to create in a France where prestige of the styles of the past seemed to render innovation derisory and imitation a sterile exercise? 'During the nineteenth century,' wrote Bac, 'one imitated the Past because one loved it ... but, after having imitated it quite badly one got to the point of imitating it too well .... What this tendency led to at the beginning of the twentieth century on Bac's beloved Cote d'Azur, well before the mass tourism of today disfigured it even more, was a singular case of cultural incoherence. Bac's friend, Robert de la Sizeranne, complained of the insolence of speculators and rich winter residents who erected palaces and villas seemingly inspired by pastry, painted in fruit colors in the styles of Louis XIV or the Middle Ages, some of them inspired by castles on the Rhine, in England or even by Norwegian chalets. Traditional architectural forms - the provencal 'mas', the Italian terrace, the Roman villa - seemed to have been banished; plants native to the region such as the oak, the lemon tree, and the parasol pine had been supplanted by exotic species such as the ubiquitous palm tree, the cactus, the ficus as well as a number of other fleshy of fuzzy varieties. It was clear to many in the years preceding the World War I that culture yearned for renewal. To meet the demand, came a plethora of vigorous and ill-defined movements: after Fauvism came Orphism, Futurism and a host of others. Bac did not remain insensitive to the spirit of the times and presented as revolutionary his own program for the reform of garden design. Revolutions, as he understood it, however, hews close to the metaphor on which the term is based: the turning of a wheel so that what was formerly on a lower level rises to the top. Bac's revolution is a renaissance, a rebirth of the old, a renewal of ancient forms. He presents himself as a man of his time who points confidently to the future. But on what basis can a modern art be founded? Surely, according to Bac, only on the debris of the old. In this respect he places himself squarely in the wake of a host of conservative modernists. His work, very different from theirs, points out a common paradox.