Andalusi and Mudejar art in its international scope: legacy and modernity

Andalusi and Mudejar art in its international scope: legacy and modernity

Andalusi and Mudejar art in its international scope: legacy and modernity

Casa Ă rabe es un consorcio formado por:

Introduction 5 Eduardo López Busquets Hispano-Muslim art and the universal expositions: from Owen Jones to Leopoldo Torres Balbás

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Juan Calatrava The “Hispano-Muslim garden”: the historical construction of an idea

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José Tito Rojo Mexico’s presence at the international expositions. The “Moorish” pavilion of New Orleans (1884)

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Rafael López Guzmán and Aurora Yaratzeth Avilés García Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, the last orientalist

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Guillermo de Osma The Great Mosque of Paris. A political project of mauresque architecture at a time of universal and colonial exhibitions in France

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José Antonio González Alcantud Spanish architecture in North Africa from a heritage perspective

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Ramón de Torres López The Alhambra and contemporary architecture

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Emilio Cachorro Fernández Spanish architecture in the Arab World Elena González González

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am delighted to present this new publication entitled Andalusi and Mudejar Art in its International Scope: Legacy and Modernity, the outcome of on-going work developed by Casa Árabe in recent years. Given their national and international scope, if anything the themes addressed in this monograph —also published in edition 11 of the Awraq journal— have contributed and will contribute further to strengthening the impact and dissemination of Spanish brands in Arab countries.

This opens up a broad range of opportunities for us since Spain unquestionably fulfils all the conditions needed to play a major role in terms of not just generating “know how” but also “knowing how” to export this: this valuable know-how is not just financial, but also cultural and intellectual and widely exportable.

These opportunities have been highlighted in a previous idea, which is now palpable and which will propel and position the Arab world, in general, and the Gulf region, specifically, into the international arena. I am talking about the connection between its origins and Andalusi and Mudejar artistic legacy —established over different periods in the political history of al-Andalus— which is now emerging, internationally, with the future World Fair in Dubai in 2020.

Therefore, this book aims to emphasise the important historical and contemporary role played by Spain in the Arab world, firmly stressing that we are the best intermediary for connecting countries in the Middle East, the Gulf and North Africa, not just with Spain but also Latin America. Our Andalusi historical and artistic past places us in a privileged position to manage these relations —proof of which are the close communication channels being established with different Arab countries on an institutional level, for instance with the exhibitions “From Qurtuba to Córdoba” and “On a Journey. Spanish Architecture in the Arab World”—, on a ministerial level and on a public diplomacy level.

Consequently, I wanted to promote a publication that embraces two dimensions: past and present; legacy and modernity. The discourse of nine eminent specialists articulates this timelessness. Firstly, through a decidedly historical focus, analysing themes such as the importance of the international scope of the Andalusi and Mudejar artistic legacy throughout the 19th century, as well as its representation in different universal exhibitions. These questions are discussed by the lecturer Juan

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Calatrava in a magnificent article that provides context on the figures of Owen Jones (1806-1874), who was in charge of the interior design of the Great Exhibition venue in London in 1851 and the person who raised awareness of the Alhambra and al-Andalus art in Europe, and Leopoldo Torres Balbás (1888-1960), famous for his interventions in the Alhambra and Generalife.

The fascination with Andalusi and Mudejar art also reached Latin America as a result of Spain’s colonial expansion from the 15th century onwards. This influence would endure over the centuries in the aesthetic tastes of Latin America, and we can see how the engineer Juan José Ibarrola drew inspiration from Mudejar art as he designed the Mexico pavilion for the Universal Exhibition of New Orleans in 1884, followed by the San Luis Exhibition in 1904. The so-called “Morisco pavilion” —a removable iron structure comprising various Mudejar-style arches and pillars— was taken to Mexico at the beginning of the 20th century, and today can be found in a very reasonable condition in the Santa María de la Ribera neighbourhood in Mexico City. This theme is explored by Professor Rafael López Guzmán and Aurora Yaratzeth Avilés García.

José Tito Rojo, custodian of the Botanical Garden in the University of Granada and a landscape gardener specialised in the restoration of historical gardens, introduces a new dimension that analyses the concept of a Hispano-Muslim garden and its dynamic evolution until the middle of the 20th century, from Romanticism to the present day. This evolution, defined by social change in Spain, has materialised into a gardening style —initially regionalist and subsequently nationalist— extolled in the work of relevant figures from Spanish landscaping, such as Melitón Atienza and Pedro Julián Muñoz y Rubio, as well as the painter Santiago Rusiñol.

Another theme addressed in this book is the relevance of the Spanish designer Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (1871-1949) as an international promoter of Spanish heritage by way of his designs and his collection of Andalusi textiles and artworks inherited from his father, the Orientalist painter Mariano Fortuny y Marsal. This versatile artist put many of the principles promoted by Owen Jones into practice, for instance the idea that artistic styles from other epochs should inspire original contemporary creations, resoundingly rejecting mimetic imitation. Mariano Fortuny able successfully integrated many ornamental components from the Islamic legacy and other art periods into his creations, thus generating innovative designs that undoubtedly represented an important landmark in the history of fashion and design at the start of the 20th century. Guillermo de Osma, an expert on Mariano Fortuny and a renowned art historian, focuses on the “last Orientalist”.

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This volume would not be complete without a section devoted to the European internationalization of this art, initially exemplified, along with other representations, in the project to build the Paris Mosque, which got under way in 1921 thanks to the drive of Marshal Lyautey and Kaddour ben Ghabrit (1868-1954). Professor José Antonio González Alcantud outlines the modernising process of the universal exhibitions in Casablanca in 1915 and Fez in 1916, as well as the successes of the Paris project, which, as part of the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1889, extolled the neighbouring country as a “true diorama of world cultures”.

This international representation is further reflected in an incomparable production in which shared histories between the Kingdom of Spain and Morocco have been at the centre —in the urban and architectural planning— of decisive interventions in cities such as Tétouan, Larache, Ksar el-Kebir, Chefchaouen, Villa Alhucemas and Villa Nador. Both the Andalusi medina and the first urban expansion projects promoted by Spain at the beginning of the 20th century defined and continued to define this shared heritage. The renowned architect Ramón de Torres López expertly introduces this discourse using various examples: the Andalusi house, the Neo-Arab movement, the architecture of eclecticism, the first rationalist movement, the architecture of nationalism and the second rationalist movement.

The synchronic and diachronic analysis of Andalusi and Mudejar art in its international scope would be incomplete without a study of and reflection on the architectural configuration of the Alhambra and the Generalife, addressed in this publication by the eminent architect Emilio Cachorro Fernández. His article explores an innovative way of approaching the Alhambra, proving insight into its international impact —such as the multiple Islamic references to the Swiss-French genius Le Corbusier, Mexico’s Luis Barragán, or Rogelio Salmona Álvaro Siza and John Pawson, etc.— focusing on the Alhambra Manifesto, a collection put together

by Fernando Chueca Goiti and considered by many as the basis of the reorientation of Spanish architecture. And of course the local angle, exemplified through a long series of recent and undoubtedly future projects, ranging from the Alhambra Palace hotel, the Rodríguez-Acosta Foundation and the Museo Memoria de Andalucía (2006-2009) to the “Atrium of the Alhambra” project by Álvaro Siza and Juan Domingo Santos, which aims to improve the reception area in the Alhambra.

The final article in this publication offers a more current perspective from the coordinator of Casa Árabe programme and an expert in art from the Arab world, Elena González González. Her article outlines Spain’s current potential with re-

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spect to the Arab world, with a specific focus on architecture. This was highlighted in the exhibition organised by Casa Árabe and the Higher Council of Architects’ Associations of Spain (cscae) entitled “On a Journey: Spanish Architecture in the Arab World”. The work carried out by Spanish architecture firms and companies in Arab countries is an excellent example of the successful internationalization that has contributed enormously to consolidating and positioning the Spain brand overseas, particularly in the Arab world.

I would like to finish by reiterating the intrinsic value of this publication. It is the outcome of complex, constant and long-term institutional work that not only demonstrates the present and future potential of Spain, but also the crucial work carried out by an institution that possesses various key strategic components to complete its mission: its tangible and undeniable human value, and the strategic location of its headquarters in Madrid —located in a Neo-Mudejar-style building in front of the Retiro Park known as the “Escuelas Aguirre”— and its Córdoba headquarters, the “Casa Mudéjar”, which groups together five houses dating from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.

Eduardo López Busquets General Director of Casa Árabe

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HISPANO-MUSLIM ART AND THE UNIVERSAL EXPOSITIONS: FROM OWEN JONES TO LEOPOLDO TORRES BALBÁS Juan Calatrava

Hispano-Muslim architecture and its process of historiographic “nationalization”

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he gradual formulation and consolidation of a canonical historical account of Spanish architecture over the course of the 19th century —after some noteworthy prior failures— has been studied in relative detail. This process also occurred simultaneously in other countries such as France,1 but a specific characteristic of this process in Spain was undoubtedly the fact that one of the main problems that had to be addressed in this initial construction of the “history of Spanish architecture” was how to integrate or how to “nationalize”, one might say, the very important legacy of Hispano-Muslim architecture.

This nationalization eventually managed to shake off the censures that the Counter Reformationist religious debate had cast over everything Islamic and concluded, in the final decades of the 19th century, when Spanish historians irrevocably accepted Hispano-Muslim architecture as a fully-fledged chapter in its own right in the great book of Spanish architecture. However, other factors, external to the purely scholarly debate, also contributed decisively to this historiographic outcome. One of the most important factors was the role of Islamic architectural tradition in the development of an external image of the nation, particularly at the major international events known as the universal expositions, and where the on-going inter-relationship between the historiographic discourse of scholars and the institutional consolidation of that discourse in a debate that was not just intellectual, but much more directly political, played a crucial role, resulting in a series of official buildings that were supposed to capture, for other nations, the historical essence of the Spanish people.

1

Simona Talenti (2000). L’histoire de l’architecture en France. Émergence d’une discipline (1863-1914). París: Picard.

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As has been said, the intellectuals of the Enlightenment had already faced this problem. In 1766, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando —which at the time was in the process of outlining the historical “models” that would grant intellectual status to the architectural profession and distance it from the pragmatic world of construction foremen— had dispatched José de Hermosilla, Juan de Villanueva and Juan Pedro Arnal to Granada and Cordoba to study and draw the Arab monuments. The result of their drawings (the first authoritative drawings and surveys of the Alhambra, see Illustration 1) and reflections was the publication of the Antigüedades árabes de España.2 Its generic praise of the Arab monuments did not, however, prevent these from remaining relegated to an inferior level than those reserved for Western classical tradition, which was the only one compatible with the predominance of reason that would characterize Western man in contrast with Eastern “passionals”. The same can also be said of Eugenio Llaguno and his Noticias de los arquitectos y arquitectura de España desde su restauración, written in the late 18th century with extensive additions from Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez but not published until 1829. It was significant that the programmatic proposal for the inclusion of the Islamic era as one of the “epochs” of Spanish architecture was not reflected in the contents of the book itself.

Illustration 1. José de Hermosilla (1804). Antigüedades árabes de España, pl. vi. Plan of the Alhambra.

Source: Private collection.

2

See Carlos Sambricio (1986). La arquitectura española de la Ilustración. Madrid: Consejo Superior de los Colegios de Arquitectos de España; Delfín Rodríguez Ruiz (1993). La memoria frágil. José de Hermosilla y las antigüedades árabes de España. Madrid: Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid; and Juan Calatrava (2006). La Alhambra y el orientalismo arquitectónico, in Ángel Isac (ed.). El Manifiesto de la Alhambra 50 años después.

El monumento y la arquitectura contemporánea. Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife, pp. ii-69.

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Hispano-Muslim art and the universal expositions: from Owen Jones to Leopoldo Torres Balbás

The foundations had therefore been laid for an ambiguous and qualified appraisal of Islamic architecture which managed to combine an apparently positive evaluation while at the same time clearly demoting it to the inferior aesthetic domain of the “cute” or “magical”, perceived as being dominated by passions and instinct as opposed to reason. In the middle decades of the 19th century, the Romantic generation would take this approach to its extreme, through the complex ideological matrix of Orientalism. Fusing the outpourings of British and French travellers with the exaltation of genius and nationalist passion of the Spanish Romantic writers, and all within the context of the substantial destruction of heritage brought about by the processes of modernization, the result was a gradual distilling of a veritable history of Spanish architecture that would endure for nearly a century and which was ultimately nothing more3 than another chapter in the forging of the mythical history of the nation of Spain and its people. A huge body of texts (articles, books, academic discourses, travelogues, literary works, etc.) and images (paintings, engravings, lithographs, photographs, etc.) make up the corpus within which Islamic architecture would gradually, and with much effort, integrate itself as another chapter in the glorious trajectory of the architecture of the Spanish nation.

In this regard, the view from abroad was instrumental in this process. The key to the new Orientalist vision can largely be attributed to European writers and artists and their “romantic image of Spain”. Figures such as Swinburne, James Cavanah Murphy, David Roberts, Richard Ford and John Frederick Lewis from Britain and Chateaubriand, Théophile Gautier, Girault de Prangey, Baron Taylor and Gustave Doré from France, as well as, of course, the American Washington Irving, all contributed to the sanctioning of a view of Hispano-Arabic architecture that enhanced its status in emotional terms, in a poetic fancy evident in Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra or Victor Hugo’s Les Orientales (see Illustration 2).

3

Ignacio Henares and Juan Calatrava (1983). Romanticismo y teoría del arte en España. Madrid: Cátedra; Ángel Isac (1987). Eclecticismo y pensamiento arquitectónico en España. Discursos, revistas, congresos, 1846-1919.

Granada: Diputación Provincial; Julio Arrechea Miguel (1989). Arquitectura y romanticismo. El pensamiento arquitectónico en la España del xix. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid; Luis Sazatornil Ruiz (1995). Historia, historiografía e historicismo en la arquitectura romántica española, in vv. aa. Historiografía del arte español en los siglos xix y xx. Madrid: Instituto Diego Velázquez del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (csic), pp. 63-75; Juan Calatrava (2005). Estudios sobre historiografía de la arquitectura. Granada/Mexico: Editorial Universidad de Granada/Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Juan Calatrava (ed.) (2011).

Romanticismo y arquitectura. La historiografía arquitectónica en la España de mediados del siglo xix. Madrid: Abada Editores.

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Illustration 2. David Roberts, The Fortress of the Alhambra, Granada (1837-1838).

Source: Caja Granada Collection, Museo Memoria de Andalucía [Andalusian Memorial Museum].

In the same vein, the first autochthonous attempts at outlining a history of the architecture of the Spanish nation were marked by disputes regarding how to integrate the Islamic legacy, from a comparative standpoint, with the major styles of the Western tradition. The process was initiated in 1837 by Antonio de Zabaleta,4 who argued that the truly “national” character of Spain’s Gothic architecture as opposed to that of France was given precisely by the ingredient of direct contact with the Islamic.5 Two years later, in 1839, in the first volume of the spectacular series Recuerdos y bellezas de España, one of the greatest visual and literary landmarks of Spanish Romanticism, the Catalan poet Pablo Piferrer had no issue with presenting the Alhambra and the Mosque of Cordoba as monuments worthy of study, along with the cathedrals of Barcelona, Burgos and Toledo.

In the 1840s, particularly noteworthy was the great historiographical work of José Amador de los Rios, who granted a new “nationalization” status to Hispano-Arabic 4

See Antonio Zabaleta (1837). “Arquitectura”, No Me Olvides, No. 11, p. 6; and Luis Sazatornil Ruiz (1992).

Antonio de Zabaleta, 1803-1864. La renovación romántica de la arquitectura española. Santander: Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Cantabria.

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It is remarkable that Zabaleta also inserted the reference to the Hispano-Muslim in the context of the contemporary debate about colour in architecture. See David van Zanten (1977). The Architectural Polychromy of the 1830’s. New York: Garland Publishing; Marina del Castillo Herrera and María Ocón Fernández (2009). No podría parecer maravilla el que los arquitectos eruditos volviesen la vista a la arquitectura policrómata. El debate europeo sobre el color en el siglo xix y la intervención del arquitecto, in Ángel Isac y María Ocón Fernández (eds.). Intercambios culturales entre España y Alemania en el siglo xix. Granada: Universidad de Granada/Freie Universität Berlin/Instituto Cervantes de Berlín, pp. 91-114.

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Hispano-Muslim art and the universal expositions: from Owen Jones to Leopoldo Torres Balbás

architecture. His books Sevilla pintoresca (1844) and Toledo pintoresca (1845), as well as the series of articles published in 1846 in the Boletín Español de Arquitectura,6 assert the undeniable need to include Hispano-Muslim architecture as a section in the “grand story” of Hispanic architecture. This would enable it to, in the words of Amador de los Ríos himself, achieve nationality [alcanzar la nacionalidad], something that would happen, first and foremost, by theoretically and historically basing the originality of Hispano-Arabic architecture on the vast body of references from the Islamic world.7 In 1848, an important year, José Caveda’s eagerly anticipated historical compendium Ensayo histórico sobre los diversos géneros de arquitectura appeared.8 In this voluminous book, the publication of which was directly connected to the creation of the Comisión de Monumentos Históricos y Artísticos [Commission of Historic and Artistic Monuments] in 1844, Caveda vindicates a purely architectural analysis that can be used to assist in the creation of contemporary architectural tastes and outlines a periodization of Spanish architecture founded on the advocation of the originality of each period, completely integrating Islamic architecture (Chapters x to xiv). He was the first to make a strict differentiation between the interests of architectural historians and those of artists and archaeologists. He also, in line with Amador de los Ríos, presented arguments supporting the originality of Arab architecture (as he would reaffirm strongly in 1859),9 stemming from its own determining factors and in which its textile elements —that at the time also drew the attention of Gottfried Semper— played an essential role. Furthermore, Hispano-Arabic architecture possesses a second degree of originality; hence the need to divided its historical struc6

José Amador de los Ríos (1846). “Sobre la necesidad de escribir la Historia de la Arquitectura Española, y sobre la influencia de este estudio en el de la civilización española”, Boletín Español de Arquitectura, pp. 100-103; and José Amador de los Ríos (1846). “Arquitectura árabe”, ibid., pp. 26-27, 34-35 y 42-44.

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Later, in 1859, Amador de los Ríos would also be the first to raise another of the touchstones of this process of “nationalization”: the question —which would be discussed well into the 20th century— concerning Mudéjar architecture and its hypothetical ability to express the synthesis of national spirit. See José Amador de los Ríos (1859).

El estilo mudéjar en arquitectura. Discurso de recepción en la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid. See José Manuel Rodríguez Domingo (1999). “Neomudéjar versus neomusulmán: definición y concepción del medievalismo islámico en España”, Espacio, Tiempo, Forma, No. 12, pp. 265-286.

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José Caveda (1848). Ensayo histórico sobre los diversos géneros de arquitectura empleados en España desde la dominación romana hasta nuestros días. Madrid: Imprenta de Santiago Saunaque; also translated into German in José Caveda [Prologue by Franz Kugler] (1858). Geschichte der Baukunst in Spanien. Stuttgart: Ebner & Seubert.

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Caveda’s response to the inaugural speech at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando read in 1859

by Francisco Enriquez and Ferrer on the subject of the originality of Arab architecture.

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ture into three periods. These periods range from the warlike coarseness of the early days to the delicate refinement of the final stage, from the oppressive and harsh to the pleasant and gentle represented by the Alhambra. The latter is the subject of an enthusiastic appraisal which complemented the conceptual focus on the ensueño [dreamlike] and the mágico [magical] with a calibrated architectural appreciation of ornamental, colouristic, spatial and constructive values.

Moving into the 1850s, in the volume entitled Recuerdos y bellezas de España dedicated to the Kingdom of Granada, Francisco Pi y Margall provided the first major overview of Nasrid architecture and, what is more interesting, largely echoing the stereotypes of Orientalism, he also made a case for the rationality of Alhambran architecture beneath its deceptive appearance of pure delirium. In the following decades, other texts would consolidate this integration of Arabic architecture into the architectural history of Spain. These include the Estudio descriptivo de los monumentos árabes de Granada, Sevilla y Córdoba (1878), by Rafael Contreras (who was in charge of the Alhambra between 1847 and 1888), and Los orígenes de la arquitectura arábiga, su transición en los siglos xi y xii y su florecimiento inmediato (1880), by Juan Facundo Riaño, an intellectual linked with Krausism who had posited the strict rationality of Arab architecture and the use of a comparative method capable of providing a true internal history of Hispano-Muslim art.

Islamic design and contemporary architecture: Owen Jones, 1851-1856 It was through this Orientalist ideological matrix, gradually revised and refined by the advances of historiographical positivism, that Neo-Arabic architecture was introduced to the modern metropolis.10 In London, Paris and Madrid, modern methods of Islamic are deployed, from 1830-1840, in a wide range of buildings and spaces including mansions and villas, interiors characterized by the mental association of 10

Michael Darby (1983). The Islamic Perspective: An Aspect of British Architecture and Design in the 19th Century.

London: The World of Islam Festival Trust; John Sweetman (1987). The Oriental Obsession: Islamic Inspiration in British and American Art and Architecture, 1500-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Pierre-Robert Baduel (ed.) (1994). “Figures de l’orientalisme en architecture”, Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, No. 73-74 [monographic issue]; Miles Danby (1995). Moorish Style. London: Phaidon Press; Mark Crinson (1996). Empire Building: Orientalism and Victorian Architecture. Londron/New York: Routledge; José Manuel Rodríguez Domingo (1997). La arquitectura “neoárabe” en España: el medievalismo islámico en la cultura arquitectónica española (1840-1930). Granada: Universidad de Granada; Rémi Labrusse (ed.) (2007). Purs décors? Arts de l’Islam, regards du xixe siècle. Collections des Arts Décoratifs. Paris: Louvre Museum Exhibition Catalogue; Nabila Oulebsir and Mercedes Volait (eds.) (2009). L’Orientalisme architectural. Entre imaginaires et savoirs. Paris: Picard; Rémi Labrusse (ed.) (2011). Islamophilies. L’Europe moderne et les arts de l’Islam [Catalogue of the exhibition entitled Le Génie de l’Orient]. Lyon: Somogy; Juan Calatrava and Guido Zucconi (eds.)

(2012). Orientalismo. Arte y arquitectura entre Granada y Venecia. Madrid: Abada Editores.

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Hispano-Muslim art and the universal expositions: from Owen Jones to Leopoldo Torres Balbás

Oriental “voluptuousness” with the new elite modes of comfort and leisure (bedrooms, studies, smoking rooms and billiard halls), the interiors of restaurants and cafes, bullfighting arenas (where the debate on the Neo-Mudejar would specifically be raised), kiosks, public toilets, etc. The Islamic paradigm proved to be one of the most fertile sources for 19th century metropolises in their particular use of the past.

However, one place and several locations would be converted in a very special way into the architectural laboratory that would pilot this combination of the Romantic historiographic discourse, the generic outpourings of Orientalism and the role reserved for Islamic tradition within contemporary architecture: the great universal expositions of the 19th century. In fact, it was the exposure to the general public, by means of the modern cultural and economic mechanism of the “exposition”, that would ultimately order the confluence of the two routes of contemporary access to the Islamic, namely the purely historiographic and scholarly route and the stereotypical route which had its origin in poetic Orientalist effusions.

In fact, the ephemeral architecture of these first great mass events reflected the coexistence —as strained as it was rich in nuances— of the new technological and social world of the industrial metropolis and the appreciation of heritage as a country’s backbone. Thus, the pavilions of each country became national insignia and valuable elements in the construction of its own identity; hence, the choice of architectural style was not merely an aesthetic issue but a key element in a deep political and ideological debate on the “self” of the nation. In this regard, the official pavilions of Spain at the 19th century World Fairs from 1867 onwards reflect the shifts in its turbulent political debate. They thus reveal a hesitant oscillation between the exaltation of the Arab past with which Romantic travellers had identified “lo español” [the essence of Spain], an appreciation of the Renaissance “Plateresque” movement and Gothic civility, as well as the hybridization represented by the Mudejar or the combination of various styles.11 11

María José Bueno Fidel (1987). Arquitectura y nacionalismo (pabellones españoles en las exposiciones universales del siglo xix). Málaga: Colegio de Arquitectos/Universidad de Málaga; Zeynep Çelik (1992). Displaying the Orient. Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs. Los Angeles: University of California Press; Daniel Canogar (2000). Pabellones españoles en las Exposiciones Universales. Madrid: Sociedad Estatal Hannover; Luis Méndez Rodríguez (2008). La imagen de Andalucía en el arte del siglo xix. Sevilla: Centro de Estudios Andaluces (see in particular chapter iii, “Andalucía en el tiempo de las exposiciones universales”); Luis Sazatornil Ruiz and Ana Belén Lasheras Peña (2005). “París y la españolada: casticismo y estereotipos nacionales en las exposiciones universales (1855-1900)”, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez. Nouvelle Série, 35 (2), pp. 265-290; Ana Belén Lasheras Peña (2009). España en París. La imagen nacional en las Exposiciones Universales, 1855-1900 [Doctoral thesis] [online]. Cantabria: Universidad de Cantabria, <http://www.tdx.cat/ handle/10803/10660>, [Consulted 14th April 2015].

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The first great chapter in this story emerges from the Great Exhibition of London in 1851, an event that to a large extent has yet to be studied in all its ramifications, despite the abundant literature of recent years. In 1850, the Crystal Palace, which held the exhibition in London’s Hyde Park, would be forever associated with the name of its creator, Joseph Paxton, but it is of much more interest to us now to remember another person whose presence was strongly felt in its design and in its construction: Owen Jones, one of the major artistic figures of 19th century Orientalism, on whom we shall now focus.

Owen Jones (1809-1874) has enjoyed uneven critical fortune, with the result that he has occupied an ill-defined role within the “eclecticism” and “historicism” of the 19th century. He has recently been subject of renewed interest thanks to extensive historiographical revision work that, in the last three decades, has completely subverted our image of the nineteenth century.12 Jones was a travelling architect. In the 1830s, his trips to Italy (including Venice which, like Granada, was considered a gateway between East and West), Greece, Turkey, Egypt and finally Spain, and especially Granada and the Alhambra, were strongly marked by a fascination with Romantic Orientalism. However, within this western enchantment with the sensuality, colour and life of the cities of the East, Owen Jones would very soon become known for his desire to replace the lyrical reveries and evanescent discourse of the “fairytale” with a true scientific understanding of Islamic architecture and the laws that governed it: a scientific approach rather than a literary one. In his opinion, this was the only way to facilitate the translation of the Islamic evocation directly into designs that could be used by contemporary architects and artists and that would meet the conditions and demands of the modern metropolis.

While in Greece, Jones met the young French architect Jules Goury, who introduced him to the burning issue of the original polychromy of Greek architecture and the idea of revising the austere white image of it which Neoclassicism had

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See Michael Darby (1974). Owen Jones and the Eastern Ideal [Doctoral thesis]. Reading: University of Reading; Carol A. Hrvol Flores (2006). Owen Jones. Design, Ornament, Architecture, and Theory in an Age in Transition. New York: Rizzoli; Juan Calatrava (2011). Owen Jones: diseño islámico y arquitectura moderna, in Owen Jones y la Alhambra [Exhibition Catalogue]. Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife/Victoria & Albert Museum, pp. 9-42.

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Hispano-Muslim art and the universal expositions: from Owen Jones to Leopoldo Torres Balbás

conveyed.13 Goury collaborated in research on Gottfried Semper, the German architect whose path would again cross with Jones’ years later at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. It is also with Goury that Jones came to Granada in March 1834 to begin a comprehensive study of the Alhambra. The study would take them the next six months and would be what made this Jones’ true Damascene journey. It would also result in, among other things, the publication of two of the most influential books on architecture and ornamentation, of the 19th century, and which had their roots directly in his desire to substantiate what he was convinced was his major discovery in Granada: that the true scientific and universal laws regarding the use of colour and ornament in architecture could be found in the Alhambra.

In the six months they spent in Granada, tragically marked by the cholera epidemic that claimed Goury’s life, their feverish work resulted in numerous sketches, drawings, surveys, plaster casts, rubbings, etc. Jones’ activity in the following years (including a second trip to Granada in 1837) would essentially be focused on preparing for the publication of the great synthesis of the universal lesson of the Alhambra, the book Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Alhambra.14 The publishing process was long and complex and forced him, among other things, to become a pioneer of the new art of chromolithography.15 The first volume appeared in 1842 and the second three years later, thereby completing a work which for the first time meant the Nasrid palace could be placed, not on a kind of timeless pedestal, but in a specific historical moment: that of the happy crystallization of an entire aesthetic system whose laws people were now trying to apprehend (see Illustration 3).

13

David van Zanten (1977). The Architectural Polychromy of the 1830’s. Op. Cit.; Robin D. Middleton (1984).

Hittorf’s Polychrome Campaign, in Robin D. Middleton (ed.). The Beaux-Arts and Nineteenth Century French Architecture. London: Thames & Hudson, pp. 174-195; David van Zanten (1984). Architectural Polychromy: Life in Architecture, in ibid., pp. 196-215; Marina del Castillo Herrera y María Ocón Fernández (2009). No podría parecer maravilla el que los arquitectos eruditos volviesen la vista a la arquitectura polícromata. El debate europeo sobre el color en el siglo xix y la intervención del arquitecto, in Ángel Isac y María Ocón Fernández (eds.). Op. Cit.

14

For the edition in Spanish, see Owen Jones and Jules Goury (2001). Planes, alzados, secciones y detalles de la Alhambra. Madrid: Akal (with an introductory essay by María Angeles Campos Romero).

15

Kathryn Ferry (2003). “Printing the Alhambra: Jones and Chromolithography”, Architectural History, No. 46, pp. 175-188.

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Illustration 3. Owen Jones (1842). Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra.

Source: Private collection.

Jones therefore brought a scientific approach, superimposed onto the Romantic vision. This reflected the influence of the new social prestige of the sciences on many nineteenth century artists and intellectuals, who became obsessed with finding aesthetic “laws” as stringent as those of physics, chemistry or biology (and, what is more important, in many cases dependent on progress in these fields, as demonstrated by the clear connections that would be woven in the 19th century between aesthetic questions of colour and the contributions of scientists such as George Field, a primary reference for Jones, and Michel-Eugène Chevreul).

In line with this new approach, Jones’ book —and Goury’s, since Jones had had the nobility to share authorship of the book with his dead friend eight years earlier— features a short, austere text devoid of literary developments or emotional outpourings. The spotlight is instead on the 69 splendid full-page chromolithographs and the black and white lithographs inserted into the text; the amazing “discovery” of what rigorous study of the Alhambra could offer the contemporary artist, not only in terms of archaeological and historical references and grounds for aesthetic and

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Hispano-Muslim art and the universal expositions: from Owen Jones to Leopoldo Torres Balbás

spiritual exaltation, but, much more precisely, a whole series of universal laws and principles directly applicable to the correct use of ornamentation and colour in architecture. Indeed, in Plans, Elevations..., the chromatic system of the Alhambra was directly linked with contemporary scientific studies (and, in particular, with the chromatography of George Field) concerning the balance of colours and the correct understanding of the relationship between primary, secondary and tertiary colours.

This understanding would, according to Jones, have led the anonymous Nasrid artists to create an architectural polychromy that resonated in the eye and spirit of the beholder not through the obscure means of incomprehensible fascination but, on the contrary, through the intelligent use of optical and psychological mechanisms that could be perfectly explained by the new science.

This lesson from the Alhambra was essentially the basis for Jones’ extensive artistic activity from 1834, as an architect, interior decorator and designer of architectural components (amenities, furniture, mosaics, tiling, floors, coverings of all kinds, carpets, rugs, drapes and other textile items, wallpaper, etc.). A constant feature of this work is his attempt to marry historical ornament with the new demands of mass, speedy and inexpensive industrial production.

Thus, this brings us once more to the subject of the universal expositions for in this meeting between the ornamental laws of the Alhambra and the new scientific paradigms of the industrial world, one event was particularly decisive for Jones and for many others: the Great Exhibition of London in 1851. For the first of the great world fairs of the 19th century, more than six million people visited the Crystal Palace, built in Hyde Park by Joseph Paxton. This structure, composed almost exclusively of iron and glass and with its paradoxical “closed transparency”, was to become one of the most innovative landmarks of 19th century architecture and a true icon of the industrial age. Owen Jones was part of the committee overseeing this revolutionary construction. Even more importantly, however, he recognized in Paxton’s huge glasshouse the first opportunity to implement the chromatic and ornamental theories incubated in Granada on a large scale. Under his direction, an army of painters coated the ultramodern metal structures of the Crystal Palace with a colour scheme based on the primary colours and on the theses concerning the combined effects of red, blue and white gold, as set out in George Field’s Chromatography of 1835 and as Jones himself had been able to experience in the Alhambra.

Based on the idea that colour is not merely a superimposed addition but that it actively contributes to defining form and architectural space, Jones designed a colour scheme of apparent simplicity. Inspired by Alhambresque combinations of

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the three primary colours, it was hoped that this colour scheme would help articulate the difficult —i.e. large, undivided and transparent— interior space of the Crystal Palace, introducing gradations of perspective and depth (see Illustration 4).

An additional planned feature that was ultimately shelved was the demarcation of spaces through a series of hanging tapestries. This further Oriental feature is seldom mentioned but is important when one recalls how it converges with the interest that George Semper displayed at around the same time in textiles, viewed as primordial elements of architecture. This was the same Gottfried Semper whose theories on colour Jones had encountered twenty years previously through Jules Goury and who at the time was exiled in London, where he wrote a text of great significance on the exhibition.16 Illustration 4. Joseph Paxton and Owen Jones, London, Great Exhibition (1851). Interior of the Crystal Palace.

Source: Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

The story does not end in 1851, however. When the exposition came to a close on October 11 of that year and the Crystal Palace began to be dismantled, the idea of its reconstruction elsewhere in London immediately formed. Thus, the second Crystal Palace inaugurated by Queen Victoria on June 10, 1854, in Sydenham

16

Mari Hvattum (2004). ‘A Complete and Universal Collection’: Gottfried Semper and the Great Exhibition, in Mari Hvattum and Christian Hermansen (eds.). Tracing Modernity. Manifestations of the Modern in Architecture and the City. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 124-136.

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Hispano-Muslim art and the universal expositions: from Owen Jones to Leopoldo Torres Balbás

(where it would remain until its destruction by fire in 1936).17 It was not an exact copy of Paxton’s: its dimensions were substantially larger and, more importantly, its exhibition content varied substantially to better serve its new pedagogical purpose.

Indeed, this desire to educate the public took precedence at Sydenham. To this end, Owen Jones, Matthew Digby Wyatt and other artists designed, built, decorated and furnished a series of Fine Arts Courts. These “courts” would have to display, with no original pieces and by using historical recreations and up to date systems of art reproduction, the general principles and fundamental aesthetic achievements of the major civilizations in history: fake historical constructions, sets that, without hiding their artificial nature, injected new life into the teaching of history in human intellectual progress. In addition to the Alhambra Court, which shall be discussed presently, visitors could tour the Egyptian, “Nineveh”, “Byzantine and Romanesque”, Greek, Roman, Italian and “Renaissance” Courts. Abundant photographic evidence remains of each of these —such as that of Philip Henry Delamotte—18 and this is of significant value, not only for providing information on the configuration of these courts but also for what we can learn about their use from observing the visitors’ attitudes.

The Alhambra Court was the only court dedicated to a single building, reflecting the huge importance Jones attributed to the Nasrid palace. It featured two rectangular enclosures in which copies of items and ornaments from various parts of the Alhambra, coloured by Jones according to his theories on the original Islamic polychromy, were grouped together. The first enclosure featured the famous recreation of the Patio de los Leones [Court of the Lions] with several sections of columns and the two projecting pavilions removed so as to fit the site without reducing the scale.

The second contained what was called the Hall of Justice, the Hall of the Abencerrajes (chosen out of necessity due to the limited space available; apparently Jones would have preferred to feature the Hall of the Two Sisters and reproduce all of its 5,000 muqarnas), the Divan and the Cast Room, where the moulds made by Jones on his travels to the Alhambra were exhibited. The end result was an evocation, not a facsimile, and, as Jones openly admits, the effort to adapt the Islamic ornaments to the available space sometimes led to imperfect finishes that “no gaze that lingers” would have tolerated. In Sydenham therefore, in contrast to the vagueness of Ro17

Jan R. Piggott (2004). Palace of the People: The Crystal Palace at Sydenham 1854-1936. London: Hurst & Company.

18

Philip H. Delamotte (1855). Photographic Views of the Progress of the Crystal Palace, Sydenham. London: Crystal Palace Company.

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manticism, Jones had roundly asserted his autonomy as a contemporary architect together with the scientific bases of his work, as evidenced both by the plates of his Plans, Elevations... and the plaster casts and test prints that were displayed in the Cast Room as evidence of the rigour of his approach (see Illustration 5).

Illustration 5. To the right, the Alhambra Court in the Crystal Palace of Sydenham; to the left, the opening page of the publication with the plan, in Owen Jones (1854). The Alhambra Court in the Crystal Palace, Erected and Described by Owen Jones.

Source: Private collection.

For each of the courts in Sydenham, small introductory descriptive books were printed. Among them was The Alhambra Court in the Crystal Palace, written by Owen Jones himself (see Illustration 5).19 Exalting the image of an ideal community of artists and craftsmen under the direction of the architect, the text of Alhambra Court served Jones mainly as a way of presenting in an orderly fashion those basic principles of the Islamic ornamental system which had been presented primarily through images in Plans, Elevations... The Alhambra —and its surrogate in Sydenham— embodied the “Moresque” requirement that no ornament be superfluous, that everything arise in a calm and natural manner, that all lines develop in gradual undulations and always flow from one main stem, that subdivisions are logical and dictated by reason; that between the straight line, the angle and the curve (the drawing equivalent of the three primary colours) reigns the harmony which makes the Alhambra comparable to the Parthenon. The Alhambra also illustrated Owen Jones’ radical rejection of the direct imitation of nature and the basic principle that 19

Owen Jones (1854). The Alhambra Court in the Crystal Palace, Erected and Described by Owen Jones. London: Crystal Palace Library. See also a modern edition, with introductory essays by Juan Calatrava and José Tito (2010). El Patio Alhambra en el Crystal Palace. Madrid/Granada: Abada Editores/Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife.

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Hispano-Muslim art and the universal expositions: from Owen Jones to Leopoldo Torres Balbás

ornamentation is ennobled by the ideal and should never be subjected to too faithful a representation.

The presentation of the basic guidelines on the use of colours in the Alhambra (despite the mistreatment suffered by the original polychromy, as acknowledged by Jones) develops the explanation of those principles that had already been schematically outlined in Plans, Elevations... The idea of the extensive use of primary colours (blue, red and golden yellow) and the much more restricted use of secondary purple, green and orange is thus highlighted, along with the “Moors’” preference for using primary colours in the upper parts, and secondary and tertiary colours in the lower sections.

There was also, of course, a special focus on plaster “stalactites”, i.e. the aesthetic as well as geometric and constructive problem of the muqarnas. Jones explains in detail the geometric construction of this element of Arab architecture, which he considered wholly original and which was present on the façade of the Alhambra Court.

The question as to whether the modern reproduction should imitate the ancient artisanal methods or use contemporary techniques would be resolved in favour of the latter with the use of moulded gelatine, a decision Jones defended on the basis of the combined criteria of educational value, economy and speed of execution.

This open mindset that permitted the introduction of strictly contemporary criteria is also evident in the recreation of the Court of the Lions. In his text, designed to serve as a guide for visitors, Jones continually compares the two plans and sections, that of the original of the Alhambra and that of his reconstruction, mixing admiration for the original with exaltation of the hard collective effort aimed at evoking its greatness in a much more confined space in Sydenham. Jones does not hide the difficult choices that this involved and that resulted in substantial differences; instead, he explains in detail his decision in each case.

His explanation of the problem of the covering for his new Court of the Lions is particularly interesting. Unsure whether they had glazed tiles or not, he opted for the unglazed (made in terracotta by Blashfield) “to avoid the risk of misleading with an invention of our own”.20 It is revealing, in order to understand the full extent and limits of the influence of Jones’ ideas, to compare his prudent abstention in Sydenham with the polychrome Orientalist fantasy which the restaurateur Rafael Contreras would use to complete the pavilions of the actual Court of the Lions just a few years later.

20

Ibid., p. 69. [tn: Translated from the Spanish version. Any translations of quotations are the translator’s own].

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The Hall of Models fulfilled an essential role in this exaltation of the creative, original and not imitative activity of the modern artist based on the lessons of history.

In it, Jones showed the public the original moulds he had taken in the Alhambra and the plates from Plans, Elevations... corresponding to the parts of the Alhambra that they had been unable to reproduce. It was therefore not only the evocation of the Alhambra but also the methodology of Owen Jones’ work that was offered for reflection by the cultured spectator, not some much for the latter’s passive aesthetic enjoyment but more through an active willingness to foster the progress of the nation in the field of design. Regarding this “examination” —and the word is chosen carefully: examining was involved, not mere contemplation— Jones hoped that visitors could, at the end of their visit, form “[...] an idea of the glories of a palace that seems to combine in its architecture all the elements required for an authentic artistic style”.21 All of this historical, aesthetic, architectural and pedagogical reflection ultimately means that the Alhambra stands as a compendium of all the virtues: receptacle of the greatest progresses of the human spirit in a condensed form, synthesis of the finest artistic achievements of different civilizations, a perfect combination of vision, feeling and intellect and, for all this, able to serve as a “model” to be imitated, not so much for its specific accomplishments as for the intelligence and sensitivity of its creators.

The challenge of the two Crystal Palaces of 1851 and 1854 had been decisive in the definitive crystallization of their theses concerning ornament. This is evidenced by the fact that it was only two years after the challenge of Sydenham that the work that would make the name of its author familiar to several generations of architects, artists and designers was born: The Grammar of Ornament (1856),22 one of the most influential books on art and architecture in the following decades.

The Grammar is, essentially, a systematic and purportedly scientific compendium of the history of ornamental motifs from distant Antiquity up until the Renaissance. These ornamental repertoires were displayed in a series of chromolithographs

by Francis Bedford which, with a unified treatment of colour, conversed with the text to make up both a true visual encyclopaedia and a theoretical reflection on the 21

Idem, p. 87.

22

María de los Ángeles Campos Romero (1992). “La influencia de Owen Jones a través de su tratado ‘The Grammar of Ornament’: Sobre la estética victoriana de mitad del siglo xix”, Anales de Arquitectura, No. 4, pp. 67-84; Nicholas Frankel (2003). “The Ecstasy of Decoration: ‘The Grammar of Ornament’ as Embodied Experience”, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, 2 (1); John Kresten Jespersen (2008). “Originality and Jones’.

‘The Grammar of Ornament’ of 1856”, Journal of Design History, 21 (2), pp. 143-53; Stacey Sloboda (2008).

“The Grammar of Ornament: Cosmopolitanism and Reform in British Design”, Journal of Design History, 21 (3), pp. 223-236.

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supposed natural laws of ornamentation. This took the form of 37 axioms in which the fruitful exchange between Jones and the other great figure of Victorian design, Henry Cole, is evident.

The structure is simple and effectively didactic. For each “civilization” identified, an introductory historical text explains the basic design principles that characterized it. This is followed by a series of plates that group —sometimes in a jumbled manner— numerous ornamental examples. The one hundred chromolithographs that make up the work unfold before the reader a profuse composite sample, from a wide variety of sources, comprising approximately one thousand ornamental examples corresponding to some twenty civilizations.23 In this way, a sort of hybrid of a catalogue and a genealogy of those that Jones considered most representative of the ornamental systems of different historical cultures is formed. Within this complex historical panorama, the Alhambra nonetheless still occupied the primary role, comparing favourably with the products of all the other historical cultures.

For Jones, the Alhambra was the peak of the perfection of Moorish art, comparable to the Parthenon in Greek art, and each of its ornaments could, in fact, contain in itself a whole “grammar”: “We can find no work so fitted to illustrate a Grammar of Ornament as that in which every ornament contains a grammar in itself”.24 One of the most interesting aspects of The Grammar of Ornament, and most likely also one of the factors that explains its longevity, is its hybrid nature. It occupies the midpoint between a theoretical treatise that sets out a series of rules of supposed general validity (the famous 37 propositions), the varied and multiform historical tour that allows you to trace the rationale behind these rules (and which thereby introduces a high degree of historical and cultural relativism) and the catalogue of forms and ornamental solutions at the instant disposal of designers and educators. Jones himself continuously insisted, however, that his work should not be seen as a repertoire to be copied directly, but rather as encouraging creativity, stimulating the development of the individuality of each designer and the constitution of a culture directly expressive of our age. Different peoples and historical civilizations had managed to distil their own approaches to ornament, and examples thereof should encourage contemporary designers to do likewise, quite apart from any direct formal imitation.

23

Specifically, in the order of their appearance in the book: “savage tribes, Egyptian, Assyrian and Persian, Greek, Pompeian, Roman, Byzantine, Arabian, Turkish, Moresque, Persian, Indian, Hindoo, Chinese, Celtic, Mediaeval, Renaissance, Elizabethan” and “Italian”, as well as a specific section on “leaves and flowers from nature”.

24

Owen Jones (1868). The Grammar of Ornament. London: B. Quaritch, p. 66.

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In the important opening chapter, the aforementioned 37 propositions ordered and systematized, with this didactic objective, ideas Jones had already set forth in fragments on other occasions. They also served as a universal reference to compensate for the overwhelming historical diversity that the reader was about to encounter in the following chapters. Ideas thus reappear, organised in a new, more directly normative fashion. These ideas include the essential unity of the arts of design, under the sway of architecture; architecture as an expression of a particular marriage between history, customs, materials and climate; the redefinition of the Vitruvian triad, which required that architecture and the decorative arts combine functionality, harmony and proportion; the preference for gradual, undulating lines for their direct resonance with our feelings; the search for balance and complementarities between basic forms so as to escape the monotony that dominance of just one would produce; the special attention to the aesthetic and psychological values of curved lines; and the rejection of the use of ornaments taken directly from nature without them undergoing a reworking that of necessity implies a certain degree of abstraction and serialization.

With regard to colour, Jones here reaffirms, strengthened in his convictions by the multitude of historical examples, his idea that it is not an additional and superfluous element, but rather an essential component in the construction of volumetric forms, of the architectural space and of the ornamental systems; its integration must therefore be strict, based on new knowledge on the subject that optics, physics and the natural sciences continued to provide. It must also take full account of the respective proportions of the colours, how they interact and, in general, all the aspects of what we would today call the psychology of perception. Jones proposed, in short, an approach to the use of colour in architecture that would eliminate the arbitrary and capricious (see Illustration 6).

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Hispano-Muslim art and the universal expositions: from Owen Jones to Leopoldo Torres BalbĂĄs

Illustration 6. Owen Jones (1866). The Grammar of Ornament. Plate with â&#x20AC;&#x153;moresqueâ&#x20AC;? ornament.

Source: Private collection.

The Grammar of Ornament also presented a new facet of Jones: that of the public dissemination of ornamental schemes not always easily accessible to all interested parties (including artists, art teachers, manufacturers and ordinary citizens interested in these matters). The book has been widely distributed until today and became an obligatory work of reference for several generations of architects and artists. These include the most paradigmatic architect of the Modern Movement, Le Corbusier himself, who, in his formative years, studied Jones in depth, as evidenced by a number of drawings kept at the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris.

Owen Jones was, in short, the key figure when it came to shifting Islamic architecture from the terrain of Romantic Orientalism to that of the contemporary disciplinary discussion. His reflections would serve as a theoretical foundation for many architectural and decorative projects that, both in Victorian England and in other European countries, including Spain, articulated the fascination with Arab ornament with the problems of mechanization, industrial production and defining the new modern and elite domestic habitat.

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The Islamic paradigm and the Spanish pavilions at the international expositions, 1867-1929 Returning to the role of the Islamic legacy in the official image of Spain, it must be remembered that it was at the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1867 that the system of representation based on national pavilions began. The exposition featured such important pieces for Orientalist architecture as the “kiosco morisco” [Moorish kiosk] by Carl von Diebitsch but on this occasion official Spain chose a Renaissance rather than Islamic style, with the Neo-Plateresque building designed by the architect Alejandro de la Gándara (which in its interior, in Rafael Contreras’ reproductions and models, did nonetheless feature a nod to Alhambrist Orientalism).

Only seven years later, at the Universal Exposition of Vienna in 1873, Neo-Arabic evocation was a feature of the architecture. The official pavilion of Spain, designed by the architect Lorenzo Álvarez Capra, took on an obvious arabesque and Oriental quality which echoed clearly the artistic and political debate on “mudéjarismo” that had broken out just a few years previously, as we have seen, with its root in the writings of José Amador de los Ríos (see Illustration 7). The Hispano-Islamic presence could also be observed in other areas of the Prater, namely in the wine kiosk of “Los González de Jerez”, thus reaffirming the close association between the evocation of Muslim and the recreational spaces of the new metropolises (see Illustration 8).

Illustration 7. Lorenzo Álvarez Capra, Spanish pavilion at the Universal Exposition of Vienna (1873).

Source: National Library of Spain.

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Hispano-Muslim art and the universal expositions: from Owen Jones to Leopoldo Torres Balbás

Illustration 8. Spanish wine stand at the Universal Exposition of Vienna (1873).

Source: National Library of Spain.

However, it was in 1878, again in Paris, where what María José Bueno has referred to as an “explosion of Alhambrism” took place in the pavilion designed by the architect Agustín Ortiz de Villajos (see Illustration 9). The resignation of Lorenzo Álvarez Capra as architect of the pavilion gave rise to a wide debate with a strong political slant concerning the style most suited to the “national character”. From the choice between the Classical Christian Renaissance tradition and the Arabic, Spain eventually opted for a kind of Arabic eclecticism: a pavilion in which, in the words of the Official Commission, “[...] all the Arabic styles come together and interpenetrate, created, unwrapped and characterized in the various existing buildings of Spain”. The pavilion of 1878 blended —as we see not only in photographs and illustrations from that time, but also in Alejandro Ferrant’s splendid and colourful painting— elements taken from the Alhambra, the Mosque of Cordoba among other buildings in an aggregation of the different stages of Hispano-Muslim architecture. However, despite all the efforts to historicise this legacy, the end result proved anti-historical.

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Illustration 9. Agustín Ortiz de Villajos, Spanish pavilion at the Universal Exposition in Paris (1878).

Source: Private collection.

At the 1889 exposition, once more in Paris, alongside the Eiffel Tower and Contamin and Dutert’s Gallery of Machines, those two great monuments to new technology, the veritable proto-theme parks of Rue de l’Histoire de l’Habitation Humaine and Rue du Caire exemplified a new architectural Orientalism based on the reconstruction of “local colour”, with extras included. On this occasion, however, the official pavilion of Spain, whose design was entrusted to the architect Arturo Mélida y Alinari, revealed with greater clarity than ever the indecision that for decades had been holding the country back when it came to choosing an image to represent it. Indeed, the pavilion of 1889 took the combination of styles so characteristic of 19th century architecture to the extreme, juxtaposing Neo-Plateresque, Neo-Arabic and Neo-Mudejar elements in an artificial and unsuccessful attempt at producing a kind of summary of the architectural history of Spain.

This attempt at synthesis soon reached a dead end and Spain returned to alternating between images that were more or less unitary in style. So it was that, only four years later, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 —so significant in other respects in the history of contemporary architecture— the Valencian architect Rafael Guastavino, already successful in the construction industry in the United States, would evoke the splendour of the Spanish cities of the Late Middle Ages by basing the pavilion of Spain on the Gothic civil architecture of the fish market of his native city.

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Hispano-Muslim art and the universal expositions: from Owen Jones to Leopoldo Torres Balbás

The first universal exposition of the twentieth century, dedicated to the triumph of electricity, was held in Paris in 1900. The Spanish pavilion once more turned to the Plateresque in a testament to Renaissance splendour, much in keeping with the new intellectual climate sparked by the crisis of 1898. The evocation of the Neo-Arabic was nonetheless a feature of the exposition in the pavilion built

by Jesús Urioste inside the Gallery of Machines. It was, however, the French architect Dernaz who at this fair would carry the Orientalist image of Arab Spain to its ultimate paroxysm: his Andalousie au temps des Maures. A delirious construction measuring 5,000 m2 and a genuine theme park avant la lettre, it evoked variously the Court of the Lions, the Giralda, the Sacromonte and the Alcazar of Seville around a large square converted into a stage for various events such as competitions, staged caravan raids and Gypsy weddings (see Illustration 10).

Illustration 10. J. Dernaz, Andalousie au temps des Maures, Universal Exposition of Paris (1900).

Source: Laurent Antoine Lemog, <http://www.lemog.fr/>.

More than fifty years after the pseudo-Court of the Lions in Sydenham, the legacy of Owen Jones’ architectural Alhambrism would once again be apparent in the Spanish pavilion of the Universal Exposition in Brussels in 1910. In that year, which also featured the first major exhibition of Islamic art in Munich,25 the official 25

Meisterwerke mohammedanischer Kunst, Munich, Teresienhöhe, May-October 1910. See Eva Troelenberg (2012). “Regarding the Exhibition: The Munich Exhibition ‘Masterpieces of Muhammadan Art’ (1910) and its Scholarly Position”, Journal of Art Historiography, No. 6.

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image of Spain would again involve the revival of the Arab past. The ideological and political context was now different, however: it no longer involved so much a generic Orientalism as a very specific Spanish North African policy, which, only a year earlier, had resulted in the Tragic Week of Barcelona and in the face of which efforts were made to promote by any means the idea of the historical links between the two cultures. The Spanish pavilion in Brussels was the responsibility of the architect from Granada Modesto Cendoya. Navarran by birth but Granadan by adoption, Cendoya had just been appointed (in 1907) curator of the Alhambra, thereby ending the long dynasty of the Contreras. A very tight outdoor complex, which vaguely evoked the towers of the Alhambra nonetheless housed in its interior a fairly accurate reproduction of the Court of the Lions, but with fewer arches.26 In this case the influence of the expositive fiction of Brussels on the actual architecture was instantly apparent: in that same year, Cendoya built the Alhambra Palace hotel, Granada’s first modern hotel, in which Neo-Islamic eclecticism put all its ornamental repertoire at the service of the modern demands of comfort of luxury tourism (see Illustrations 11 and 12).

Illustrations 11 and 12. Modesto Cendoya, Spain’s pavilion of at the Universal Exposition in Brussels (1910).

Source: Postcard from a private collection. Photograph from Ghent University Library Images.

26

José Manuel Rodríguez Domingo (1997). “La Alhambra efímera: el pabellón de España en la Exposición Universal de Bruselas (1910)”, Cuadernos de Arte, No. 28, p. 132.

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Hispano-Muslim art and the universal expositions: from Owen Jones to Leopoldo Torres Balbás

It was also in Granada —whose elite were pleased to highlight its Orientalist image— where Leopoldo Torres Balbás replaced Modesto Cendoya as curator of the Alhambra in 1923. From the moment of his appointment, Torres Balbás began devising —to general bemusement that would cost him so dearly in 1936— a model of monumental restoration far removed from the deliriums of Orientalism, thus initiating a new stage in the historical view of Hispano-Muslim architecture.

At that time, Granada was developing the idea of a large Spanish-African exhibition, to be held in 1924. This should be viewed from the joint perspective of the ideological and political context of Miguel Primo de Rivera’s colonial strategy, and the attempts of local intellectuals to promote the idea of Granada’s privileged relationship with the north of Africa.27 The committee for this frustrated endeavour —which would have had great urbanistic28 implications for a city that had only recently seen the opening of the Gran Via, heavily criticized by Torres Balbás for its destruction of heritage—29 consisted of Torres Balbás himself and the Arabist Emilio García Gómez, among others.

At this point, it should be highlighted that, in the early twentieth century, the “national” view of Hispano-Muslim architecture was seen as largely determined by the great debate of the 1898 generation regarding “being from Spain”. In 1922, Vicente Lampérez, who in this debate had advocated architectural regionalism as an expression of the inclusive variety within Spain, reaffirmed in his Arquitectura civil española de los siglos i al xviii, the importance of the “civilización mahometana” [“Mohammedan civilization”] in the trajectory of Spain: for him, the orchards and farmhouses were a part of the rural architecture of Spain in which the Regenerationists would show so much interest. According to Lampérez, the Nasrid houses of Granada could be integrated into the overall history of the “Spanish house” and the gardens of the Alhambra into the new field of the history of the garden, the importance of which Lampérez himself was one of the first to highlight. Moreover, the Islamic palace “[...] with the Naseritas [sic] Kings, achieves the nationalization and

27

Cristina Viñes (1995). Granada y Marruecos: arabismo y africanismo en la cultura granadina. Granada: Fundación El Legado Andalusí.

28

Ángel Isac (1994). Granada, in vv. aa. Atlas histórico de ciudades europeas. Península Ibérica. Barcelona: Salvat, pp. 326-327.

29

Leopoldo Torres Balbás (1923). “Granada, la ciudad que desaparece”, Arquitectura, No. 53, pp. 302-318.

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splendour, widely recognised, of Granadian art”.30 In short, the Islamic architecture of Spain was, for Lampérez, one element of the complex “alluvial” sedimentation that characterized “Spanish” architecture and that reached its contemporary conclusion in the reality of a national unity founded on regional variety.

The architect, historian and restorer Leopoldo Torres Balbás, however, had long31 maintained positions diametrically opposed to those of the folklorist persuasion represented by Lampérez, both as regards restoration and in terms of the vexed question of “regionalism”.32 Against the “falso casticismo” [false traditionalism] of the latter, Torres Balbás advocated a “sano casticismo” [healthy traditionalism] which looked especially —in keeping with its close links with Giner de los Ríos and the Institución Libre de Enseñanza— to real popular tradition, to that vernacular architecture that was not “zarzuelizada” (in the words of Federico García Lorca)33 or falisified, and that was expressed above all in constructive lessons and the honest use of materials.

While at the Alhambra, Torres Balbás become passionately interested in Hispano-Muslim architecture, which until then had not been among his priorities.34 His vast restoration work on the Alhambra was accompanied by a series of scientific publications on Hispano-Muslim architecture that would culminate in 1949 in the great synthesis entitled Arte almohade, arte nazarí, arte mudéjar, volume iv in the Ars Hispaniae collection. It was at the crossroads of these two spheres of work —heritage and historical research— that Hispano-Arabic architecture would definitively abandon 19th century Orientalism, which had enjoyed a second life in the 30

Vicente Lampérez and Romea (1922). Arquitectura civil española de los siglos i al Calleja, vol. 1 (facsimile ed., Madrid: Giner, 1993), p. 583.

31

See, for a significant example, Leopoldo Torres Balbás (1918). “Mientras labran los sillares”, Arquitectura, I, June 1918, pp. 31-34.

32

Ángel Isac (1989). “Torres Balbás y la restauración arquitectónica en España”, Cuadernos de la Alhambra, No. 25, pp. 45-44.

33

Juan Calatrava (2002). Architettura e poesia a Granada: Federico Garcia Lorca, in Massimo Giovannini (ed.).

Le Città del Mediterraneo. Alfabeti, radici, strategie. Rome: Kappa, pp. 29-36; Juan Calatrava (2014). Granada, 1922-1928: un poeta, un músico y dos arquitectos, in Emilio Cachorro, Francisco del Corral y Milagros Palma (eds.). El Amor Brujo. Arquitectura y escenografía en espacios de la Alhambra. Granada: Ed. Godel, pp. 63-68.

34

Antonio Almagro Gorbea (2013). Estudios islámicos de Torres Balbás, in vv. aa. Leopoldo Torres Balbás y la restauración científica. Ensayos. Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife, pp. 349-360. See also Carlos Vílchez Vílchez (1999). Leopoldo Torres Balbás. Granada: Comares; Alfonso Muñoz Cosme (2005). La vida y la obra de Leopoldo Torres Balbás. Seville: Consejería de Cultura; Juan Calatrava (2007). “Leopoldo Torres Balbás.

Architectural Restoration and the Idea of ‘Tradition’ in Early Twentieth-Century Spain”, Future Anterior. Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory and Criticism, IV/2, pp. 40-50; Julián Esteban Chapapría (2012). Leopoldo Torres Balbás. Un largo viaje con la Alhambra en el corazón. Beniparrell (Valencia): Pentagraf Editorial.

34

xviii.

Madrid: Saturnino

Hispano-Muslim art and the universal expositions: from Owen Jones to Leopoldo Torres Balbás

regionalism of the early century, and would be integrated into a vision of national architecture determined by the strong revision to which the very concept of tradition would be subject.

Illustrations 13 and 14. Leopoldo Torres Balbás, pavilion of Granada in the Ibero-American Exhibition of Seville (1929).

General view and interior courtyard.

Source: Archive of the Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife [Council of the Alhambra and Generalife].

In fact, it is in this sense that the Granada Pavilion by Leopoldo Torres Balbás, exhibited at the Ibero-American Exposition in Seville in 1929, and later destroyed by fire, should be understood.35 Compared to the ornamental display of Aníbal González’s buildings and other architects marked by their regionalist theses, the image of Granada that Torres Balbás presented in his pavilion was purposely refined, as if he wished to put an end to an entire tradition of viewing Islamic architecture through its decoration and not its spatiality. The composition of the different areas of this pavilion opted, on the contrary, for a reading that introduced the Islamic to this other idea of tradition that was much more legible in terms of building materials and methods as well as ways of conceiving volumes, composition and space (see Illustrations 13 and 14). It is no coincidence that barely twenty years later, in 1952, Fernando 35

José Luis Barea Ferrer (1987). Granada y la Exposición Iberoamericana de 1929, in vv. aa. Andalucía y América en el siglo xx. Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, pp. 131-162.

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Chueca Goitia, the leading disciple of Torres Balbás, would see in the Alhambra the catalyst for a certain timid modernity that would drag Spanish architecture out of the mire of early Francoism. From the meeting held in Granada in October 1952, the Manifesto of the Alhambra would thus emerge, a genuine point of no return in the evolution in our understanding of Hispano-Muslim architecture as a perpetual lesson in spatiality, investigation, construction and connecting with the landscape, which is still perfectly applicable to contemporary architecture.36

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR Juan Calatrava is Professor of History of Architecture at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura [Higher Technical School of Architecture] of the Universidad de Granada, of which he was director from 2004 to 2010. He is the author of over one hundred scientific publications. Among his areas of research is the study of the artistic and architectural manifestations of contemporary Orientalism, a subject on which he coordinated, together with Guido Zucconi, the volume Orientalismo.

Arte y arquitectura entre Granada y Venecia. He has also curated several exhibitions; including one dedicated to the figure of Owen Jones in 2011.

ABSTRACT During the mid-nineteenth century, Spanish Romantics made a great intellectual effort to integrate the Islamic architecture of Spain into the construction of the first overviews of the history of Spanish architecture. This “nationalization” would be manifested soon after in the various pavilions that constituted the official image of Spain in the great international expositions of the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.

KEYWORDS Orientalism, architectural historiography, international expositions, Neo-Islamic architecture.

TRANSLATION Kevin Connolly.

36

Carlos Sambricio (2004). “Fernando Chueca Goitia y el Manifiesto de la Alhambra”, introductory essay in the facsímile edition of Manifiesto de la Alhambra. Zaragoza: Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Aragón, 2004, pp. ix-xi; Juan Calatrava (2005). Estudios sobre historiografía de la arquitectura. Granada/México D. F.: Editorial Universidad de Granada/Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

36

THE “HISPANO-MUSLIM GARDEN”: THE HISTORICAL CONSTRUCTION OF AN IDEA José Tito Rojo

A

l-Andalus had gardens. A number of them still exist today, at times combining interventions from very different periods with dozens of overlapping changes, sometimes with remarkable continuity and almost identical today as they were when they were created. The gardens created in the Middle Ages are those we consider to be strictly Andalusí. However, in this article we will not address those gardens but rather a different concept: that of the Hispano-Muslim garden, encompassing various groups of sometimes-contradictory ideas; theoretical creations conceived by people who imagined what those gardens were like. These ideas were often far from correct but responded to the needs of their creators. While the Andalusí garden is a reality of the past, requiring research to understand it, the Hispano-Muslim garden is an ideological construction that must be analysed to differentiate the assertions that, on the one hand, stemmed from available documentation and, on the other, responded to various Orientalist-based inventions.

The term Hispano-Muslim was synonymous with Andalusí was a creation of the Spanish Arabism of the past. It is no longer in use and is often criticised as being imbued with erroneous connotations associated with an era of nationalisms. However, we find the term very useful to specifically differentiate what was thought and written from what really existed. Progress in research on the Andalusí garden has led us to believe that the old notions of Arabism were already in decline. This allows us to define the construct of the “Hispano-Muslim garden” for a very specific period, spanning from when studies on the gardens of al-Andalus began —when the lack of scientific research made fanciful speculation easy—, to more recent times, with the emergence of science, and fanciful speculation is subjected to verification through documentation. As with all disciplines, there is great resistance that makes it difficult to let go of old ideas and old opinions consolidated by repetition and by respect for the intellectual authority of the initial researchers. Many of the things said in

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the past are still being said and will continue to be said for some time, particularly when a belief was consistent with the way of understanding the past of al-Andalus as a whole and solid, source-based evidence was not necessary. This needs to be clarified, as although the lack of documentation contributed to the prevailing nationalist view of the gardens of al-Andalus, it does not explain it. It was the way of thinking that interpreted reality and gave it meaning, although sometimes it is necessary to make a selective reading of existing documentation. When the Manifiesto de la Alhambra asserted that “the Muslim garden is primarily an attempt to represent Paradise on Earth”,1 it was justified by two arguments: The first was of an ethnological nature: “A people that lives by feelings had to react in such a way”.2 This argument is a compendium of dubious assumptions: that Muslims are a people with similar characteristics who live by feelings, thus implying that their gardens served as theological artifice.

The second assumption is supported in writing: “The Arab garden is almost theology, and is described as a depiction of the afterlife in the Koran”.3 In fact, this garden, which is first called “Muslim” and then “Arab”,4 has never been described in the Koran in such a way. Although it is true that Paradise is portrayed as a garden, gardens on Earth are never “described” as a depiction of the garden of the beyond. The incorrectness of the assertions appears to give the texts a semblance of an interpretation of what is in fact the product of an earlier ideology, and it is this that explains the subsequent critical advancement of these as well as similar judgments.

The last sentence of the Manifiesto de la Alhambra is consistent with the assumptions of nationalism: “The Hispano-Muslim garden should be the starting point for our gardens”.5 It was a late recommendation because, although there were gardens 1

vv. aa. (1953). Manifiesto de la Alhambra. Madrid: Dirección General de Arquitectura, p. 47. Although written collectively, the section on gardens was written by Fernando Chueca Goitia.

2

Ibid.

3

Idem.

4

There is, as can be appreciated, extensive terminology that generally does not imply a variation in meaning. Over time, the terms Arab, Muslim, Islamic, Andalusian, Arab-Andalusian, Hispano-Moresque and Hispano-Muslim have been used. Although the aim of the recent use of the term Andalusí is to separate it from the connotations of the past that used the above-mentioned terms, with regard to gardens there was no attempt to make this differentiation and most of the characteristics that were embodied in the Andalusí garden were the same as those established by the previously-mentioned terms.

5

vv. aa. (1953). Manifiesto de la Alhambra, Op. Cit., p. 49.

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The “Hispano-Muslim garden”: the historical construction of an idea

in Spain in the twentieth century designed in accordance with criteria of modernity, for decades Islamic historicism had been the dominant style. Gardens in this style are also referred to as Hispano-Muslim gardens.

The aim of this study was to chart the evolution of this idea and of those gardens. It is a study that we have conducted before, in which we referred to various partial aspects. Here, we have updated that study with a more global vision and incorporated new arguments and cases from more recent studies in order to better understand the process.6 Preamble: nationalism and the garden Sometime around 1910, La Quinta, the catalogue of “Grandes Establecimientos Hortícolas” [Great Vegetable Gardens] of Granada, included the following recommendation for its customers: “The shape that has been adopted for gardens today is called apaisada (landscaped) or jardín a la inglesa (in the English manner). Its whimsical layout can be adapted to any terrain, whatever its form”.7 Just ten years later, the very same catalogue was critical of that kind of garden: In Spain, there was a time (not long ago) that is still remembered, in which most public and private gardens were transformed by an indefinite style that is called inglés (English), without it having anything English about it at all. Our fondness for the exotic on the one hand, the desire to always imitate foreign ideas and, on the other, the complete trust in all that they say is garden design, have made us abandon our style in favour of accepting the former.8 Using a similar argument, it goes on to say that “in both public and private gardens, we see these big mounds of earth whose surfaces are smooth, designed on a whim, with a total lack of art and good taste, with no perspective and no floral or 6

Our vision of the Andalusí garden and its conflictive relationship with the imaginary of the Hispano-Muslim garden is described in the book by José Tito Rojo and Manuel Casares Porcel (2011). El jardín hispanomusulmán: los jardines de al-Andalus y su herencia. Granada: Universidad de Granada.

7

Pedro Giraud (ca. 1910). Catálogo descriptivo Grandes Establecimientos Hortícolas “La Quinta”. Granada, p. 51.

Although undated, it included the new variety of rose Rayon d’Or, developed by Joseph Pernet-Ducher in 1910.

8

Juan Leyva (ca. 1924). Grandes Establecimientos Hortícolas “La Quinta”, Juan Leyva, sucesor de Pedro Giraud.

Granada, p. 180. The approximate and estimated year that a range of a variety of roses was developed (for example, Souvenir de Georges Pernet, developed in 1921) and included the project plan for the remodeling of the Jardines del Salón, in Granada, also from around that time.

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José Tito Rojo

wooded continuity [...]” and, after providing a list of negative opinions, it ends by saying that “it constitutes an incorrigible ugliness”. It contrasts this with a new type of garden that “is called the jardín español (Spanish garden)”, and describes it as “a transition or modification of the Arab garden, adapted our tastes” and offers, in several paragraphs, greater terminological clarity: “What today we call the jardín español is a modernised Arab style” and “is a modern Spanish or Andalusian style”.

If we find in the description of the English garden, with one justification or another, the concepts of “lack of art”, “deplorable”, “non-aesthetic”, “ugly”, “of little merit”, “of no decorative value”; in the case of the Spanish-Andalusian garden, we read of “patterns and imagination”, “beauty of the whole”, “a variety of resources”, “less risk taken”, “advantages”, “truly within our tastes” and, in a specific reference to the Parque de María Luisa, an “enchanting paradise”. It is therefore not surprising that it ends by stating “for all of these reasons, we should always tend to create this [type of] garden in preference over any other”.9 We are fortunate to have this testimony —showing the change in trend that was transpiring in Spanish garden design— via the work published by a single company that also revealed in its publications the debate between the “old”, English or “foreign” landscape gardening, and the “new”, the national, or Andalusian, garden.10 This was not a phenomenon limited to Spain, as the same debate, perhaps even more intensely, was taking place in other parts of Europe, particularly in Italy and France. Throughout the nineteenth century, in both texts and practice, this kind of international style, called inglés or a la inglesa, predominated, continuing to follow the line of eighteenth-century naturalistic landscape gardening, adapting it to the limited plots of land available in cities. Nineteenth-century books on garden design and horticulture constantly reflected this predominance of the irregular garden, which was the norm and was accepted by everyone. Large urban parks, from Central Park in New York to the Buttes-Chaumont in Paris, showcased the triumph of landscape gardening applied to the aesthetics of large-scale public gardens, but it was also reproduced in small squares and in the private gardens of the bourgeoisie whose properties were proliferating in the areas of new growth in cities. In these gardens, the metaphor of Nature, typical of landscape gardening, was reflected by 9

Ibid, pp. 182-184.

10

See José Tito Rojo (2015). Modernity and Regionalism in the Gardens of Spain (1850-1936): From Radical Opposition to Misunderstood Synthesis, in Therese O’Malley and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (eds.). Modernism and Landscape Architecture, 1890-1940. Washington D.C./New Haven/London: National Gallery of Arts/ Yale University Press, pp. 167-204.

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The “Hispano-Muslim garden”: the historical construction of an idea

the kidney-shaped flowerbeds, very slightly elevated grassy hillocks, modest wooded areas and artificially-created serpentine paths.

Various interconnected phenomena began to question this point of view. The main phenomenon was the ideological shift of the dominant middle classes that, following the period of revolutionary uprising against the old aristocracy, were in a position to embrace the splendour of their previous enemy that had now become their ally against the danger they faced from the lower classes. If irregularity in garden design was a sign of progress, characteristic of enlightened thought, then retrieving regularity in gardens was appropriate to their new conservative position.

This process began at the cusp of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the development of more gardens in a formal style, especially near to built-up areas.

The gradual recovery of the aesthetics associated with those of bygone gardens was supported by the rise of nationalisms. It was the ideal breeding ground for the emergence of historicist revivals. Thus, France saw the rise of the invention of the jardin à la française11 that adapted Baroque forms to modern tastes and requirements, as did Italy with the concept of the giardino Italiano,12 inspired by the Renaissance, via —paradoxically— the intervention of non-Italian landowners and landscape gardeners.13 The problem was approached differently in the case of England. Recovering a style of garden from the past that could be called “English”, when compared to classical landscaped gardens, it was confusing as it was already considered to be “English”. However, when this term began to be used, towards the mid-eighteenth century, it was not of a markedly ideological nationalist nature. The incorporation 11

Monique Mosser has written various articles on the rise of the jardín française. See Monique Mosser (1989).

Ernest de Ganay, poète et biographe des jardins (1880-1963), in Ernest de Ganay. Bibliographie de l’Art des Jardins. París: Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, pp. iii-xvi; Monique Mosser (1990). I Duchêne e la riscoperta di Le Notre, in Monique Mosser and Georges Teyssot (eds.). L’architettura dei giardini d’Occidente. Milan: Electa, pp. 442-446; Monique Mosser (1998). Sous l’objectif, les jardins des Duchêne entre historie et creation, in Hervé Duchêne (ed.). Le style Duchêne. Neuilly: Éditions du Labyrinthe, pp. 20-25; and her most recent work: Hervé Brunon and Monique Mosser (2006). Le jardin contemporain. Paris: Editions Scala, pp. 15-22.

12

For more on the jardín italiano and its invention, see Leonardo Parachini and Carlo Alesandro Pisoni (eds.)

(2003). Storia e Storie di Giardini. Verbania: Editoria & Giardini.

13

In reference to the followers of the Grand Tour. The first neo-Renaissance revival was perhaps the water garden created at the Villa Gamberaia (1895), owned by the Romanian princess Jeanne Ghyka, that reinterpreted Renaissance themes, adding modern touches; and the Tuscan villas, many of them owned by English and Americans, whose geometric gardens, designed in the early 20th century, followed the same criteria. The work of Edith Wharton (1904). Italian Villas and Their Gardens. New York: The Century Co., is, in that sense, important on a theoretical level; in design terms, the gardens by Cecil Pinsent are significant. On the role of the English and Americans in shaping the imaginary of the “Italian garden”, see Giorgio Galletti (1992). Il ritorno al modello classico: giardini anglofiorentini d’inizio secolo, in Il giardino storico all’italiana. Milan: Electa, pp. 75-85.

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of formal and historicist elements that also took place in England occurred without the need for a change in apellation.

The words of the poet Pierre de Nolhac, who was the curator of Versailles and in great part responsible for its recovery, are a good example of the role of the garden as a component in the design of nationalist aesthetics: The Gardens of Versailles obey the laws of balance and moderation characteristic of the French spirit and of which they are the perfect image [...]. True, they were despised as if they represented dead greatness [grandeur morte], that were forgotten for a long time and disdained by many French artists, uprooted from their traditions [...] but, beyond the impertinence of Alfred de Musset when he rhymed the tedious park of Versailles [Versailles parc de l’ennuyeux], some of its beauty courses through our blood.14 For nationalists, every country had a unique character that was expressed through its own ways of feeling and doing things that set it apart from other countries. Works of art lent themselves to the shaping of this national spirit and gardens, as an art form, also had to follow the trend.

The regionalist garden in Spain The problem in the case of Spain was that it had to choose an example for its national garden that was singular and clearly distinguishable from the styles of previous periods. There was no point in bringing back the gardens of the Spanish Hapsburgs, which were seen to be almost indistinguishable from those of the Italian Renaissance, nor the Baroque gardens of the Bourbons, justifiably seen as a poor imitation of French styles. It was therefore not difficult to settle on the type of garden found in mediaeval Muslim Spain as a paradigm of Spanishness, clearly different from other European styles. It met the requirements consistent with cultural regionalist constructs: it was exclusive to the country, it evoked an idyllic past splendour and it could be presented as an element of homegrown tradition threatened by the predominance of foreign aesthetics. From a nationalist perspective, this option entailed a serious conceptual problem as large parts of the country could hardly accept as 14

Text created by joining fragments relevant to this topic found in the text by Pierre de Nolhac (1924). Les jardins de Versailles. Paris: Henry Floury, pp. 3, 5 and 7. Nolhac’s final comment refers to the critical verses by Musset (“l’ennuyeux parc de Versailles”) and praise by Albert Samain (“un peu de vos beautés coule dans notre sang”).

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The “Hispano-Muslim garden”: the historical construction of an idea

their own a style of garden that was associated with such a specific part of the it, particularly with the south, Andalusia, and to a lesser extent, the eastern part of Spain. It also entailed a practical problem; while there was clear documentation for French and Italian revivals to look back at, no one knew what the Hispano-Muslim garden was, or to be more precise, what it looked like. When it came to creating new gardens in this national aesthetic, it was clear that the current physical condition of the few surviving examples had been affected by serious changes at different times and, in addition, no visual evidence existed of these gardens in their original form. For a French gardener like Achille Duchêne, creating a modern “garden in the French manner” was easy; it was enough just to look at the many surviving Baroque examples, compare their condition with the myriad paintings, engravings and treatises of the 17th century and the first decades of the 18th century and incorporate those elements, adapting them to suit the tastes of the day, the material possibilities and the obligations required of this new way of life. The problem posed by an equivalent process in Spain was how to define what a Spanish garden was, how to imagine the gardens of al-Andalus.

The Arabic-Andalusí garden before the invention of the Hispano-Muslim garden In the nineteenth century, no attention was paid to the layout of the Andalusí garden and basically only two possibilities —formal and informal— were taken into consideration, depending on whether the desired result was geometric artificiality or naturalness, and planting plans were largely responsible for the existence of these two alternatives. It is not surprising, therefore, that Cavanah Murphy said in 1812 of the Patio de la Acequia in the Generalife (see Illustration 1) that its garden was “Chinese in style”,15 a term used at the time to mean informal naturalness. It did not matter if a courtyard had four perfectly rectangular planted sections; what made it “Chinese” was that the plants were arranged randomly without forming patterns on the ground.

Although the Andalusí-Andalusian garden was largely ignored by theoreticians of landscaping in that century, there is enough evidence to affirm that Murphy’s statement was not an isolated nonsensical comment. Loudon, the most respected garden designer at the turn of the century, when describing the gardens of Granada, called them “picturesque”, a term that in the lexicon of the day was used exclusively for

15

James Cavanah Murphy (1813). The Arabian Antiquities of Spain. London: Cadell & Davis, no page (comments on print number xcv).

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José Tito Rojo

naturalised gardens.16 Melitón Atienza y Sirvent, the first Spanish author to write a history of gardens, considered that those of al-Andalus were the precursors of landscaped gardens, English avant la lettre, “mixed styles, symmetrical and picturesque, abound in profusion throughout Spain; leading us to say that they are exclusively our styles, in particular the picturesque style that was founded in our peninsula by the prolific genius of the Arabs”.17 In contrast to the formal French Baroque layout were the disorderly informal English and the Andalusí gardens. Melitón Atienza insisted that the two were similar, and although one was modern and the other mediaeval, both were scientific and oriental,18 the English garden due to a Chinese influence, the Andalusí garden because of its roots in the Fertile Crescent.

Illustration 1. Idealised view of the Patio de la Acequia as a landscaped wood.

Source: Drawing by V. Foulquier for Voyage en Espagne (1869).

16

John Claudius Loudon (1835). Encyclopaedia of Gardening. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, p. 279.

17

Melitón Atienza y Sirvent (1855). Historia de la arquitectura de jardines. Madrid: Joaquín René, p. 50.

18

Atienza never explained why modern (English) gardens were scientific but did say that the ones in al-Andalus were [scientific] because they were based on agronomic knowledge, citing the book by Ibn al-Awwam, translated by Banqueri (1802), which had impressed learned Spanish circles. Ultimately, the scientific description was simply a positive opinion. English gardens and those of al-Andalus were “good” and therefore scientific, while the others —formal and French ones— were neither one nor the other. Obviously the importance of the contemporary French agronomy of Versailles was of little consequence to Atienza’s argument. In this respect, as in most of his book, his opinions were not supported by documentary evidence.

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The “Hispano-Muslim garden”: the historical construction of an idea

Gardens created with an “Arab” aesthetic before the invention of the Hispano-Muslim garden At the start of the 21st century, with the paradigm of the “Andalusí garden” well established, it is hard to appreciate the difficulties involved in providing a list of elements to define the shape of a Spanish garden (Andalusí-Arabic-Spanish). One characteristic of paradigms is that they appear to be self-evident, but they are actually concepts that have changed over time, very often involving conflicting ideas. But what is in fact commonly accepted as typical of the Andalusí garden is actually imbued with historicity. It is enlightening to analyse the few examples of nineteenth-century gardens with supposedly “Arabic-Spanish” garden design aesthetics, some actually created, others simply imagined. Let us take a look at the most significant.

The first is a garden built in Granada in around 1858 and which was photographed by Charles Clifford just as it was finished. It was situated on one terrace of the Carmen de los Mártires, an interesting property on the hills of the Alhambra that was like a collection of places summarising the history of garden design styles, one of which imitated the Islamic style, referred to in old texts as “Andalusian”, and in twentieth-century publications as “Spanish” (see Illustration 2). The method employed to create this Andalusian imitation included ornamental elements such as those used in the Gardens of the Generalife, e.g. cypress arches along paths, and fences made of woven canes, called encañados, to demarcate planted areas. However, the layout of the garden was conventionally geometric, with a main crossroads of paths that divided the space into four parts, each divided, in turn, into four parts by secondary diagonal paths. A simple, not uncommon layout that can be seen with more or less variations in the design of classical European gardens, in the Mannerist flower beds of palaces, in Baroque copses or in urban squares of the past and even in the boom of nineteenth-century public gardens. This contradiction between the academic layout and the main ornamental plants, both live (cypresses) and inert (canes), clearly indicate that these were responsible for defining a garden as “Andalusian”. It was considered that the layout of this type of garden did not have to be different from any other kind of garden.

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José Tito Rojo

Illustration 2. The Andalusian garden of the Carmen de los Mártires. Comparison of the imitation of the Generalife, visible in the photo, and the classic path layout that can be appreciated in the recreation of the garden plan based on this photo and various plans of a later date.

Source: Photo by Charles Clifford and recreation of the garden plan by José Tito Rojo (1996).

The same idea can be observed in the two “Arab-style gardens” included in the book by Pedro Julián Muñoz y Rubio, Tratado de jardinería y floricultura.19 It was published in 1887, at a time when English garden design predominated and was accepted as the style to follow unless the architecture of the building called for a more formal historicist layout. The plans mentioned are only found in the third posthumous edition from 1923 (see Illustration 3).20 As in the case of the Carmen de los Mártires, the layouts of the two gardens followed the models taught in gardening schools and also included illustrations of rather Versaillesque broderies. The legend indicates the elements that give this conventional layout an “Arab style”: “an avenue of cypresses cut to form archways” or a “star-shaped fountain of thick bricks”. Only the rose garden, with its geometric lawn design, can be considered to have been inspired by Islamic designs.

19

See Pedro Julián Muñoz y Rubio (1923). Tratado de jardinería y floricultura: historia de la jardinería. Madrid: Librería de Luis Santos.

20

Ibid, pp. 414-415 and 416-417.

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Illustration 3. Plan of an “Arab-style garden”. Below is a digitally enhanced detail of the area with cypresses cut to form archways and the star-shaped fountain.

Source: Pedro Julián Muñoz y Rubio, 1887-1923.

The third example from the same period is, interestingly, reversed, as the layout imbues it with Muslim features, while the flower beds are planted in a conventional way. This was an ephemeral garden created in 1871 for the Patio de Lindaraja (see Illustration 4) in the Alhambra and, as only recently discovered,21 was dismantled just five years later. When this garden was created, no theories had been put forward regarding layouts that could be considered typical of al-Andalus and its designer, presumably Rafael Contreras, the director and person directly responsible for work on the monument, imitated, on the ground, the geometric forms found in decora21

José Tito Rojo and Manuel Casares Porcel (2012). “Las tipologías de los jardines de la Alhambra en el siglo xix, a la luz de la fotografía”, Cuadernos de la Alhambra, No. 44, pp. 102-104.

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tive Nasrid elements such as fabrics, wood and tiling. Surviving plans and photographs show how the flower beds and bushes were actually cut in a style similar to the corbeilles typically found in the garden designs of the day,22 and were adapted to this Islamised geometric discipline.

Illustration 4. The ephemeral state of the Lindaraja Garden with Arab-influenced layout.

Source: Plan by Francisco Contreras (1876, published in Monumentos arquitectónicos de España. Palacio árabe de la Alhambra, 1878) and photograph by Charles Mauzaisse (1875), proving that the garden really existed.

A speculative vision should also be included: with regard to the many buildings constructed in the 18th century and at the start of the 19th century imitating a Muslim style or, more specifically, a neo-Alhambra style, their gardens were not designed following a similar aesthetic (see Illustration 5).23 This contrasts with the statement 22

Corbeilles, literally ‘baskets’, were flower beds, usually round or oval, slightly domed and with low, colourful flowers and shrubs forming geometric designs (see Michel Conan [nia. ca. 1997]. Dictionnaire historique de l’Art des jardins. S. l.: Hazan, p. 74).

23

For more on the Alhambrist fashion, see Tonia Raquejo (1990). El palacio encantado: la Alhambra en el arte británico. Madrid: Taurus. Much information on these buildings can be found in Eloy Martín Corrales (2010).

Siglo y medio de neoarabismo y neomudejarismo en España (1848-2009), in José A. González Alcantud (ed.).

La invención del estilo hispano-magrebí. Barcelona: Anthropos, pp. 200-224. In relation to Latin America, see Rodrigo Gutiérrez Viñuales (2006). La seducción de la Alhambra. Recreaciones islámicas en América, in Rafael López Guzmán (coord.). Mudéjar hispano y americano. Itinerarios culturales mexicanos. Granada: El Legado Andalusí, pp. 166-173.

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The “Hispano-Muslim garden”: the historical construction of an idea

made by Muñoz y Rubio who, when presenting his plans for the aforementioned Arab garden, described them as being “constructions based on it [the Alhambra] and in the same style”.24 The lack of commonly accepted rules that would allow a garden to be recognised as Muslim, together with the lack of interest that Islamic garden design held for the learned circles of society, determined that the planting plans for these buildings, when plans did exist, were to be designed in tune with the fashions of the day. Very occasionally, Islamic-style elements were incorporated, generally inert elements such as fountains or pavilions. A remarkable example of this was the Patio de los Leones built at Crystal Palace, where this architectural replica from the Alhambra was accompanied by a parterre that reproduced the division into four squares, but without the planting plan having any relevance.25 Illustration 5. The contrast between a mansion in a neo-Arab style (the Villa Generalife in Sant Cugat del Vallés, 1919) and its conventional-style garden.

Source: Postal de L. Roisin (nia).

24

Pedro Julián Muñoz y Rubio (1923). Tratado de jardinería y floricultura: historia de la jardinería. Op. Cit., p. 413.

25

For information on this garden, see José Tito Rojo (2010). Los jardines del Patio Alhambra y el Patio de los Leones, in Juan Calatrava and José Tito (eds.). El Patio Alhambra en el Crystal Palace. Madrid: Abada Editores/ Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife, pp. 41-103.

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José Tito Rojo

The combination of this nineteenth-century reality, the few hypothetically “Arab-Andalusí” gardens and the conventional ones that graced neo-Arab buildings highlights the difficulties that had to be overcome for this type of garden to become a nationalist pattern to follow.

The beginnings of regionalist garden design The supposedly Andalusí gardens of the 19th century did not reflect the desire to reject the predominant English style. It was at the start of the next century when criticism of foreign fashions began to proliferate and the need to recover a theoretically Spanish garden arose. The painter-writer Santiago Rusiñol played a prominent role in this process. During his visit to Granada in 1895, he discovered the theme of the garden and began to depict those that he considered neglected due to the predominant fashion of the day.26 His paintings of gardens became an ode to the beauty of the past, at risk because society did not value it. Those of Granada became his main subject for ten years. He presented his work at several exhibitions (the first in Paris in 1896) and they made up the core of his book, Jardins d’Espanya,27 an exquisite volume with prints chosen from the author’s paintings, preceded by texts by important writers, most of them poets. Having put them on the map, the gardens of Granada were replaced by those of other places such as Valencia, Catalonia, Italy and Aranjuez, but he was, until his death in 1931, almost exclusively a painter of gardens.

As pointed out by Margarida Casacuberta, the book was considered by regionalist groups “to be one of the most appropriate remedies to combat the ills of Spain”.28 Its interpretation was twofold: attempts had to be made to prevent the old Spanish garden from disappearing, transformed into a foreign style; and new gardens had to be created in this threatened national style.

Gardens played an important role in the culture of Spain at that time. Nineteenth-century Costumbrista painting had brought attention to local and rural themes. However, for the new bourgeoisie (and for the new aristocracy) that vision 26

Rusiñol’s transformation into a painter of gardens after seeing a glorieta of cypresses in the Granada neighbourhood of Realejo was beautifully described by his friend Miguel Utrillo (1989). Historia anecdótica del Cau Ferrat. Sitges: Grupo d’Estudis Sitgetans. And later by Josep Plá (1942). Santiago Rusiñol y su tiempo.

Barcelona: Barna, who follows on from Utrillo’s writing, which, at that time, had not yet been published. On Rusiñol and Granada, see Santiago Rusiñol and Vinyet Panyella [Introductory study and publication] (2001).

Andalucía. Granada: Museo Casa de los Tiros.

27

Santiago Rusiñol (1903). Jardins d’Espanya. Barcelona: Thomas.

28

Margarida Casacuberta (1999). Els jardins de l’ànima de Santiago Rusiñol [Los jardines del alma de Santiago Rusiñol]. Girona: Fundació la Caixa de Girona/la Caixa de Sabadell/Sa Nostra/Caja de Segovia, p. 208.

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The “Hispano-Muslim garden”: the historical construction of an idea

was unacceptable as other kinds of spaces with bright, striking aesthetics, appropriate for sophisticated parties were required, ones that would transmit society’s modernity and social standing. Rusiñol’s paintings depicted gardens able to encompass that discourse. He not only painted rural life and the poor, as portrayed by Costumbrista artists, but also the refined and abandoned discourse of the old aristocracy. A type of garden could be recognised in his work that the elites, both economic and intellectual, could identify with. His work embodied several elements relevant for that new era: it was national, different from French and English styles; it was formal, geometric, comparable with new European fashions; and it was at risk, something that could be the focal point of a campaign for the defence of vernacular values. It was no coincidence that Rusiñol chose Granada to start his discourse; its remoteness from central government, coupled with the economic poverty of the city had given rise to a particular style of garden where Mediterranean elements were combined with supposedly Islamic tradition, and where even the gardens created following Romantic and Isabelline fashions incorporated local components. There, he also discovered what was to become the leitmotiv of his painting, the “abandoned garden”, a polysemic term applied to some of his paintings and that also became a title of one of his literary works.29 The “abandonment” of the garden became the symbol of the decline of Spain, a relevant topic in Spanish culture at that time, thanks to the so-called Generation of ‘98.

It is worth noting that most of the gardens he depicted were not Islamic. The exact list of works presented at his first exhibition in Paris, Jardins arabes de Grenade in 1896,30 has not survived. However, in terms of the exhibition held in Granada in 1898, of nineteen paintings and over thirty sketches and drawings exhibited, a handful —of the Generalife— were of Islamic gardens. Later at the Great Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1899, he exhibited twenty paintings of Granada, seven of Aranjuez, two of Sitges, two of Tarragona, one of Barcelona and another of La Granja. Of these, only two —the courtyards of the Alberca de la Alhambra and the Acequia of the Generalife— can be considered to be strictly Muslims gardens; the 29

In the first, in 1895, he depicted the Jardín del Cuzco in the town Víznar, near Granada. It was published as a print by Santiago Rusiñol (1903). Jardins d’Espanya. Op. Cit.

30

More than a solo exhibition, it was in fact, a series of paintings in the Spanish section of the Salon de Champde-Mars of 1896. There is therefore no reference to this title in writings on Rusiñol, except in the one by Vinyet Panyella (Santiago Rusiñol and Vinyet Panyella [Introductory study and publication] [2001]. Andalucía. Op. Cit., p. xiii). Parisian newspapers of the day used this title in reference to a painting purchased by the French State and only appears clearly in Le Temps (April 24, 1896, p. 3) as the group title of all the paintings on display together (accessed in Gallica, Bibliothèque Numérique, Bibliotèque Nationale de France).

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rest were gardens created in the nineteenth century, mostly privately owned and relatively recent: Cuzco in Víznar (1795), the Jardines Nuevos del Generalife (1856), Los Mártires (1856-58), the Casería de la Bailarina (ca. 1870). Obviously, that is not how Rusiñol interpreted it; for him, as well as for later regionalists, all of those gardens in Granada were more or less Arab, so much so that they thought of using the 1896 title, Jardins arabes de Grenade, for the Paris exhibition of 1899, and it was only at the last moment that it was definitively changed to Jardins d’Espagne.31 The choice of Rusiñol’s work was very well received and the gardens he depicted became the paradigm of the Spanish garden that had been lost and found. It also set the precedent of a vision that was fortuitous as it pinpointed Andalusia as being most clearly and genuinely “Spanish”, with the Hispano-Muslim element as the foundation of the nationalist garden design that had to be forged. While there was intense debate within emerging nationalist architecture between neo-Andalusian (neo-Mudéjar) and Castilian or northern styles, in garden design Andalusian and Arabism triumphed. This was generalised to the extent that some regional garden designs sometimes sought non-exclusionary labels with respect to the term “Andalusian”, such as “Mediterranean”, “Latin” or “Levantine” [the latter referring to the eastern Mediterranean coast of Spain].

Rusiñol also made something essential possible for nationalist aesthetics; they could be presented as the successors of an unbroken tradition. Intellectuals in the early twentieth century defended the idea by using the book Jardins d’Espanya as an affirmation that a living tradition existed, although it was in danger and almost forgotten. Thus, the new regionalist garden was presented as the heir to both the Arab garden and the traditional garden of the common people who believed it preserved, in its ingenuousness, unaltered and also distanced from English fashion, the old values of the Arab garden. This acknowledgment of heritage is also evident from Rusiñol’s writings, in which the defence of the homegrown garden stemmed from the defence of the traditional garden, that of the poor, as opposed to the new garden “with numbered and named plants [...] in order to be publically recognisable”; he suggested a new “aristocracy of art” to fight against the “vulgar middle class” and to find a way of creating new select gardens, removed from the “the dominance of the insulting majority”. The gardens of this “aristocracy of art” were to be inspired by those of the past; both by the old aristocracy as well as the popular classes, whose paradigm were the cármenes [villas with gardens] of Granada, the model on which 31

Josep de C. Laplana and Mercedes Palau-Ribes O’Callaghan (eds.) (2004). La pintura de Santiago Rusiñol, obra completa. Barcelona: Editorial Mediterrània, p. 70.

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The “Hispano-Muslim garden”: the historical construction of an idea

what he called “modernist gardens” should be based. “But before every trace of good tradition dies, in the hope that these new ones improve the current ones, these cármenes of today must be seen”.32 That idea was adopted by the regionalists for whom Rusiñol represented the concept of the “garden”. Almagro San Martin, to revive the Spanish garden, and after describing it as an Arab legacy at risk due to the predominance of the English garden, stated: “To rebuild it there are, however, some traces. In Granada, I discovered a carmen that retains the main outlines of its distant Arab layout” (see Illustration 6).33 Illustration 6. Arquitectura verda by Santiago Rusiñol (1903). On the right, the same path can be seen in the photograph Jardín moruno by Torres Molina (1916).34

Source: Left to right, Plate from the book Jardins d’Espanya by Santiago Rusiñol (1903). Photo Jardín moruno by Manuel Torres Molina (1916).

32

Santiago Rusiñol (1897). Impresiones de arte. Barcelona: La Vanguardia, p. 229.

33

Melchor de Almagro San Martín (1916). “Jardines de Granada (para Santiago Rusiñol)”, La Esfera, 128: [two unnumbered pages].

34

The photo Jardín moruno by Manuel Torres Molina was included, with this title, in Melchor de Almagro’s article (see Melchor de Almagro San Martín [1916]. “Jardines de Granada (para Santiago Rusiñol)”, Op. Cit.) as a surviving example of an Arab garden in Granada. It is shown here, reproduced from an original of the day (jtr collection), not from the reproduction in the magazine La Esfera, which was inferior in quality.

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José Tito Rojo

His article includes it in a photo by Torres Molina entitled Jardín moruno. Evidence that this regionalist view was followed was that it was actually a carmen from the second half of the nineteenth century built in a place which, prior to the garden being built, was a plot of land with no sign of having been previously inhabited. Santiago Rusiñol’s painting, Arquitectura verda —included in his publication Jardins d’Espanya— was of the very same cypress-lined path as the one in the photo, taken twenty years earlier.

In the vast majority of his paintings, and not just during his initial phase, Rusiñol was completely obsessed by architectural topiaries, usually cypress, which he considered to be an Arab legacy.35 Of these, the most repeated were the glorietas, enclosed spaces created by arches of trimmed cypresses. The glorieta became synonymous with Rusiñol’s gardens, and it was not by chance that Picasso placed one in the background of a portrait of the painter. Of them, the Glorieta de la bailarina stands out as Rusiñol depicted it repeatedly in several of his paintings with different titles. In a culmination of garden coincidences, it happened to be on the Granada property of the gypsy dancer Josefa Durán, immortalised in the biography Pepita written by her granddaughter, the writer Vita Sackville-West, who was also a passionate gardener.

The contribution of Forestier to the shaping of the regionalist Andalusian style Now that the need to create gardens in a Spanish style had been established, specifics for it had to be outlined. The person who solved this problem, Jean Claude Nicolas Forestier,36 was, paradoxically, a foreigner. He arrived in Spain in 1911, summoned to Seville to help with the preparations for the Universal Exhibition that eventually became the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929.37 His assignment was to transform the mid-nineteenth century landscaped garden, created by the Duke of Montpensier for his Palace in San Telmo and which had been ceded to the city in 1893 by the Infanta Maria Luisa, in whose honour the park —Parque de María Luisa— was 35

For information about these topiaries in Rusiñol’s paintings, see José Tito Rojo and Manuel Casares Porcel (1999). “La bailarina del Generalife y las topiarias de ciprés en los jardines granadinos del siglo xix”, Cuadernos de la Alhambra, No. 35, pp. 57-92.

36

Much has been written about Jean-Claude-Nicolas Forestier. Essential reading is the work of Benedicte Leclerc (ed.) (1994). Jean Claude Nicolas Forestier, 1851-1930. Du jardin au paysage urbain. Paris: Picard. On his work in Seville, see Sonsoles Nieto Caldeiro (1995). El jardín sevillano de 1900 a 1929. Seville: Padilla. And, in general, on his work in Andalusia, see Antonio Tejedor Cabrera [doctoral thesis] (1998). Jardines históricos de Andalucía. Seville: Universidad de Sevilla.

37

See Cristina Domínguez Peláez (1995). El Parque de María Luisa, esencia histórica de Sevilla. Seville: Ayuntamiento de Sevilla; and Vicente Lleó Cañal (1997). La Sevilla de los Montpensier. Seville: Focus.

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The “Hispano-Muslim garden”: the historical construction of an idea

named. The Seville that greeted Forestier served as the hub for the creation of a new architectural movement, local neo-Sevillian regionalism, and the arrival of a foreigner to renovate such important gardens was not well received. Everyone in the city agreed that the landscaping of the Parque de María Luisa had to be done “without any foreign touch” and maintaining the “character of Andalusian gardens”.38 As inspiration for his designs, Forestier chose regional historical gardens, in particular those of the Alhambra and the Generalife (see Illustration 7) in Granada. The result pleasantly surprised everyone, including his initial critics, and it became the core around which the much-desired national garden could be articulated, now forever assimilated into an Andalusian style with Islamic roots.

In the same way that the Italian nationalist garden owed much to the work of British and American theoreticians and landscape gardeners, it is not surprising that it was a Frenchman who provided the criteria for the regionalism of the Spanish garden. France at that time was facing a cultural problem in which Forestier also participated: finding a valid style for colonial work in Africa. Following the Conference of Algeciras (1906) and the Treaty of Fez (1912), France took over the colonial management of Morocco. Marshal Lyautey decided not to repeat the model applied in Algeria, which had abolished local culture replacing it with French culture. Instead, he brought together a group of intellectuals and technicians who developed the architecture, urban planning and art of the protectorate with a style that was called Hispano-Mauresque.39 It was decided that in Morocco the remains of its magnificent art, Muslim but not “Arab”, should be preserved, but created and developed in Europe, in Spain, hence the name in English Hispano-Moresque, while the Spanish version “Hispano-Muslim” eventually prevailed and supplanted the terms that had been used previously. The art of this colony was inspired by this model yet had to be researched and crystallised. The process, brimming with nuances, was a complex game of exchanges and influences, involving theoretical concepts, historical and literary studies, many publications, archaeology carried out in different places, architectural projects, urban planning and the creation of public parks and gardens, all encouraged by Lyautey, and together with prominent figures drawn from many different cultural fields such as Henri Prost, Albert Laprade, Georges Marçais, Jean 38

On the agreements of the Committee of the Universal Exhibition in Seville in 1911, see Sonsoles Nieto Caldeiro (1995). El jardín sevillano de 1900 a 1929. Op. Cit., p. 72.

39

José Antonio González Alcantud (2010). La fábrica francesa del estilo hispano-mauresque, en la galería mediterránea de espejos deformantes, in José Antonio González Alcantud (ed.). La invención del estilo hispanomagrebí. Barcelona: Anthropos, pp. 15-76.

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Gallotti, Henri Terrasse, and Tranchatt de Lunel. A powerful instrument of cultural creation in which Forestier collaborated in his field by carrying out the urban planning as well as the landscaping of spaces in cities in Morocco.40 Illustration 7. An example of Forestier’s design method. 1. Observation of gardens in an Andalusí context. Patio de la Sultana del Generalife. 2. Drawing of the garden (study of its planes and design, based on the previous photo. 3. Layout of a new area that transforms the garden design referred to (detail of the plan of the Parque de María Luisa found in this book). 4. The garden that was created.

Source: 1. Photograph by Rafael Garzón (1890). 2. Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier (1922). Jardins. Carnets de plans et de dessins. Paris: Emile Paul. 3. Ibid. 4. Photograph by Linares (ca. 1920).

The “garden in the climate of orange trees” put forward by Forestier in his writings and in his work in Spain and France is linked to the way the French chose to 40

Other landscape gardeners also took part in the design of the gardens such as Henri Prost and Albert Laprade.

In the specific case of Jean Gallotti, the influence of his book, Le jardin et la maison arabes au Maroc, should be highlighted with an important presentation by Lyautey (see Jean Gallotti [1926]. Le jardin et la maison arabes au Maroc. Paris: Albert Levy). Interestingly, Andalusia is hardly mentioned in this book, and it mainly focuses on comparing Moroccan and French gardens and emphasising their Oriental connection (Persia, India, Turkey). It is worth noting that, in his review of this book, the Arabist Georges Marçais did highlight the importance of Andalusia, even claiming it to be the place where the “types partaits de riâd” were established in the Middle Ages (see Georges Marçais [1927]. “Les jardins arabes du Maroc”, Art et Decoration, February issue, p. 60).

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The “Hispano-Muslim garden”: the historical construction of an idea

develop colonial Morocco. Forestier’s many facets allowed him to play a pivotal role in formalising the longed-for Hispano-Moresque garden. He attended the École Forestière of Nancy, held positions of administrative responsibility in the Service Promenades et d’Architecture des Plantations in Paris, promoted professional associations, was a hands-on landscape architect and was also concerned with the theoretical aspects of urban planning and landscape design. By the time he started working as an urban planner in Morocco and carried out his work in Spain, he had already written a number of notable books, Grandes Villes et Systèmes de Parcs being the most noteworthy examples.41 These facets allowed him to contribute to the creation of the Hispano-Muslim garden, combining the creation of theory and the actual creation of gardens.

His position largely coincided with the view that gardens were the manifestation of the spirit of a people, reflecting “the feelings and tastes of a race”,42 but he knew that very little remained of those mediaeval gardens, an opinion that contrasted with that of local regionalism. He had already expressed this opinion with regard to French mediaeval gardens: “No vestiges remain from the Middle Ages; only a few miniatures, a few tapestries, some scattered notes in stories, in very old plans that give us a very vague idea about the gardens of that time”.43 He held the same opinion of Andalusí gardens: “What must the Gardens of the Alhambra have been like, unfortunately ephemeral creations, destroyed by the storms that attacked them and of which the only witness of their vanished splendour is a marble fountain, unearthed by the picks of the workers at the foot of the Torre de las Damas?”44 However, some lines of text allowed him to find formal references to construct gardens in that style. On the one hand, the survival of tradition because the Andalusian gardens of his day were “authentic, the refinement of old”, and in the gardens of Morocco he found a similar situation as old art was “limited, in fact, to its rudimentary principles”.45 As can be seen, Andalusia and Morocco coincided in being a deteriorated source of a lost art. Forestier’s skill was in finding layouts that could be 41

See Jean-Claude-Nicolas Forestier (1906). Grandes villes et systèmes de parcs. París: Hachette.

42

Jean-Claude-Nicolas Forestier (1922). “Jardines andaluces”, Arquitectura, No. 39, p. 298.

43

Jean-Claude-Nicolas Forestier (1914). “Jardins d’autrefois”, La Gazette Illustrée des Amateurs des Jardins, No. 6, p. 4.

44

Jean-Claude-Nicolas Forestier (1922). “Jardines andaluces”, Op. Cit., p. 300.

45

Ibid, p. 299.

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presented as Andalusí (those of the Garden of the Alhambra and the Generalife, but this was not the case of every mediaeval garden) and adding to them the Andalusian ornamentation that was being used at the time by Sevillian regionalist architects.46 He also took some decorative and design elements from Morocco, in particular with regard to water features. The result was his design for the Parque de María Luisa, constituting the origin of the Arab-Andalusian garden that was later imitated by his disciples, the Spanish regionalist garden designers.

If we look at Forestier’s idea, we can see that it combined the two aspects that had been used unsuccessfully in gardens in the nineteenth century and which have been described above; in some, the emphasis was on the decorative elements of the garden, but not on the layout, while for others, the opposite was done. Forestier included layouts that were Islamic in origin, decorating them with traditional Andalusian elements. In the case of the park in Seville, the combination of elements created an interesting result: the layouts are in the style of Granada, while the decorative elements are in the style of Seville. Imitations of structures such as the Patio del Ciprés de la Sultana, the Acequia del Generalife, and the water channels of the Patio de los Leones were decorated with tiles, plant pots and brick in the textures and colours of Seville. However, Forestier’s garden design cannot be reduced to a task of recovery and assemblage of traditions as he introduced many new ideas. Just like the Duchênes did, notably Achille, Forestier used a wide range of resources, from the inclusion of traditional Baroque forms, evident in the sinuous lines of some fountains in the Parque de María Luisa, to combinations of Modernist-style lines —the forerunner of Art Deco which would soon appear.

Forestier not only limited himself to showing a way of creating gardens, he also took pains to provide written guidelines for the understanding of the characteristics of the Hispano-Andalusian garden. He never left a concrete list but through his articles ideas can be found that were incorporated into the understanding of what, during the twentieth century, Hispano-Muslim gardens were.

46

In his report on the Parque de María Luisa, he uses terms that unequivocally reveal this intention. “The richness of all these Arab decorations can greatly help to beautify these gardens. We can find either new ornamentation inspired by ancient pieces or objects from other eras, such as columns, fountains, benches, basins, etc., etc., which are still found in great numbers in Seville” (Juan Forestier [1991]. Proyecto de arreglo del Parque de María Luisa. Exposición Hispano Americana de Sevilla, 1914. Madrid: Comisaría de la Ciudad de Sevilla para 1992, unnumbered).

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They are listed here with a short description:47 a. The combination of geometric and symmetrical designs and disorderly plant arrangements. Using this concept, Forestier recalled the previous glory of the Andalusian garden with its informal plant arrangement but corrected it by arranging the plants in a formal layout. Georges Marçais48 described it later —and his brother William Marçais captured it in a fortuitous photograph— as “A geometric grid laid out in a section of virgin forest”.49 b. The combination of edible plants, herbs and flowers in flower beds.

This idea prevailed throughout the twentieth century and was known as a vegetable garden, a reductionist view that forgot that what mattered was the purpose of the space and not the nature of its elements.

The Patio de la Acequia was a garden and not a vegetable patch, although among the plants were some fruit trees. c. The presence of creepers and trellised roses. d. The topiary in search of architecture, in his words: “The arches of bay, boxwood, cypresses, the hedges, the high myrtle walls”. Here he applies to the past what he saw in Andalusian gardens. It is more than likely that these structures had been used in garden design, even before the advent of Islam. e. The presence of cruceros or axial paths. This was one of Forestier’s great achievements. It was summed up later by Torres Balbás in the expression “patio de cruceros” (courtyard of axial paths), although this is not quite how it was expressed by the Frenchman. Interestingly, the example that Torres Balbás considered to encapsulate this, the Patio de los Leones, was not a patio de cruceros in the Middle Ages as it was paved with marble and thus had no paths on its axes.

47

To do end, we have used, in particular, texts by Jean-Claude-Nicolas Forestier (1915). “Los jardines hispanoandaluces y andaluces”, Bética, No. 43-44 [4 unnumbered pages]; Jean-Claude-Nicolas Forestier (1920). Jardins, carnet de plans et de dessins. París: Emile Paul Frères Éditeurs; and Jean-Claude-Nicolas Forestier (1922).

“Jardines andaluces”, Op. Cit. For a broader understanding of the comments included, see José Tito Rojo and Manuel Casares Porcel (2011). El jardín hispanomusulmán: los jardines de al-Andalus y su herencia. Op. Cit.

48

Georges Marçais (1927). “Les jardins arabes du Maroc”, Op. Cit.

49

We have not been able to determine the origin of the quoted text taken from Emilio García Gómez (1947).

“Sucursal del paraíso”, abc, 28 February, p. 3.

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f.

Pavilions where “the women who were confined could escape their reclusion and enjoy the view”. g. The use of water with “charming ingenuity” and he noted the playfulness of the gardens, “those ‘surprise water jets’ imitated later without rhyme or reason in the gardens of Italy and then throughout Europe”. Forestier’s view of these surprise water jets was soon replaced by an opposing idea by the Spanish orientalist imaginary which, by defending the idea of the contemplative Arab, melancholic and a lover of subtle pleasures, ended up denying —despite all evidence to the contrary— the use of surprise water jets in al-Andalus. h. The elevation of paths to keep the ground moist for plants. It was one of Forestier greatest successes, transferring to al-Andalus what could still be seen in Morocco. Subsequently, archaeological digs confirmed that this technique was common in Andalusian gardens. i. The refinement of materials, marbles, tiles. j. Sensory exuberance: scents, the sound of water, the colours of the flowers, sudden contrasts, the splendour of the bushes, diversity of plant species. This was the sensual Arab orientalist vision at work, and which still exists today. Without arguing if some peoples are more or less sensual than others, what is true for the history of gardening is that in every era and place, enjoyment for the senses has been sought after in gardens. Gallotti applied this idea by contrasting the disorderly and exuberant freedom of the ryads of Morocco to Europe’s own jardins de l’intelligence with Versailles as a symbol of the subjugation of nature, in contrast to the exuberance and free nature of the Orientals.50

The ideological dominance of the Hispano-Muslim garden The dual aspect of Forestier’s work —his gardens following a historicist Andalusian style and his theoretical ideas— was the basis of the imaginary for the “Hispano-Muslim garden” which prevailed largely unchanged throughout the twentieth century and was instrumental for the future of Spanish garden design. After Forestier, creations by Spanish architects and landscape gardeners in this Andalusian style multiplied, especially during the twenties and thirties. Although some attempts 50

Jean Gallotti (1926). Le jardin et la maison arabes au Maroc. Op. Cit., vol. 2, p. 22.

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The “Hispano-Muslim garden”: the historical construction of an idea

were made in that period to introduce more modern designs, they did not have the impact or the critical acceptance of historicist gardens, which also benefited from the ideological dominance of traditionalist thought following the victory of the “national side” in the Spanish Civil War. In both public and private spaces, centralist-Andalusian shapes and elements proliferated and even old gardens were transformed through the addition of elements in line with the new dominant aesthetics (see Illustration 8). This phenomenon took on an interesting slant in the colonial work produced in the Moroccan protectorate; there, public squares and monuments were adorned with flower beds and elements (buildings, pavilions, urban furniture) in the aesthetics initiated by Forestier. It was, coming full circle, a political decision parallel to that of France in its respective colonial work. If the Hispano-Muslim style in Spain was indebted to the Hispano-Moresque style promoted by Lyautey, in Morocco the influence of Andalusia is evident in both protectorates (see Illustration 9).

On a theoretical level, French Arabism was also influential. In 1941, Georges Marçais gave a lecture, published afterwards, that was the first truly scientific study conducted on the gardens of Islam.51 In Spain, writings on the gardens of al-Andalus began to appear; they were, as before, more literary than scientific but written by Arabists and not intellectuals or amateurs with scant knowledge of the reality of Andalusí gardens. Of those who showed interest in the subject, Emilio García Gómez stands out: on several occasions he wrote short articles on the subject in “La Tercera”, op-ed articles on the third page of the newspaper abc, and later complied in 1948 in his book Silla del Moro.52 In them, and in particular in some on the Generalife,53 he put proposed ways of understanding the gardens of al-Andalus that, without rejecting what had been established by Forestier, emphasized the sensual and discreet sensibility that came to characterise Hispano-Muslim gardens during the Franco regime. In contrast to the imagined exuberant Arab gardens of the past, now a mystical, dreamlike romantic idea was depicted. García Gómez wrote in a literary way when he talked about gardens, and in one article, “Nuestro Generalife”, referred to them directly. Scientific Arabism, he said, referring to that of his day, had moved away from picturesqueness, leaving just the oasis of the gardens, accessible only to poets. And in the imaginary of literature, the Generalife is considered to be a “sucursal del Paraíso” (an offshoot of 51

Georges Marçais (1957). Les jardins de l’Islam, in vv. aa. Melanges d’histoire et d’archéologie de l’Occident musulman [Tomo 1]. Algeria: Impr. Officielle du Gouvernement Général de l’Algérie, pp. 233-240.

52

Emilio García Gómez (1948). Silla del Moro y nuevas escenas andaluzas. Madrid: Revista de Occidente.

53

In particular, “Sucursal del Paraíso” (abc, 28th February, 1947) and “Nuestro Generalife” (abc, 13th March, 1947).

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Paradise), the title of another of his articles quoted here, and a place that “undoubtedly hides a nostalgia for Paradise”. He followed in the steps of the imagined aesthetics of Georges Marçais, who in his lecture compared the gardens of Islam with the Paradise of the Koran. But neither he nor García Gómez actually affirmed, and much less theorised, that Arab gardens aimed to encompass a religious metaphor, limiting themselves to the creation of a literary diversion involving poetic license.

This was not so in the case of Francisco Prieto Moreno54 who accepted as fact that the intention of Muslims when they created gardens was to make them a metaphor of the Paradise in the Koran, something that, as noted at the beginning of this article, was also mentioned in the Manifiesto de la Alhambra. To some extent, it was Prieto Moreno who ended the process of invention of the Hispano-Muslim garden. His opinions shaped the way that the gardens of al-Andalus were understood by experts, strengthened by the fact that he was the director of the Alhambra, an architect interested in gardens, professor on the subject at the School of Architecture in Madrid and a designer of gardens in, and away from, the Alhambra. Prieto’s interpretive work within the context of Spain took place in the fifties. According to the official ideology of the Franco regime, Spain was considered “the moral reserve of the West” in contrast to a West that was rationalistic and irreligious. The mystical nature of the Spanish character was projected to the country’s past, including its Islamic past. Thus, earlier nineteenth-century views of Arabs as excessive and decadent people, lovers of pleasure and luxury, were abandoned. It no longer claimed that gardens were created for pleasure, for the direct enjoyment of the senses, as an extravagance and for lust, but for discreet, delicate pleasures, for meditation and prayer; those gardens were no longer seen as decorative and without deliberate symbolism, but were seen as a religious symbol.

This ideological standpoint comprised other components that favoured its implementation. At a time when art history was dominated by the analysis of symbols, the meaning of the Islamic garden was revealed in a manner that allowed for its seamless interpretation, without the need to search for specific documentation for each individual garden with regard to the intentions of its creator. While observing a painting, scholars were forced to analyse its contents and determine whether or not a figure in the painting revealed elements that would shed light on its meaning, determine who produced or commissioned the painting, what its purpose was, in the case of Islamic gardens a similar exercise was not considered necessary. It did not matter if the place in question was the courtyard of a mosque or a palace, 54

Francisco Prieto-Moreno (1952). Los jardines de Granada. Madrid: Cigüeña.

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The “Hispano-Muslim garden”: the historical construction of an idea

Illustration 8. Transformation of a historical garden to adapt it to the new regionalist aesthetics. The Jardín de la Danza in the Alcázar in Seville in the 20th century (photograph by Léon y Lévy, ca. 1885) following the addition of tiling for the benches and steps (detail of a stereotypical example from the collection of El turismo práctico, ca. 1925).

Source: Photograph by Léon y Lévy (ca. 1885); El turismo práctico collection (ca. 1925).

Illustration 9. Andalusian garden in the Mohammed V square in Chauen, with cypress arches, tiles from Seville and a wrought iron fountain from the factory of Juan Miró, also in Seville.

Source: Anonymous photograph (ca. 1940).

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the garden of a devout kind and poet or a king criticised by the imams as being impious, the small space of a family of modest income or a country pleasure palace, either for private use or created by a monarch to astound and impress vassals and ambassadors. They all shared the same intentional meaning: a metaphor for Paradise, a religious symbol. No attempt at analysis was made not was any attempt made to search for possible documentation; it was enough for the discourse to give the appearance of depth when analysed. In most cases, it was sufficient to offer quotations from the Koran that provided evidence that Paradise was a garden —a simple fallacious argument (fallacy of ambiguity), consequently inferring that all gardens were a “Paradise”.

The transformation of the excessive nineteenth-century Arab into the mystical and delicate one of the second half of the twentieth century had repercussions with regard to many other details. If in the nineteenth century, and Forestier continued to affirm this, Muslims created myriad water features, with fanciful fountains and jets that rose various metres, the belief changed to one that considered that they did not use jets of water and merely caressed the water as they sat on the edge of a pool. In denying any hint of frivolity, it was considered that the combination of utilitarian and ornamental plants meant that al-Andalus actually had no real gardens but just grew crops (orchards, vegetable gardens) that were decorated to a greater or lesser extent.

The same occurred with trimmed plants: if architectural topiaries were considered, even by Forestier, to be an undeniable characteristic, it was later affirmed that this technique was not used in al-Andalus and so any surviving example, for instance the hedges of Comares, became a clear Christian addition.55 These opinions were almost always more common in general literature, but were present, to a greater or lesser extent, in most works, particularly in studies that did not focus on gardens in which it was sufficient to dedicate just a few lines to mentioning shared characteristics.

If the last phase of the invention of the Hispano-Muslim garden can be considered to end with Prieto Moreno, it can also be said that its predominance began to wane when specific studies were first carried out on these gardens in the late twentieth century based on archaeology, Arabism and research into the history of gardens. Just as the book Los jardines de Granada was a milestone in the invention of the Hispano-Muslim garden, the book La arquitectura en la literatura árabe,

55

With regard to all of these concepts, we referred to detailed research found in José Tito Rojo and Manuel Casares Porcel (2011). El jardín hispanomusulmán: los jardines de al-Andalus y su herencia. Op. Cit.

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The “Hispano-Muslim garden”: the historical construction of an idea

by María Jesús Rubiera Mata,56 marked the beginning of a new phase in garden historiography with the study of documentation replacing poetic invention. This was not only a new perspective, but an implicit criticism of previous thinking.

In the same way as what we have described as the Hispano-Muslim garden was originally established to satisfy the needs of Spanish nationalism in the early nineteenth century and was consolidated in the second phase of that ideology —coinciding with the Franco regime—, we can also consider that the current phase is evolving at a time when that Spanish Arab spirit has no place in our current imaginary, nor in the way that societies and the nature of the Arabs are viewed today. While the garden of al-Andalus was a mediaeval reality, it would be incorrect to transfer to that time and place judgments that prevail today and reflect the current reality, judgments that would most likely be ideologically contaminated. Returning to the significance of the shift caused by Rubiera Mata’s book, the only way to advance our knowledge of what the Andalusí gardens were like and their meaning is to study documentation, whether literary or technical texts, material remains that have been unearthed or remain buried, paintings and sculptures, and the pollen and minerals of the soil. Being rigorous does not mean we have to ignore the poetic words proclaimed by García Gómez, and lose sight, in the present, of the lessons we can learn from the gardens of Al-Andalus, for their enjoyment and for their exquisite design beauty. “This idea of an indecipherable message is the one that best represents what the Generalife is for us”, said García Gómez in March 1947. It could easily apply to all the gardens of al-Andalus, whether they are still planted with flowers or described in a book of poems, without having to invent a new Hispano-Muslim garden tailored to our needs in order to create an ideology.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR José Tito Rojo is the curator of the Botanical Garden of the University of Granada and is an expert in the restoration of historic gardens. As a researcher, he has focused in particular on the Andalusí garden and its influence on modern Spanish landscape gardening. He holds a PhD from the University of Granada, where he works as the curator of the Botanical Gardens. He is also a member of the International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes of icomos and of the Comitato Scientifico of the Fondazione Benetton Studi e Ricerche. His most noteworthy recent works include the following: Modernity and Regionalism in the Gardens of Spain 56

María Jesús Rubiera Mata (1981). La arquitectura en la literatura árabe. Datos para una estética del placer.

Madrid: Editora Nacional.

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(1850-1936): From Radical Opposition to Misunderstood Synthesis (2015); I grandi bacini d’acqua nell’Occidente musulmano: funzione, evoluzione, restauro. A proposito della Favara (2015). His most important collective works include the following: Jardín y paisaje. Miradas cruzadas (2011, with Juan Calatrava); El jardín hispanomusulmán: Los jardines de al-Andalus y su herencia (2012, Manuel Casares-Porcel); and “Las tipologías de los jardines de la Alhambra en el siglo xix a la luz de la fotografía” (2013, together with Manuel Casares-Porcel).

ABSTRACT From the Romantic period until today, the concept of the Hispano-Muslim garden has evolved in parallel to the changes in the way the perception of al-Andalus has been understood, acquiring contradictory connotations at different times and due to different authors. We will analyse the phenomenon by relating it to social changes as well as its impact on the creation of a regionalist style of garden that eventually became mainstream in the early decades of the twentieth century and even more deeply-rooted following the military and ideological victory of nationalist thinking of the Spanish Civil War. In this context, the contributions of important figures with regard to the history of landscape gardening theory and practice will be examined, via Spanish authors such as Melitón Atienza and Pedro Julián Muñoz y Rubio, as will the definitive shape of the garden, highlighting the important roles played by the painter Santiago Rusiñol and the French theoretician and gardener Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier. Our analysis of the manifestations of the concept’s historical authenticity will overlap with the study of their reflection in the gardens created during each period in a hypothetically Islamic style.

KEYWORDS Regionalist garden, Hispano-Muslim garden, Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier, Santiago Rusiñol, Francisco Prieto-Moreno.

TRANSLATION Monique Fuller.

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MEXICO’S PRESENCE AT THE INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITIONS. THE “MOORISH” PAVILION OF NEW ORLEANS (1884) Rafael López Guzmán and Aurora Yaratzeth Avilés García

Introduction

T

he evocation of the past has been a constant throughout various periods in history, in terms of appropriating the past as a means of validating contemporary existence. This evocation was particularly prevalent during the 19th century, with varying formal and symbolic qualities across different regions, in both Europe and America.

In the case of Mexico, this reconstruction of the past became a matter of identity, of authenticity, of guaranteeing cultural survival in times of the definition of modern mexicanidad [Mexican-ness]. One of the means by which the different constructions of national identity were expressed was through architecture. It was during the Porfiriato [the rule of General Porfirio, 1876-1910] when, despite the general “Frenchifying” of culture, Mexican architects realized that they could create their own architectural vocabulary. This would enable them to consolidate the national identity by reflecting the pre-Hispanic and viceregal past, all within the framework of eclecticism: combining the technological use of concrete and steel with ornamental motifs taken from different historical times and places, offering a self-image without sacrificing modern European and American advances. “Eclecticism” in a positive sense insofar as each aesthetic of the past was taken to be a partial manifestation of beauty, and it was the subjective optionality which gave it meaning in a particular cultural context. The architect “needed to consolidate the universal vision of man: heir and depository of the great civilizations and eras of history”,1 at 1

Hugo Arciniega Ávila (2010). La exposición internacional mexicana de 1880, in Hugo A. Arciniega Ávila, Rebeca Kraselsky Masmela, et al. México en los pabellones y las exposiciones internacionales, 1889-1929. Mexico City: National Museum of San Carlos/National Institute of Fine Arts/CONACULTA, p. 21.

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Rafael López Guzmán and Aurora Yaratzeth Avilés García

the same time as aiming to construct an identity and create “national styles” by way of reviving the forms of the past.

In Mexico, this search for an identity ranged from the revival of pre-Hispanic aesthetics, European styles —such as Spanish Renaissance and Venetian Gothic— and Oriental exoticism, generically known as Moorish.2 Later, from the early 20th century onward, the re-evaluation of the viceregal tradition was fostered as a new symbol of identity, encouraged by the work of theorists such as Jesús T. Acevedo in 1910 and Federico E. Mariscal in 1913. The former regarded “colonial” architecture as the guiding force of the evolution and the source from which a true national architecture would emerge. The latter, on the other hand, noted that it had been during the Hispanic period when the elements of Mexican nationality combined, and that the constructions of those years should therefore be used as the basis for the modifications that would reveal, in “modern” buildings, the changes that “Mexican life had since that time” undergone. In Mexico City, a series of conferences on the art of New Spain was held and the El Universal newspaper called for the restoration of monuments built during the viceregal era.3 In this way, the Hispanic past was reclaimed as a unitary and set period, comprising the new and, in many cases, institutional and commercial buildings of the historic centre with baroque facades that openly copied the decorative motifs of the adjacent seventeenth and eighteenth-century palaces. Moreover, concessions were made to latticework of Mudejar origin, polylobed arches or the use of Pueblan ceramics, disregarding their technical origin and focusing on their values of identity. This false historicism had the advantage of not aggressively impacting on pre-existing volumes installed in viceregal blocks. This ideologically well-founded era extended beyond the time of the revolution and found in Jose Vasconcelos a staunch advocate of social values that were expressed visually in the endowment of neo-colonial institutional buildings which acknowledged the artistic and cultural forms of the viceregal period. This also constituted the first instance of heritage assets being given protection at legislative level.4 2

See James Oles (2013). Art and Architecture in Mexico. London: Thames and Hudson, p. 207.

3

See Annick Lempérière (1995). “Los dos centenarios de la independencia mexicana (1910-1921): de la historia patria a la antropología cultural”, Historia Mexicana, 45 (2), p. 348.

4

As a way to project itself internationally, this was the aesthetic of the pavilion designed by Mexico for the IberoAmerican Exposition in Rio de Janeiro in 1922 by Carlos Obregón Santacili and Carlos Tarditi. Later, in the tenders for the Mexican pavilion at the Latin American Exhibition in Seville in 1926, several neo-colonial pavilions would be presented, along with others in a neo-indigenous style that would, ultimately, become the trend of choice, with clear Mayan and Toltec influences.

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Mexico’s presence at the international expositions. The “Moorish” pavilion of New Orleans (1884)

Mexico at the universal and international expositions If defining the national identity became a cultural objective of the state and of society in general, the major international exhibitions served as a showcase for the evolution of thinking in Mexico to the outside world.

The main objectives of the organizers of the expositions between 1876 and 1929 were the advancement of industrialization in the country and trade. By exhibiting, the intention was not only to display the nation’s riches, industries and produce, but also to expand markets and conduct trade.

Mexico participated in various exhibitions in the 19th and 20th centuries. The preoccupation at each exhibition was to portray the image of a modern and stable nation that the political leaders at the time were committed in establishing. To this end, teams of officials were made responsible for organising these events. These teams sought to showcase the most distinctive features of the country to each venue.

The buildings in which Mexico exhibited its products expressed the image they wished to project to the outside world. It also expressed the conceptions the elite organizers had of their reality, through the links with the pre-Hispanic era, the viceregal period or the Western legacy that they presented.

The first international exposition in which Mexico participated in an official capacity was held in Philadelphia in 1876. It had a stand in a building located in Fairmount Park and a section in the Gallery of Art, where works by the teachers and most gifted students of the Academy of San Carlos were exhibited. The Mexican stand was “neoclassical” in style, “with some Aztec adornments”.5 The revival of the pre-Hispanic past was an important element in the search and construction of the national identity and they turned to this for inspiration on several occasions as a way of introducing Mexico.

The next exposition in which Mexico participated was the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition (New Orleans, 1884). The “Moorish” pavilion, designed by the architect Jose Ramon Ibarrola Berruecos and on which this text will focus, was constructed specifically for this fair. It is interesting to note that a larger number of viceregal paintings were set to be exhibited at this fair than those that had been sent to Philadelphia, indicating a greater appreciation of this kind of art at that time.6 5

Mauricio Tenorio Trillo (1998). Artilugio de la nación moderna. México en las exposiciones universales, 18801930. México D. F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, p. 67.

6

Among the items sent to New Orleans were thirteen viceregal paintings, while only five were sent to Philadelphia (see Archivo de la Antigua Academia de San Carlos, Doc. 11,038, reported by Eduardo Baez Macias [2003]. Guía del Archivo de la Antigua Academia de San Carlos 1781-1910. Mexico D. F.: National Autonomous University of Mexico (unam), Institute of Aesthetic Studies, p. 284).

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Rafael López Guzmán and Aurora Yaratzeth Avilés García

Mexico would also be present at the next exposition, this time on the other side of the Atlantic. The International Exposition of Paris in 1889 commemorated the centenary of the revolution. The organising committee made a logistical and economic effort unprecedented in the country’s history. Unlike previous events, this time Mexico sent a large pavilion inspired by Xochicalco architecture and pre-Hispanic mythology.

The building combined the desire to highlight the national lineage with the aim of portraying itself as a modern country ready for foreign investment and immigration.

The building, designed by the historian Antonio Peñafiel in collaboration with the engineer Antonio de Anza, was built in accordance with the instructions of the Minister of Development, Carlos Pacheco, to “represent the character of one or more of the typical ancient monuments of the country, and which we wish to present abroad as being characteristic of the nation”.7 To this end, attention turned to the monuments of Huexotla, Teotihuacan, Mitla and, especially, Xochicalco. From this latter monument, motifs and formal elements were taken to be reinterpreted in the pavilion and organised into an elevation of Greco-Roman style and in which “Mexican-style” columns replaced the classic ones and Toltec figures were arranged in the manner of caryatids. The façade featured twelve bronze reliefs representing Aztec gods, heroes and leaders. These were produced by the Mexican sculptor Jesús Contreras, who was in Paris at the time.8 The building combined motifs from the past with modern building materials such as the internal steel frame, made by a French company.9 The interior, luxurious and ostentatious, embodied the Parisian taste.

The aesthetic of the Mexican pavilion in Paris can be seen as the visual and symbolic appropriation of a glorious past. At the time, it was viewed as heir to a lineage traced back to the Aztec kings and heroes, whose bravery and moral quality were emphasized and whose achievements were acknowledged as the foundations of the nation’s history. Moreover, this took advantage of European nations’ interest in studying ancient cultures, placing Mexico among that group by demonstrating its contributions to world knowledge.

Inside the pavilion, Mexico exhibited a large number of products including cotton, silk, “national costumes” made of leather and cloth, saddles, tanned leather and 7

Clementina Díaz y de Ovando (1990). “México en la Exposición Universal de 1889”, Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, No. 61, p. 113-114.

8

For more information on the building and its iconography, see Fausto Ramírez (1988). Dioses, héroes y reyes mexicanos en París, 1889, in vv. aa. Historia, leyendas y mitos de México: su expresión en el arte [XI International Symposium of Art History]. Mexico D. F.: unam, Institute of Aesthetic Studies, pp. 201-258.

9

James Oles (2003). Art and Architecture in Mexico. Op. Cit., p. 201.

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Mexico’s presence at the international expositions. The “Moorish” pavilion of New Orleans (1884)

exotic hides, embroidery, lace, tortoiseshell work and furniture. Various models of agricultural and industrial apparatuses were also sent, together with “a model of a railway for ships whereby the ships would be transported from ocean to ocean across the isthmus [of Tehuantepec]” and a map showing “all the territories and produce, railroads and telegraph lines”. There was also, of course, a replica of the statue of Cuauhtemoc from the Paseo de la Reforma avenue in Mexico City, something that featured in almost all the expositions in which Mexico participated. Among the artistic works presented at this exposition were a fairly large set of paintings by José María Velasco and his students,10 which received favourable reviews from the press: “Yes, there is a school of landscape painting in Mexico, and a school that does not owe anything to anyone, which has not imitated anyone, which has developed alone, observing the wonderful vegetation in the valleys, distant clearings in the mountains, the sweet and transparent light in the architecture”.11 Undoubtedly, these works not only demonstrated the high technical quality of the landscape painters, they also spread the image of a solid state due to its land and natural resources, immersed in a process of industrialization and ready to receive foreign investment.

Mexico would return to Paris for the great Universal Exposition of 1900, the purpose of which was to see off the century with a big event that “would reflect the dazzling genius of France and show that, as in the past, we continue to be in the vanguard of progress”.12 Seventy-five foreign pavilions were spread over the grounds of the fair, which occupied the entire Champ de Mars, the Trocadero, the Esplanade des Invalides, the Cours de la Reine and the banks of the Seine from the Pont de l’Alma to the Place de la Concorde. Thirty-nine million people visited the exposition over the course of seven months to see, among other things, the magnificent constructions erected as part of the event to represent the architectural innovations of the end of the century —the Petit Palais, the Grand Palais, the Gare d’Orsay and the Al10

José María Velasco led Group 1, dealing with works of art. As part of this contingent, 68 pieces by the landscape artist were exhibited, which demonstrates the great importance of his work in Mexico at that time (see Mauricio Tenorio Trillo [1998]. Artilugio de la nación moderna. México en las exposiciones universales, 1880-1930. Op. Cit., p. 91).

11

“La pintura en París, honor a un mexicano”, in El Mundo, Mexico, Thursday, August 15, 1889 (published by Ida Rodríguez Prampolini [1997]. La crítica de arte en México en el siglo xix. Estudios y documentos, tomo iii [1879-1902]. Mexico D. F.: unam, Institute of Aesthetic Studies, p. 255).

12

Raymond Rudorff (1972). Belle Epoque: Paris in the Nineties. London: Hamilton, p. 322 (cited by Mauricio Tenorio Trillo [1998]. Artilugio de la nación moderna. México en las exposiciones universales, 1880-1930. Op. Cit., p. 253).

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Rafael López Guzmán and Aurora Yaratzeth Avilés García

exander III Bridge, inaugurated to celebrate the political rapprochement between Russia and France.13 The construction of the pavilion in which Mexico would exhibit its items once again generated a debate regarding the search for a national architectural style, non-existent up to that point. The decision was therefore made to associate the country with the image of universality and to place it in the vanguard through the use of an internationally accepted style, known at the time as Neo-Grec or Neo-Greco. As Sebastian B. de Mier, the Mexican commissioner in Paris, noted: All of the pavilions on the Street of Nations, in which these are represented, preferred firstly to employ serious and new architectural styles. Mexico, which as we have seen does not have an architecture that characterizes it, which at the mere sight of the pavilion’s façade brings to mind its nationality, as is the case with Italy, Spain, Norway, etc., needed to adopt a serious style that would reflect the character of the government that guides its destiny and the NeoGrec style, which satisfied these conditions, was the one adopted.14 The engineer Antonio de Anza was commissioned to design this classicist building, a symbol of modernity and cosmopolitanism that also drew on the work of the architect Ramon Rodríguez Arangoiti, who had introduced this style in Mexico years previously. As is apparent from Mier’s words, the national image was associated with adjectives such as seriousness and sobriety. From the point of view of the Mexican organizers, modern nations steered clear of rude exuberance and the pavilion, built in a Western style, and aimed to portray the universalism of Mexico, to support the formality of its government and to put an end to its uncivilized past. On this occasion, the return to pre-Hispanic architecture was not considered as an option.

The inevitable relationship with the past was manifested in the building through allegories that alluded to particular periods in the history of Mexico (Independence, Reform and Peace),15 while the modern character was accentuated 13

Ibid, p. 254.

14

Sebastián de Mier (1901). México en la Exposición Universal Internacional de París 1900. Paris: Published by J. Dumoulin, p. 229.

15

Mauricio Tenorio Trillo (1998). Artilugio de la nación moderna. México en las exposiciones universales, 18801930. Op. Cit., p. 259.

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Mexico’s presence at the international expositions. The “Moorish” pavilion of New Orleans (1884)

by the use of electric lighting, one of the innovations that featured heavily at the Paris exposition.

At around the same time, Mexico participated in the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Its participation was notable for its ethnographic focus, with the exhibition of Mexican antiquities, photographs of ruins, reproductions of the architecture of pre-Hispanic monuments, figures representing regular people, clothing and skulls of indigenous people. A replica of the Cuauhtémoc Monument was again sent, as well as of one dedicated to Columbus.16 Two paintings by two of the most outstanding students of Jose Salome Pina, an art teacher at the National School of Fine Arts, were commissioned especially for this exposition: La rendición de Cuauhtémoc ante Cortés [“The Surrender of Cuauhtemoc to Cortés”]

by Joaquín Ramirez Jr. and El suplicio de Cuauhtémoc [“The Torture of Cuauhtemoc”] by Leandro Izaguirre, currently kept in the National Palace and the National Art Museum of Mexico City, respectively. According to Fausto Ramírez, these paintings demonstrated the “desire to emphasize the moral superiority of Mexican heroes, meaning the overcoming of their own passions and honouring their word [...] in the face of the cruelty and deception of the foreign conquerors”.17 It would seem that both the ethnographic objects and the paintings exhibited had a common thread which aimed to take advantage of the taste for exoticism combined with an idealized vision of the pre-Hispanic past that would support and display the nation’s own civic and moral values.

The lack of stylistic clarity that characterised the pavilion at the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1900 was also a feature of Mexico’s participation at another American fair the following year: the Pan American Exposition of Buffalo. Mexico’s participation consisted of a “Spanish mission” building which revived the “colonial style” and housed the mining, art and liberal arts exhibitions. It also featured a supposedly realistic reproduction of a Mexican village, which included a live show performed by Mexicans dressed in traditional costume, in which they carried out routines of daily life in Mexico.18 16 17

Ibid, p. 247.

Fausto Ramírez (2003). México a través de los siglos (1881-1910): la pintura de historia durante el Porfiriato, in Los pinceles de la historia. La fabricación del Estado, 1864-1910 [Exposition catalogue]. Mexico D. F.: Patronage of the National Museum of Art/National Bank of Mexico/unam, Institute of Aesthetic Studies, p. 119 and 120.

vv. aa.

18

Mauricio Tenorio Trillo (1998). Artilugio de la nación moderna. México en las exposiciones universales, 18801930. Op. Cit., p. 246 and 250).

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Three years later, in 1904, Mexico attended the “Louisiana Purchase” Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. This fair commemorated the centenary of France selling this territory to the United States. For this show, Mexico constructed a “colonial style” building, with a central courtyard surrounded by gardens containing autochthonous Mexican plants. From the material exhibited, the anthropological and archaeological studies were highlighted. The Ministry of Justice and Public Education exhibited a large collection of pre-Hispanic pieces from the Aztec, Mayan and Toltec cultures among others. In its ethnography section, Mexico displayed various photographs of “Indians of pure race”. Another exhibition featured figures of typical Mexicans. Entitled Los aztecas y sus industrias [The Aztecs and their industries], it showed Mexican (Aztec) craftspeople making bricks, pottery, and copper objects.19 This reveals continuity with the exhibition in Buffalo, in both the architectural designs and the ethnographic discourses with which Mexico presented itself.

Neo-colonial architecture, although present in different forms in Buffalo and St. Louis (Missouri), would achieve its maximum expression at the Universal Exposition held in Rio de Janeiro between September 1922 and July 1923 during celebrations to commemorate the centenary of Brazil’s independence.

The building in which Mexico exhibited their goods was constructed in neo-colonial style at the behest of José Vasconcelos and was authored by the architects Carlos Obregón Santacilia and Carlos Tarditi. For Vasconcelos, a building of this type expressed Mexican national identity insofar as it symbolized the combination of the Spanish technique with an indigenous touch. The painters Roberto Montenegro and Gabriel Fernández Ledesma painted the murals which decorated the second floor. These paintings represented traditional aspects of the Mexican identity, such as men dressed as cowboys and women with plaited hair dressed in traditional costumes. Another feature was the “Hall of Songs”, which featured fragments of Mexican folk songs on the walls. It is interesting to note that a cutting-edge aesthetic was used to express an official discourse in these murals, evidenced by the innovative forms and sculptures of Montenegro. These images were described by the international press as “Mexican allegories and images full of colour, but very traditional”.20 This image of the nation on display in Rio did however still feature the pre-Hispanic elements that had constituted the notion of identity a century earlier, as could be seen in the gift Mexico made to Brazil of a replica of the Cuauhtémoc Monument.

19

Ibid., p. 250.

20

Idem, p. 276.

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Mexico’s presence at the international expositions. The “Moorish” pavilion of New Orleans (1884)

As has already been noted, reproductions of the figure of this Indian hero were sent, in various formats, to almost all the universal expositions in which Mexico participated during the nineteenth century. In Brazil, the pedestal of the monument was designed

by Obregón Santacilia and Tarditi, who placed heads retaken from the Temple of Quetzalcoatl in Teotihuacán in its four vertices. In its pavilion, Mexico’s exhibits included ancient and modern Teotihuacan ceramics along with photographs by Guillermo Kahlo displaying the viceregal heritage. It can therefore be seen that the image of the Mexican nation in this Brazilian city was formed not only on the basis of the revival of Hispanic elements which conferred a feeling of identity, but also based on continuities with Porfirian discourse.

Towards the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, the revival of pre-Hispanic architecture was once more seen as an option for the expression of the national identity. In 1929, Mexico participated in the Ibero-American Exposition in Seville with a “neo-Mayan” pavilion designed by the Yucatan architect Manuel Amábilis. This construction drew its inspiration from the pre-Hispanic aesthetic combined with the use of modern architectural materials and elements that demonstrated the advances in the national architecture of the time.

Amábilis’ design was praised by critics for, among other things, its architectural and sculptural accuracy with respect to the ancient Mayan buildings. This faithfulness was due to the fact that the architect based his design on studies that he and Victor M. Reyes, the artist in charge of the interior decoration of the building, carried out on pre-Hispanic monuments in the Yucatán region. In addition to the painter, Amábilis’ team included the sculptor Leopoldo Tomassi, who was commissioned to make the sculptures for the facade as well as the reliefs located throughout the building.

In Mexico between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, conceptions of the national identity, expressed through the architecture of the exposition pavilions, fluctuated between the revival of the pre-Columbian past as a historical foundation, the associations with classicist, universal and sober tendencies, and the revival of the viceregal aesthetic in its various forms, before finally returning to the pre-Hispanic era, encompassing the revaluation of other cultures, as well as those of the central parts of the country. At the same time, an examination of these different notions reveals not only the views of every age about their present, taken in conjunction with specific ways of understanding the past and configuring the country’s history, but also the aspirations of a ruling elite and its attempts to place the country in harmony with modern civilized nations. Constructions of the national identity

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during every epoch were changeable and ephemeral like the pavilions that embodied and exhibited them to the world.

Mexico in New Orleans The World Exposition commemorating the centenary of the Cotton Industry took place in New Orleans between December 16, 1884 and June 2, 1885 (see Illustration 1). Mexican aspirations for this event were focused on finding a commercial outlet in the international economy for its raw materials. Porfirio Díaz, “on leave” from his position as president during the administration of Manuel González, headed the Mexican Commission for the exposition. The works created aimed to present Mexico as a modern nation on the world stage and included, for example, a Mexican steam boat built in English shipyards and a model of a ship railway that Captain Eads planned to have cross the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.21 Illustration 1. Main building of the New Orleans Exposition.

Source: La Ilustración Española y Americana (1884).

21

Idem, pp. 69-71.

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Mexico’s presence at the international expositions. The “Moorish” pavilion of New Orleans (1884)

Equally, Mexico wanted to display its statistical advances with items such as an early draft of Statistique et histoire de la République Mexicaine formée par cartes trente et une des Etats, Territoires et une carte avec des chemins de fer texte en anglais, français et anglais, by Antonio García Cubas, the completed version of which was exhibited in Paris in 1889. There were also scientific studies such as Dr. José G. Lobato’s chemical analysis of aguamiel and pulque22 and the industrial chemical study of the various products of Mexico’s maguey plant.23 Along with this were objects which again highlighted the national identity by way of the links with the pre-Hispanic past, including a plaster model of the Sun Stone Monolith. Of the artworks that were displayed, pieces by artists such as José Obregón, Santiago Rebull, Gonzalo Carrasco and José María Velasco stood out.24 Their designs shaped the image of a modern country made strong by its natural resources.

As has already been noted, José Ramón de Ibarrola (1841-1925) was in charge of architecture for the exposition. Ibarolla was a very well-known architect and engineer during the Porfiriato, which led to him becoming involved in significant national projects such as mapping railways, channelling rivers and draining the Valley of Mexico, as well as constructing the lighthouse in the Port of Tampico. He had spent several years studying metallurgy in the US, where he became friends with Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie had, in 1865, founded of the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh, a company that would be fundamental in the development of the so-called kiosco morisco [“Moorish kiosk”].25 Ibarrola was appointed architect engineer for the exposition on March 17, 1884 with a remuneration of 6,000 pesos plus expenses incurred travelling to and staying in the United States. While there, he moved between the cities of New Orleans, which hosted the fair, New York, home to the headquarters of the National City Bank through which the necessary payments were made, Washington, where he 22

[tn: alcoholic beverages made from the sap of the maguey plant. Aguamiel is sometimes known as “honeywater” in English].

23

Idem, pp. 168 y 183.

24

See “Objetos exhibidos por México en la Exposición Universal de Nueva Orleans”, El Siglo XIX, Mexico, Friday, January 30, 1885 (cited by Ida Rodríguez Prampolini [1997]. La crítica de arte en México en el siglo xix.

Op. Cit., pp. 177-182).

25

Other noteworthy details regarding Ibarrola include the fact that in 1868 he was a founding member of the Association of Engineers and Architects of Mexico, an institution that still exists today; or that in 1906 he received a doctorate in science from the University of Pennsylvania (in the United States). He also advised other governments, collaborating on and writing reports for large projects (see Porfirio Chávez Peralta [2013]. “Kiosco morisco”, Boletín Ad Lucem, 7 [28], September 2013).

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presented the relevant reports and made the application for the items required by the Consul General of Mexico in the country, and Pittsburgh, home of the company that would construct the Moorish pavilion.26 Ibarrolla’s activity in the United States between the aforementioned cities was frenetic. When he arrived in New Orleans, his first impression in terms of the timeframe was positive, as outlined in a letter to Porfirio Diaz on June 11, 1884: On the banks of the Mississippi, a short distance from the water there is a large space surrounded by boards and containing thus far only grass and some beautiful oak trees. No work, not even preparatory, has been done to create the large park [...] [at that time] Everything that as of today exists only as drawings will become reality, but for now exists only in design form, and I think it my duty to make this clear to Your Excellency so that he does not worry himself too much with thinking that everyone else is ahead of schedule and that only we are behind schedule.27 The commission bestowed upon Ibarrola, dated April 23, 1884, regarding Mexico’s requirements in terms of their objectives for the exposition, were outlined in the following points: 1. The supervision of Mexico’s allotted space in both the main building of the exposition and the park.

2. The arrangement of Mexico’s allotment in the main building, including its demarcation, as well as the construction of stands, display cases and everything necessary to house the items that were to be exhibited.

3. The construction in the Garden of Mexico of a mainly iron building for the mining exhibition.

4. The construction of a wooden building intended to serve as a centre for meetings of the Mexican Commission, to include a space for the sale of industrial products.

26

New Orleans Exposition. National General Archive. Public Works Collection. Foreign Expositions Series. Box 72. File 2. As a curious note it is worth mentioning that Ibarrola focused his stay in Pittsburgh, where he resided at the Monongahela House Hotel, and in New Orleans where he stayed at the Hotel Saint Charles.

27

Reports sent to General Porfirio Diaz. General National Archive. Public Works Catalogue/Collection. Foreign Expositions Series. Box 78. File 2.

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5. The construction of a temporary building considered suitable for the housing of the soldiers who would travel from Mexico to help in the construction work.28 6. Facilities in the garden for the live birds that were to be exhibited.

7. The preparation of the ground allotted for the Mexican garden, which would cover a total surface area of 18,500 m2.

8. If possible, the construction of a site suitable for serving and selling Mexican delicacies, confectionery and soft drinks.

Apart from the gardens, Ibarrola was involved in three buildings: the mining pavilion (“kiosco morisco”), the administrative centre of the Mexican Commission, which would be used before the fair as lodgings for the soldiers and for storage,29 and the set-up of Mexico’s stand in the main building.

The most important of these, and the one which concerns us in this study, would be: An iron pavilion, octagonal in shape, with sides measuring 32’ 6”, crowned by a decorated brick dome of iron and glass, Moorish in style, whose proportions and decorative features shall conform to the plans of the engineer Ibarrola, and of which no part or detail can be altered without the knowledge and approval of the aforementioned architect.

It was also stated that the commission was granted to the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh.30 The contract with the company was signed by Ibarrola himself on behalf of the Mexican Commission on August 16, 1884.31 In it, the North American company 28

A group of forty soldiers travelled to New Orleans under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Quintas.

29

This building was constructed mainly from wood, and Ibarrola proposed that it be used as a railway station somewhere in Mexico after the exposition. The structure was rectangular, measuring 58m wide and 90m deep.

In the end, they attempted to sell it in New Orleans but, as far as we know, they did not find a buyer, despite the fact that the city council appeared interested. They also tried to sell it as a detachable canopy for other expositions, with countries such as Honduras and Guatemala in mind.

30

This company had already worked with the Mexican government a few years earlier in 1879, building the Tampico lighthouse, also designed by José Ramón de Ibarrola.

31

Contract entered into between J. Ramón de Ibarrola on behalf of the Mexican Commission and the Keystone Bridge Company for the construction of buildings and display-cases for the exposition (Exposition of New Orleans.

August 18, 1884. General Archives of the Nation. Development Fund. Exhibition World Series. Box 78. File 2).

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agreed to carry out all the construction work, not just the structures but all assembly work, outsourcing any work it deemed appropriate. At the same time, it was agreed to include the Mexican soldier labourers on the payroll at the same rate as the Americans, according to qualification. Ibarrola, for his part, representing and responsible for the pavilion on behalf of the Mexicans, obtained in the contract the prerogative to inspect the account books and all contracts that would arise from the planning and construction of the pavilion. The finished piece had to be submitted before December 1, 1884, and the only reasons outlined for its possible delay were of a sanitary nature, namely failure of contracted staff to adapt to the New Orleans climate, or some unforeseen emergency.

Having signed the contract, Ibarrola began to focus on the design of the pavilion, providing the construction company with detailed plans and hiring six draftsmen for that purpose. Despite the intensity of the work, the set of pieces that comprised the pavilion had to reach New Orleans in November 1885 by rail, in spite of Ibarrola’s initial proposal to do so by river.32 In Ibarolla’s periodic reports to General Porfirio Díaz, he was quite optimistic regarding how the Mexican constructions would be perceived. He noted, for example, that “[...] our buildings will be, if not worthy of our nation, at least not among the worst in this grand competition”. He also assessed the items to be exhibited and predicted the success of same: [...] Things which in Mexico are not given any attention are of great importance here and an error which our people often make is to believe that only that which they deem rare is worthy of being exhibited. All our minerals, our woods, our building materials, our fibre plants, the different seeds from our fields, the various species of chilli that are scarcely known here, every species of magueyes, biznagas, nopalillos, organos,33 are here objects of admiration; our riding saddles and harnesses, other leather goods, the hides used for clothing, the shawls, blankets and other similar items are highly regarded; in a word, there is no item, however insignificant it may seem, that would not here be of great interest; and this, as 32

This statement is based on the comments made regarding the Moorish kiosk in the November issue of La Ilustración Española y Americana (1884), No. 41, p. 270.

33

[tn: Different species of cactus plant in Mexico].

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Your Excellency knows very well, should in my understanding be inculcated into the spirit of our exhibitors so that they shed their unfounded timidity.34 Ibarrola, proud of his work, stated in a letter to General Díaz on June 12, 1884, that the constructions would be “worthy of Mexico” and took the opportunity to offer a fairly damning critique of the official buildings of the exposition: The Main Building of the exposition, which should be its most outstanding, has no other merit than that it covers a huge expanse of land, but in its proportions, in its general appearance and in its details, is the biggest blasphemy I’ve seen carried out against the architectural art. The same may be said of the horticulture building, which is not even as it is illustrated in the lithography that I send to Your Excellency, which features on the top a glass roof which in reality is of boards which will have to be coated in asbestos or tinplate.

In view of this, it will not take much effort for our buildings to be far superior to the Americans’.35 The assessment of the Moorish pavilion at the time, as well as of its contents, can be gleaned from this passage by Eduardo E. Zárate: “The building, generally known as “The Mexican Alhambra”, is extremely popular. It is a beautiful miniature that imitates the historical palace of Granada well, and is located near the Main Building. Here are to be found the countless beautiful samples of the rich and almost inexhaustible mineral wealth of the country of Moctezuma...”,36 abundant silver, marble, mercury, coal, opals, topaz and onyx; this last mineral is “[...] the apex of the elevated pyramid that is found under the dome of the building [...]”.37

34

Reports sent to General Porfirio Diaz. General National Archive. Public Works Collection. Foreign Expositions Series. Box 78. File 2.

35

Reports sent to General Porfirio Diaz. Op. Cit.

36

‘Memoria de la Exposición de Nueva Orleans’ written by Mr. Eduardo E. Zárate 1892, July 16. General National Archive. Public Works Collection. Foreign Expositions Series. Box 79. File 1.

37

Ibid.

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The “kiosco morisco” The neo-Arabic aesthetic chosen for the mining pavilion differed radically from the stylistic approaches to the rest of the expositions analysed. The so-called Moorish character and its relation to works dating from the viceregal era was absent. It must have stemmed from the eclectic artistic trends that were influential in Mexico at the time and which had their origin in architects who had trained in France and travelled around Europe. Some of these architects were influenced by Orientalism and had visited southern Spain and Morocco, a trip also undertaken by a significant group of other professionals and potential contractors of public and private architecture. Another influence was the new atmosphere engendered by the curriculum change implemented in the Academy of San Carlos, where architecture was taught.38 This change was implemented in 1857 by Javier Cavallari and included subjects such as “reproduction of monuments of all styles” (second year) and aesthetics of fine art and architectural history (fifth year). This resulted in an eclectic mix of influences among the faculty of professors and, in turn, a place in the historical and aesthetic journey of architecture.

It is therefore understandable that numerous stylistic connections and antecedents of the “kiosco morisco” have been noted. Some of these relate to similar designs for other expositions, such as the Moorish horticulture hall at the Universal Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, or the one chosen to represent Spain at the Universal Exposition in Vienna in 1873.39 Its metal framework has also been linked to that of the Circo Price Theatre in Madrid (see Illustration 2).40 On this point, Elisa García Barragán noted: [...] Like the circo, the framework of the Mexican pavilion had the novelty of being made of iron, delicately worked, in which lattices and arabesques of this metal joined to form filigree latticework with 38

On behalf of the Board of Governors of the Academy of San Carlos, Juan Brocca, a Mexican architect and painter who lived in Milan, looked for somebody in Italy with extensive knowledge of engineering to fill the role of director of the architecture section. He managed to convince Javier Cavallari, a professor at the University of Palermo, knight of the Alberto Order of Saxony, member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, doctor at the academic body of Gottingen, who, as well as being an architect and engineer, had been a historian and archaeologist. Cavallari came to Mexico in 1856.

39

Elisa García Barragán (2001). “Kiosco morisco: evocación de universalidad”, Artes de México, No. 55, p. 76.

40

The Circo Price Theatre with links to the Mexican pavilion was that by the architect Agustín Ortiz de Villajos in the Plaza del Rey in Madrid. Inaugurated in 1880, it included Neo-Arabic features both on the outside and in the interior and iron framework. It was demolished in 1970.

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Mexico’s presence at the international expositions. The “Moorish” pavilion of New Orleans (1884)

glass the brightness of which provided great appeal, together with slender columns whose chapiters recall grenadine architecture.41 The pavilion is octagonal in shape with a glass dome ceiling in the centre that projects outwards along with a portico that stretches geometrically over the entrance. The interior is interrupted by another octagon with columns that allow for visual centralization under the dome (see Illustration 3). In an abstract sense, the spatial concept harks back to designs from Antiquity, specifically the Byzantine martyriums but, above all, to the most consummate of these models —none other than the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, a building fundamental to Islamic culture. This building was built by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik in the late 7th century to monumentalize and protect the rock from which the Prophet Mohammed would have begun his mystical journey to Paradise, accompanied by the archangel Gabriel. The site also has symbolic values for the Jewish people. It is said that it was from this same place that Yahweh created the world and that it was also where Abraham was to sacrifice his son Isaac, although in the end he was prevented from doing so by the divine presence. Moreover, since the early 8th century the Dome of the Rock began to be associated with the reconstruction of the Temple of Solomon, which added to its symbolism for both Jews and Christians.42

41

Elisa García Barragán (1976). “Supervivencias mudéjares y presencias orientalistas en la arquitectura mexicana”, Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, vol. xiii, No. 45, p. 143.

42

These symbolic attributes, without comparing them to historical data, have assumed that the Dome of the Rock was copied in such disparate projects as the Church of San Giacomo di Rialto in Venice or the Budapest Synagogue on Rumbach Street, designed by Otto Wagner. It has served as an architectural background for such paintings as well known as The Marriage of the Virgin by Rafael (1504) or Jesus gives the keys to Saint Peter by Perugino (1482). It was also thought that its construction copied the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which meant that from the Crusades on the two were confused. It thus appeared as an iconographic reference in the images of military orders, as well as in European architecture (on the Temple of Solomon, see William J. Hamblin and David Rolph Seely [2008]. El Templo de Salomón. Historia y mito. Madrid: Akal).

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Illustration 2. Architectural structure of the Circo Price Theatre (Madrid).

Source: Kind of Life Magazine [online], <http://www.klmagazine.es/web/index.php/lugares/147-teatro-circo-price> [Consulted 27th April 2015].

Illustration 3. Kiosco morisco in Santa María de la Ribera. General view.

Source: Photo from rlg archive.

The idea of space encircling a rock in the architecture of Jerusalem is represented in the Mexican pavilion through its museographic uses. The interior included an exhibition that visitors could only see by circulating round the centre, where a pyramid culminating in a large onyx stone was situated. Onyx is a mineral of which Mexico is the leading producer in the world. The idea of an exhibition with

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Mexico’s presence at the international expositions. The “Moorish” pavilion of New Orleans (1884)

a geological slant, as a mosaic of Mexico’s riches, had much to do with the commemorative concept —in this case of a rock— of the Jerusalem construction. The extrapolation of the plan and its distant, but in the abstract coherent, functions, in both buildings, is therefore not strange. The Mexican octagon had sides measuring approximately 10 m, half that of the Dome of the Rock, and an interior area of about 500 m2. It was smaller than the Islamic building, but ultimately looked quite similar (see Illustration 4).

Illustration 4. Kiosco morisco in Santa María de la Ribera. Interior.

Source: Photo from rlg archive.

The image that Ibarrola had of the Dome of the Rock may be connected to the drawings and engravings of travellers such as Chateaubriand who had extended the Grand Tour and visited the Holy Land, increasing Western Europeans’ interest in the Near East. These images might have included those by David Roberts, who visited Jerusalem and depicted it in 1839 (see Illustration 5).

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Illustration 5. View of Jerusalem.

Source: David Roberts (1842) [online], <http://castlesandkilts.blogspot.com.es/2013/01/heroes-de-leyenda-y-poesiasmagicas.html> [Consulted 27th April 2015].

In terms of exterior profiles, the blind arches of the Dome of the Rock and its colourful ceramics were reflected in the bays with chromatic stained-glass windows of the Mexican construction. In the interior of the pavilion of Santa Maria de la Ribera, the supports are cubic Nazari chapiter columns and it is decorated with geometric plant motifs; in the Jerusalemite construction the columns are Corinthian and it features geometric Byzantine mosaics with plant motifs, although it also includes commemorative inscriptions in Arabic, absent in the Mexican construction.

The core elements of space and composition evoke the Umayyad construction of Jerusalem, but the detail of the elevation echoes the Alhambra in Granada and Andalusian architecture. The perimeter archways consist of columns, single or double depending on the location, which continue with pillars and which frame lightly engrailed sloping arches. This is also a feature of the Alhambra, in the Portico of the Golden Room and the galleries in the Courtyard of Lions and the Comares. The elevation is enclosed with staggered battlements, another feature shared with the Al-

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Mexico’s presence at the international expositions. The “Moorish” pavilion of New Orleans (1884)

hambra, but which in terms of the tops of elevations brings to mind other Andalusian buildings, such as the Great Mosque of Cordoba, as well as much of the Moorish architecture of Seville. The exterior of the pavilion is completed by the large dome on a glass tambour that, in the Yamur style, is topped with the Mexican Eagle.

The internal space is interrupted by the central octagon, the interior of which matches the diameter of the dome and which features superimposed columns and pilasters that frame more stilted arches.

As for the decorative details, one must consider the bibliography that Ibarrola may have consulted. We know he studied at the Academy of Saint Carlos, whose library at the time of the pavilion’s design contained publications that dealt with Islamic decorative styles. These included books by Émile Prisse d’Avennes,43 Jules Bourgoin44 or Albert Charles Auguste Racinet,45 as well as the Revue des Arts Décoratifs, which was first published in Paris in 1880 and which featured some designs of Arabic character (see Illustration 6).

Illustration 6. Kiosco morisco in Santa María de la Ribera. Elevation detail.

Source: Photo from ygm archive.

43

Specifically, the book by this author that was in said library was Émile Prisse d’Avennes (s.d.). La decoration arabe: extraits du grand ouvrage l’art arabe. Paris: Librairie General de l’Architecture et des Travaux Publics.

44

Jules Bourgoin (1867). Les arts arabes, architecture, menuiserie, bronzes, plafonds, revêtements, marbres, pavements, vitraux, etc., avec un texte descriptif et explicatif et le trait général de l’art arabe. París: A. Morel.

45

Owen Jones (1856). The Grammar of Ornament: Illustrated by Examples from Various Styles of Ornament.

London: Published by Day and Son. This book is documented in the National Library of Mexico, but we do not know exactly if it comes, like the above-mentioned works, from the library of the Academy of Saint Carlos.

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However, Islamic decoration based on geometric shapes and stylized plant motifs is common to all its culture and so the sources may have their provenance in various geographical areas. The most precise reference for the detail of the Moorish pavilion brings us to the illustrations of the Alhambra by Owen Jones and Jules Goury,46 published between 1836 and 1845. Thus, the upper frieze of the interior of the area under the dome echoes the system of circles interlaced with pine cones which feature in plate xvi (see Illustrations 7 and 8).47 In general, the geometric elements that Ibarrola utilised derived from details in other albeit simplified plates, but they resemble the chromatic scheme of the Englishman’s illustrations, with their proficiency of reds and golds. The intrados of the arches, which feature shells and stylings of the tree of Paradise, also reference Owen Jones’ work.48 However, we also need to consider the possible direct influence of the plates featuring the Alhambra in “Monumentos arquitectónicos de España” [Architectural monuments of Spain] (see Illustration 9), a project of the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid in the second half of the 19th century. Thirty of its notebooks were published by José Gil Dorregaray between 1875 and 1882, and the drawings of the Nazari monument contained therein were the basis for the conception of the structure of the elevation and the decoration of the New Orleans pavilion.49 It is not certain where he may have seen these images, as their presence in any contemporary Mexican library has not been documented. However, another potential source for these images may have been the Orientalist group of Puebla de los Angeles, since its influence is also evident in the smoking salons of that city. For this reason, we must also take into account the possible influence of the architect Eduardo Tamariz.50

46

Owen Jones and Jules Goury (2001). Planos, alzados, secciones y detalles de la Alhambra. Madrid: Akal.

47

Ibid., p. 117.

48

On Owen Jones, see Juan Calatrava (Scientific Co-ordinator) (2011). Owen Jones y la Alhambra. Granada: Council of the Alhambra and Generalife.

49

On this topic see the catalogue of the exhibition held in the Royal Academy of San Fernando between December 22, 2014 and February 15, 2015: Juan Bordes (ed.) (2014). Monumentos arquitectónicos de España (1852-1881). Madrid: Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Bellas Artes de San Fernando. See also the text by Javier Ortega Vidal and Miguel Sobrino González (2007). Monumentos arquitectónicos de España. Palacio árabe de la Alhambra. Madrid: Instituto Juan de Herrera.

50

See Mónica Martínez and Héctor Erasmo Rojas (2001). “El neoárabe de Eduardo Tamariz”, Artes de México, No. 54, pp. 69-73; and José Antonio Terán Bonilla and Luz de Lourdes Velázquez Thierry (2001). “Salones fumadores de Puebla”, Artes de México, No. 54, pp. 75-83.

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Mexico’s presence at the international expositions. The “Moorish” pavilion of New Orleans (1884)

Illustration 7. Detail of the central arch of the Courtyard of the Lions (Alhambra).

Source: Owen Jones and Jules Goury (2001). Planos, alzados, secciones y detalles de la Alhambra. Plate xvi.

Madrid: Akal.

Illustration 8. Kiosco morisco in Santa María de la Ribera. Detail of the decoration.

Source: Photo from ygm archive.

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Illustration 9. Granada. Fuente central y detalles del Patio de los Leones en la Alhambra.

Monumentos Arquitectónicos de España.

Source: Drawing by Rafael Contreras Muñoz. Print Collection, Royal Academy of San Fernando, Madrid.

What is clear is that, in architectural terms, the influence of the Alhambra of Granada was a constant. In addition to the text cited by E. Eduardo Zárate,51 an article in 51

Memoria de la Exposición de Nueva Orleans written by Mr. Eduardo E. Zárate. Op. Cit.

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Mexico’s presence at the international expositions. The “Moorish” pavilion of New Orleans (1884)

La Ilustración Española y Americana reporting on the Exposition of New Orleans in 1884 specifically stated that one of the two buildings representing Mexico was conceived as: “[...] an artistic octagonal pavilion, Arabic in style, whose sides reproduce exactly the most beautiful arches of the Alhambra and of the Alcazar of Seville”.52 As has been noted by José Manuel Rodríguez Domingo regarding the kiosco (see Illustration 10), its formal precision “[...] allows us to consider anew “neo-Islamic architecture” as basically a reworking of the decorative codes viewed as the essence of Islamic art, and of a wide range of sensory stimuli, serving for eighteenth-century architects as a disguise for industrial structures devoid of all ‘aesthetic dignity’”.53 Illustration 10. Kiosco morisco in Santa María de la Ribera. Interior of the dome. Mexico City.

Source: Photo from ygm archive.

The colonia [district] of Santa María de la Ribera and the final location of the “kiosco morisco” The fact that the pavilion could be dismantled resulted in the early twentieth-century press propagating the unfounded idea that the building had toured other fairs.

The reality was that in October 1885, following the completion of the Exposition of New Orleans, the building was leased to a certain Juan de Dios Rodríguez, who 52

La Ilustración Española y Americana (1884). No. 41, p. 270.

53

José Manuel Rodríguez Domingo (2007). El modelo alhambrista en el medievalismo arquitectónico del siglo xix, en vv. aa. XVII Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte. Orientes-Occidentes. El arte y la mirada del otro.

Mexico D. F.: unam, Institute of Aesthetic Studies, p. 282.

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would go to the city of the Mississippi to proceed with its dismantling. He was to be advised by Ibarrola who, in a new report sent to Porfirio Díaz, stated: [...] that said pavilion is a structure built with great care and with great delicacy, and as much care is required for its disassembly as for its assembly; it is also essential to methodically check all its pieces to know where they will afterwards need to be placed; the packing of the necessary glass and iron parts requires great care, and finally, even arranging the various parts in the cars necessitates a special knowledge of their solidity or fragility in order to prevent breakage or damage.54 The pavilion arrived in Mexico where it was taken “[...] to the Alameda Central park [see Illustration 11] in Mexico City to be used as a venue for the National Lottery for Public Assistance and to it the residents of the capital city came in their droves to witness the draws”.55 The construction of the Juárez Hemicycle, inaugurated in 1910, meant that it was dismantled once more and moved to Santa María la Ribera.

Illustration 11. Kiosco morisco in the Alameda, Mexico City.

Source: Photograph by Félix Miret. General National Archive, Mexico.

54

Reports sent to General Porfirio Diaz. Op. Cit.

55

Elisa García Barragán (2001). “Kiosco morisco: evocación de universalidad”, Op. Cit., p. 79.

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Mexico’s presence at the international expositions. The “Moorish” pavilion of New Orleans (1884)

This “colonia” emerged from 1861 during the Porfiriato and broke the boundaries of the historic city, encompassing common land and outlying farms. A monument remaining from this era would be the Casa de los Mascarones [House of the Masks] on the San Cosme avenue (formerly the Mexico-Tacuba avenue), built between 1766 and 1771 as the country residence of Mr. José Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, count of the Orizaba Valley. This piece of Baroque architecture was integrated into a neighbourhood that originally comprised historicist and eclectic houses, (as was the fashion during the Porfiro era) and churches such as the neo-Byzantine Sagrada Familia (19011906), by the architect Carlos Herrera. This architectural set would be completed during the 1940s by Art Deco designs. Structures of particular interest to this study due to their neo-Arabic designs can be found at Amado Nervo No. 61 and Gabino Barreda No. 71 (in the adjacent San Rafael neighbourhood, originally named de los Arquitectos [“of the Architects”] and contemporary to Santa María de la Ribera).56 In the centre of the urban area consisting of rectangular blocks, the avenue where our “kiosco morisco” would finally end up was being designed (see Illustration 12).

As previously noted, the construction of the Juárez Hemicycle on the Alameda of the Mexican capital forced the migration of the pavilion to the Santa María la Ribera colonia. In the process it underwent a major transformation, losing the stained glass windows that enclosed the bays, transforming the image of an enclosed space into an open kiosk in the centre of the plaza. This recalled some prestigious antecedents, such as the design by the architect Eduardo Tamariz in Puebla de los Angeles (18821883) with its clear neo-Arabic elements such as the Nazari chapiters.

Illustration 12. Kiosco morisco in Santa María de la Ribera, Mexico City.

Source: Photo from rgv archive.

56

Some Neo-Arabic details also appear in bays of the house located at Enrique González Martínez, No. 131.

This castle-like house once belonged to the bullfighter Vicente Segura, which explains the appearance of some bullfighting motifs in the interior decorations (see Berta Tello Peón [1998]. Santa María la Ribera. Mexico D. F.: Clio, pp. 107-108).

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Considering the function of the stained-glass windows, the structure was converted from a cabinet of curiosities or wonders of a translucent kind into an open kiosk.

This enabled it to become established as a model for other buildings with the same purpose in various Mexican localities and with questionable aesthetic results, but which include neo-Arabic elements and the centralized concept of the space. The popular imagination went along with the new uses of the kiosk, which now served as a concert venue, dance hall or place for social gatherings and meetings. Moreover, its strange shapes inspired urban legends, such as that the building had been donated by an Arab sheik and references to astrological and magical aspects due to its octagonal shape and the large number of geometric decorations featured in what some refer to as the “Mohammedan pavilion”.57 In 1986, the National Institute of Anthropology and History declared the pavilion an historical monument and ordered its restoration, to be carried out by the architect Ramón Bonfil. The building, seen as ephemeral because of its original function, became the emblem of a Mexican district. Elisa García Barragán deemed it a “mirror of certain colonial resonances, but above all of the Romantic fondness for the refinement of the Islamic tradition, this monument does not ignore their thirst for cosmopolitanism. As a fitting tribute to the Alhambra, one of the world’s most significant works and a world heritage site, José Ramón Ibarrola coated his pavilion with a Romantic yearning for universality”.58 The curious thing is that, despite the pavilion having been praised by critics at the time of its construction, the Orientalist characteristics disappeared from subsequent Mexican exposition contributions. In an extensive study of nineteenth-century architecture, coordinated by the architect Carlos Chanfón Olmos, its authors asked in relation to the pavilion designs for the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1889: What was it that led the two projects presented to each conceive of pavilions that recaptured the forms and characteristics of Mesoamerican architecture five short years after Ibarrola’s successful project? Between this deservedly-praised but neo-Moorish pavilion and the latter two the construction of the Cuauhtemoc Monument was not halfway complete: Was the impact of this enough to introduce a nationalist bias to official architecture? Was it the presence of the trans-historical 57

Israel Katzman (1973). Nineteenth century architecture in Mexico. Mexico D. F.: unam, p. 192.

58

Elisa García Barragán (2001). “Moorish Kiosk: evocation of universality”, Op. Cit., p. 79.

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Mexico’s presence at the international expositions. The “moorish” pavilion of New Orleans (1884)

nationalism which blossomed impetuously at the time of the birth of (Mexico’s) official architecture, or was it rather appreciation of recent archaeological discoveries? Or was it a combination of all this, plus the spur of other artistic expressions that brought this nationalism to the architecture of the early decades before its time/in advance?

What is certain is that Mexico sent to Paris a design that was broadly reminiscent of the buildings housed in the most prominent cultural sites in Mesoamerica: Palenque, Papantla, Tula, Chichen Itzá and Xochicalco. While it could be said that the Mexican architects ticked all the boxes with their eclecticism, they did give it their distinctive nationalist indigenous stamp.59 The reality is that Orientalism disappeared from official architecture, meaning that the pavilion of Santa María de la Ribera is the first and last great work in this context, with repercussions on private architecture, a minimal impact on religious and leisure buildings, and also, in a very diluted almost kitsch manner, as we have already mentioned, on the architecture of kiosks in the centres of suburban parks and squares.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHORS Rafael López Guzmán is a professor of Art History at the University of Granada. He coordinated the “Legacy of al-Andalus” project at the scientific level and supervised the Masters in Cultural Management at the University of Granada. He has also coordinated international postgraduate programmes on the “Management and Conservation of Heritage” (Cuba and Colombia). He is vice-president of the Spanish Committee of Art History and of the Centre for Historical Studies of Granada and its Kingdom. He is also a corresponding member of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts and of the Cartagena de Indias Academy of History. In 2014, he was awarded the Andalusian “Plácido Fernández Viagas” Research Award in recognition of his career in research. His publications centre on the modern era in Andalusia and Latin America (<www.andaluciayamerica.com>), as well as Islamic culture and Moorish art in particular.

Aurora Avilés García, a native of Mexico City, is pursuing a Masters degree in the History of Art at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. For six years she 59

Carlos Chanfón Olmos (general coord.) (1998). Historia de la arquitectura y el urbanismo mexicanos. El México independiente, vol. iii. México D. F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, p. 453.

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worked as a researcher at the National Museum of San Carlos, where she co-curated two exhibitions —Gramática del ornamento. Repertorios de los siglos xviii y xix in 2009 and México en los pabellones y las exposiciones internacionales (1889-1929) in 2011—, as well as curating the 2013 exhibition Aproximaciones al arte español de los siglos xvii al xx. She also acted as editorial coordinator and curatorial support for the 2012 exhibition Caminos del barroco: entre Andalucía y Nueva España. Between 2013 and 2014, she worked as a researcher and exhibition curator at the Museum of El Carmen, National Institute of Anthropology and History. In addition, she has written several articles for specialist and general interest sources.

ABSTRACT This study focuses on Mexico’s participation in international expositions from the late nineteenth century up to the Ibero-American Exhibition in Seville in 1929.

By examining the architecture used in its constructions for same, we can trace the creation of the national identity. Of particular interest to us is the Moorish pavilion which was built for Exposition of New Orleans in 1884. Drawing on the neo-Arabic aesthetic, it was based, at compositional level, on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and, at decorative level, on the architecture of al-Andalus and, more specifically, the Alhambra in Granada.

KEYWORDS International Expositions, neo-Arabic, Mexican identity, Alhambrism.

TRANSLATION Kevin Connolly.

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MARIANO FORTUNY Y MADRAZO, THE LAST ORIENTALIST Guillermo de Osma

M

ariano Fortuny y Madrazo (Granada, 1871-Venice, 1949) is an artist who is hard to classify and sits uneasily in the discourse that has previously been constructed on 20th century art. On the one hand, he was a multifaceted artist who experimented and left his mark on diverse fields such as painting, engraving, sculpture, photography, stage design, the science of electricity and lighting, furniture and lamp design, fabric and garment design and different aspects related to their manufacturing and production, and so on. Skilfully combining art, craftwork, design and science, he left more than twenty inventions —from lighting systems and textile productions to a system for powering boats— registered with the Office of Patents and Brands in Paris.

On the other hand, however, he kept himself completely outside the fashion and avant-garde movements that rapidly spread across the 20th century, their analysis stretching far and wide over the historiography of art. Fortuny (see Illustration 1), with his personality, unique vision of art and own volition was always going to be a man of his century, and on his own terms —undeniably modern in many areas yet in no way dismissive, like so many “modernists”, of the past or the Orient, his two main sources of inspiration. To work as he did, outside of trends and in some ways time —his time— he had to be independent and self-sufficient, keeping his reliance on others to a bare minimum and used only when absolutely necessary. That was how he organised his centre of production, all of his workshops in the Pesaro Palace, the place where he amassed a vast library with a major documentary archive, which would provide him with ideas and motivation. The inside of the palace was more akin to the large studios of artists at the end of the 19th century than those belonging to Picasso, Braque and Schwitters.

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Illustration 1. Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (ca. 1940).

Source: Author’s archive.

This respect for the past, where he moved so naturally, as though it were something highly familiar from which he found so much motivation and drew so many ideas —from Mycenaean culture to versions of great masters’ works in museums— has a great deal to do with his illustrious origins. His mother, Lady Cecilia de Madrazo, was the granddaughter, daughter and sister of painters and architects and a person who would have a strong presence in Mariano’s life, as would his uncles Raymundo and Ricardo. Moreover, it is clear that his interest in the Orient, a major influence on so many aspects of his work, cannot be understood without mentioning his father, Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (Reus, 1838-Rome, 1874). Although younger, Fortuny y Marsal (see Illustration 2) belonged to the second generation of Orientalist artists, such as John Frederick Lewis (1805-1875), Eugene Fromentin (1820-1876), Leon Gerôme (1824-1904) and Benjamin Constant (1845-1902), who all tried to represent the life of this “other” fascinating, exotic and highly picturesque world in a more “veristic” fashion.

His work is framed within this particular trend, produced over the course of the nineteenth century, starting with David and the Neo-classicists, in which the majority of the art that was produced before the appearance of the impressionists was characterised by its non-reflection of contemporary life and reality. As Richard Muther said in his passionate History of Modern Painting, published in 1896: “At the beginning of the 19th century, the man who did not wear a uniform was not a dig-

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nified theme for art unless he lived in Italy as a peasant or outlaw. […] This means that painters were either archaeologists or tourists. When they were not submerged in the past they looked for their romantic ideal in the distance”. Even Delacroix, who travelled to the Orient and started the vogue of pictorial Orientalism, took little interest and remained silent over nineteenth-century French society.

Illustration 2. Mariano Fortuny y Marsal dressed in Arab clothing.

Source: Author’s archive.

The work of Fortuny senior fits perfectly in this eclecticist trend, its rejection of the contemporary world with its Italian historicist themes, the Neo-rococo scenes inspired by the 17th and 18th centuries, the “dress coat paintings” of which Messonier and Fortuny were probably its highest representatives and, most importantly, the most interesting output in his work: his Orientalist-themed paintings. The Orient and Orientalism were so vast and striking, stretching so far and across so much imagination, that each artist could discover new qualities and aspects.

In truth there were many different Orientalisms. The one corresponding to both Fortunys was neither adventuring nor did it involve journeys to the remotest and most exotic parts of the Orient. To a certain extent, it was something natural they adopted without grandiose gestures or affected aesthetics; their paintings did not have much to do with the idealised scenes in the sentimental and anecdotal tone of the multitudes of eroticised harems, slave markets, the insides of mosques or large

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caravans painted by many of their contemporaries. It was Orientalism with deeply Hispanic roots, incorporating the saying that so many travellers and painters who came to Spain throughout the century asserted —that Africa started in the Pyrenees; or the affirmation of Victor Hugo that Spain was semi-African. Travellers saw that Spain as medieval, Arab and savage, living more in the past than in the present, more African than European. It contrasted powerfully with Europe, which the industrial and bourgeois revolution was making greyer and more homogenous.

Fortuny senior did not have to travel far to find this exotic element. Without doubt, his happiest times were spent in Granada, his place of residence between 1870 and 1872 and the place where his son Fortuny y Madrazo (1871-1949) was born. Fortuny junior would subsequently adapt another city as a framework in his life, a place sharply defined by its proximity to the exotic and the Oriental: Venice at the beginning of the 20th century, the Venice “laden with the delightful Orient” of Proust, who would be the most lucid exegete of his original output of garments and fabrics.

As clearly outlined by Edward Sullivan,1 Spanish Orientalism, in particular Fortuny’s (see Illustration 3), was an extension of his own personality as he created a particularly brilliant moment in its history in his paintings, like the nineteenth-century Spanish architecture with its Neo-Mudejar or Neo-Mozarab styles: the Arab past, reflecting the search for a form of national identity. This extension of himself was naturally transferred to the territory he visited, providing him with pictorial themes: Andalusia and Spanish North Africa.

The first trip Fortuny made to Morocco was in February of 1860 upon receiving an assignment from the Council of Barcelona to carry out studies on the battles of the Hispano-Maghrebi War. He went as a press photographer and was on a topographical mission that aimed to represent the military feats of Catalan volunteers and Spanish soldiers.

Fortuny took advantage of his stay to produce hundreds of sketches, notes and drafts, not only on the military scenes, but also the emblems, architecture and bright North African landscapes. These notes were developed in his Rome studio when he produced the first large Orientalist paintings, as well as the two versions of La fantasía de la pólvora (“The Fantasy of Gunpowder”, 1866). They were freer, more colourful and personal and signalled the birth of Fortuny the great Orientalist. A key year for the artist came in 1866 when he met the merchant Adolphe Goupil, who would promote his work in Paris, England and the United 1

Edward J. Sullivan (1981). “Mariano Fortuny y Marsal and Orientalism in Nineteenth-Century Spain”, Arts Magazine, 55 (8), pp. 96-101.

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States —a body of work that would fetch huge prices. He also entered into the family circle of the Madrazos, the most influential art dynasty in Isabelline Spain.

Don Federico, a magnificent painter and director of the Prado Museum, admired the quality of his work, making his studio available and supporting him in his future career. He was also on intimate terms with Federico’s daughter, Cecilia, and they married the following year. In 1870 he travelled with his brother-in-law Ricardo de Madrazo to Seville, via Córdoba, and then on to Granada. The rest of the family arrived shortly after, and subsequently resided there for more than two years. The contact with the African light and southern Spain would bear fruit in a much more vigorous and powerful painterly language based on short brush-strokes that were precise yet nervy, verging on impressionist.

Granada would represent greater freedom, and painting outdoors with the brightness and the strong shades of local light would make his painting —not necessarily the themes— take centre stage.

Thus, in the works from this period, the last of his Orientalist output, anecdotal and narrative elements move into the background. With special permission he produced paintings in the Alhambra Palace, where he improvised his studio. As he wrote to his friend Sopena: “My painting El tribunal de la Alhambra is rather bright and I think it gives a good idea of the place (as it should be) and for those reasons it is possible the French will not like it; it has already reached Paris and I am waiting for it to fail”.2 Fortuny took a much greater interest in impressions, the effects of light, the naturalness of representation, which moved away from the escapist idealization in a large majority of contemporary Orientalist painters. At the same time, he was obsessed with the reconstruction of architecture and the components intervening in the scene, such as objects, weapons and garments —this was strongly connected to the educated vision of the great collector he had become. This passion had been gaining strength since his first trip to Morocco, which would lead him to amass a huge quantity of rare bibliographical editions, weapons, tapestries, Hispano-Morisco pottery and ancient fabrics in the Granada years, where he found some of the most extraordinary pieces in his collection from second-hand and private dealers —the resplendent Nazari jug, today in the Ermitage, or the Fortuny tile, in the Valencia Institute of Don Juan, Madrid—, with vegetal motifs and stylised animals, which would provide the inspiration for one of the embossed velvets produced by his son, Fortuny y Madrazo, years later.

2

Quoted in Mercè Doñate, Cristina Mendoza, Francesc M. Quílez i Corella y Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (2004). Fortuny: (1838-1874) [Exhibition catalogue, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona from 17 October 2003 and 18 January 2004]. Barcelona: Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, p. 254.

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Illustration 3. The watercolour El vendedor de tapices (â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Tapestry Merchantâ&#x20AC;?, dated 1870).

Source: Mariano Fortuny. Montserrat Museum, donation V. Ardiz Gallery.

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All of these objects would decorate his Rome studio in the Via Flaminia (see Illustration 4), responding to a certain type of exuberant, eclectic and picturesque artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studio brimming with tapestries, lamps, pottery, weapons, armour, helmets, fabrics, paintings and objects of every kind, all of which he had been collecting in cities he had lived in and travelled through. It was as though he had wanted to recreate the exotic and dazzling Orient, not just in his paintings but also in his living spaces, his house-studio. Travelling to the Orient was not necessary because the Orient was in his own house; this escapist rejection of the time was embodied by his studio.

Illustration 4. The inside of Fortuny y Marsalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studio in Rome.

Source: National Library of Spain.

This same aesthetic and philosophy would be repeated by his son Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (1871-1949) in the house-studio in his Venetian palace, today the Fortuny Museum (see Illustrations 5 and 6). Equally, his son would employ large fabrics and tapestries to cover walls and compartmentalise the spaces of the Palazzo Pesaro-Orfei on the Campo San Benedetto in Venice.

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He would fill it with the same horror vacui, with paintings, furniture, exotic objects, many inherited from his father, and others he designed and produced, for instance furniture, lamps, his garments and fabrics mixed with ancient fabrics, and his own paintings, as well as his father’s. Like an ivory tower, far away from it all, he would arrange his different studios for paintings, engravings, photography, lighting, fabric embossing, tailoring, laboratories and a magnificent library with a vast array of documents that would serve as an archive of ideas.

It is interesting how the son, who was only three years old when his father died, not only kept the memory of his father and the many objects he inherited alive, but also this attitude of mistrust towards the world surrounding him.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Orient colonised and “tamed” by Europeans had lost the power of seduction it possessed a century before. Yet Fortuny, just like his father, once again recreated the “Orient”, in a more metaphorical sense, in his own studio. In the charming picture his father painted of his two children in the Japanese room (Prado Museum, Madrid), María Luisa, aged six, and little Mariano, aged three, can be seen surrounded by “Chinoiserie” covering the walls as both innocently play on a “Japanese” divan. Little Mariano is covering himself with a piece of fabric, undoubtedly from his father’s collection; it foretells the interest he would take in the world of textiles, which would undoubtedly become the creative area in which he would produce his most fertile and interesting work.

Upon her father’s death, Lady Cecilia decided to leave Rome for Paris, where her brother Raimundo de Madrazo (1852-1917) lived. Madrazo was a famed portraitist, painter of the Belle Époque and the vogue themes of the time, the elegant life in the saloons, dances, masquerades, etc., and with profound academic training, which he would transmit to his nephew. The young Fortuny met various painter friends and contemporaries of his father, such as the Orientalist Benjamin Constant, whose studio was frequented by Paul Baudry and Jean Louis Meissonier. He would copy the paintings of past masters in museums, with a disregard for the polemics of modern art. In 1889 his mother decided to move into a small palace on the Gran Canal, in Venice, the Palazzo Martinengo, a meeting place not only for Spanish relatives and friends, but also for illustrious travellers such as Henry de Regnier, Reynaldo Hahn, Marcel Proust and Paul Morand, who all bore witness to its unique ambiance and its “very Spanish” atmosphere.

The fin-de-siècle Venice, decadent yet inspiring, was a meeting place for much of the social and artistic elite from the time, the place where D’Annunzio, Rilke,

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Thomas Mann, Henry James, Marquess Casatti, the Polignacs, the Hohenlohes and Countess Martine de Behague all came together… Yet Venice was, above all, the dignified and living memory of its grandiose past, proud of its Carpaccios, Bellinis, Tizianos, Veroneses, Tiépolos and protective of its legendary decorators, weavers, dyers, metalsmiths and artisans. A whole world which, in addition to providing inspiration for Fortuny, also further strengthened his timeless concept of art, determining his main sources of inspiration: the past, particularly pre-classical Mediterranean cultures, Classical Greece, the Renaissance, sixteenth-century Venice and non-Western cultures —the Orient— from Japan to the Arab world.

As a painter and engraver he would touch upon an array of genres: portraiture, landscapes, allegorical compositions and Wagnerian themes, which would bring him closer to Böcklin’s symbolism. He would soon take an interest in technical processes, creating his own pigments and introducing new engraving techniques.

In 1892, under the instruction and in the company of the painter Rogelio de Egusquiza (1845-1915), a friend of his father who, artistically, was in the Fortunyan sphere and who had reconverted himself, almost mystically, into a fervent Wagnerian, he went to Bayreuth to attend the performances of Wagnerian dramas.

Wagner became an idol, his art theories opening up new horizons. Disappointed with the antiquated systems of theatrical performance in Bayreuth, Fortuny began to experiment in the studios of his palazzo with stage lighting systems based on the properties of new electric light.

Illustration 5 and 6. Inside the Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, today the Fortuny Museum: the library and Orient-inspired lamps in the main hall, designed by Fortuny y Madrazo.

a

Source: Photographs by Eduardo Momeñe.

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In 1901 he patented a system of electric lighting that used an indirect system of light with colours. He complemented this discovery with the production of the “Fortuny Cupola”, which paved the way for modern stage practices. The system was highly successful and was adapted in many European theatres. He started working with his friend D’Annunzio on diverse theatre productions, for which he started designing his first garments.

One of the problems in Orientalism —or rather the Orientalist approach— was that the fundamental theme of clothing was forgotten or mentioned only in passing.

In this escape towards the exotic, this search for another identity, garments played a key role. The gown was, ultimately, the most revealing component of man’s attitude towards himself, of what he would like to be or how he would like to appear. Garments, essentially little more than a second skin, are without doubt created by man for many reasons: firstly, to cover and protect him from the elements, but also to differentiate or, paradoxically, to be represented as a part of a collective, to mark his status, his social position or, essentially, his own personality, what is most intimately tied to him. It is something absolutely essential, which does not happen with any other object designed by man, whether functional or artistic, and, therefore, it is the most deeply revelatory aspect of his personality, his desires and how he wishes to be perceived by himself and others.

What was apparent among many nineteenth-century artists, just as they had rejected their own time, was that the fashion they had to wear, particularly men’s fashion, seemed particularly ugly to them.

This inability to accept what they had to put on every day —the black frock coat, the straight grey trousers, the top hat, “horrible chimneys” according to the painter E. Millais—, brought about a rejection that was at times aggressive and radical, and with it came the need to find something different to identify with. The past was one source of inspiration: in the eyes of the artists, the pleated Greek and Roman tunics were much more noble, dignified, aesthetic and natural, the medieval garment more picturesque and varied than the crinolines and bustles in the corseted Victorian ladies, with their artificial silhouettes.

At the other extreme, where clothing that opposed and differed from this “intolerable” and “hideous” contemporary clothing, was the exotic world of North Africa, or the Orient with its djellabas, burnouses, dolmans, abayas, Kashmir shawls or colourist and picturesque kimonos, which did not change with the rhythm of fashion imposed by London and Paris couturiers. There was something undoubtedly costume-like about this preference for such picturesque and historicist garments. We

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have already seen how many artists not only preferred this clothing for their pictorial representations, they themselves also adopted it and were photographed or depicted in portraits dressed as Arabs, Turks, Gypsies or majos. However, there is no doubt that the “Orientalist” hunger that had such a major influence on art, architecture, design and, ultimately, on fashion —the liberty fabrics or the fashionable Kashmir shawls from the Second Empire— shaped the aesthetic vision and life philosophy of numerous artists in the second half of the 19th century. The Fortunys were no exception. Indeed, Fortuny junior translated this vision into his own textile and clothing creations. Thus, for Fortuny y Madrazo Oriental and Islamic cultures represented a hotbed of ideas: he transformed the Japanese kimono, the Coptic tunic, the Arab aba, the Maghrebi burnous, the Oriental kaftan, the Moroccan djellaba, the Turkish dolman, the Muslim yuba, and the kurta or Indian sari into an extensive collection of clothing.

Fortuny senior was a big collector of fabrics and his collection was passed on to his widow Lady Cecilia de Madrazo and then on to his son, who irrefutably drew inspiration form it for many of his own creations, such as the splendid epigraphic series of fabrics with obvious Islamic influences (see Illustrations 7 and 9).

In his paintings, Fortuny senior recreated environments from the court of the Alhambra with almost scientific detail; the components that provide the framework for these scenes, recreating aspects of Arab life in Muslim Spain, were studied in great detail —the architecture, tiles, ceramic and silver objects and, of course, the fabrics and garments. This attraction towards exoticism and the culture of the other that Orientalist painters, like Fortuny, lived as a necessity would be a key source of inspiration for Fortuny junior.

Illustrations 7, 8 and 9. Arab and Ottoman inspired fabrics.

Source: Photographs by Eduardo Momeñe.

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For Fortuny y Madrazo, with such a personal philosophy of art —in which time and space were so random and relative, moving from fiction to reality—, of garments for theatre scenes, of exotic garments, the tunic from a Greek korai or the cape of a figure from a Renaissance painting to the dress of a flesh-and-blood woman, for the woman of his time (see Illustration 10) —according to his original vision and distanced from the world of fashion at the beginning of the 20th century— recreating the past or Arab culture was as easy as it had been for his father. This process is admirably described by Proust: On the shoulders of one of the Compagnie della Calza, distinguished by the gold and pearl embroidery drawn on the sleeve and on the collar the emblem of the joyful brotherhood with which they were affiliated, I had recognised the cape that Albertina took to go with me in an open-top car to Versailles […]. And the brilliant son of Venice had taken it from this painting by Carpaccio, from the shoulders of this Compagnie della Calza he had taken it and put it on the shoulders of so many Parisian women, who certainly ignored, as I did before then, how the model existed among a group of gentlemen, in the foreground of the Patriarca de grado, in a gallery inside the Venice Academy.3 Illustration 10. Renaissance-inspired silk velvet cape.

Source: Photograph by Eduardo Momeñe.

3

Marcel Proust (1954). À la recherche du temps perdu… 3. La prisonnière. La fugitive. Le temps retrouvé texte…

[Partly unpublished, constructed upon autographed manuscripts, variations, critical notes, an introduction, summary, index of names and place and chronology]. Pierre Clarac and André Ferré (eds.) [Preface by André Maurois]. Paris: Librairie Gallimard, p. 647 (For the Spanish version see Marcel Proust [1968]. La fugitiva [Translated by Consuelo Berges]. Madrid: Alianza Editorial).

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Fortuny’s garments cut into a rectangle or in a T shape hung from women’s shoulders in a completely natural way, adapting to the shapes of their bodies without the false modesties of contemporary fashion (it was the beginning of the 20th century) and allowing complete freedom of movement.

After the Delphos, a silk satin tunic with infinitesimal pleats created in around 1907, the rest of Fortuny’s designs were of Neo-classical, medieval, Coptic or Islamic inspiration. To cover these “lewd” garments, Fortuny developed a line of jackets, coats, cloaks and capes in muslin, silk and velvets embossed with Cretan, Arab, Renaissance and Baroque motifs and in sumptuous colours that changed with the light to obtain layer upon layer, similar to the glaze on a painting, and enriched by applying silver and gold using artisan techniques, whose secrets were well kept, despite patenting his processes in Paris.

At the beginning of the 20th century a certain Orientalist revival took place in art, design and fashion. The key artists in the history of modern art, such as August Macke, Paul Klee and Henri Matisse, did travel to North Africa and, like their predecessors, were drawn towards the light and exoticism, yet they did not look to escape their time or produce their work through other cultures. The Orient with colonization, progress, easy travel and early globalization had lost part of its ability to charm; instead of going to the Orient, the Oriental entered Europe, particularly with the explosion of colour, extravagance and freedom reflected in the Ballets Russes after the first season in Paris in 1909. The Parisian “intelligentsia” and elite, and later Europe, rediscovered the novelty of the exotic and once more fell under its spell. The impact of the “savage” and Oriental ballets, with their décor and clothing by Bakst, Goncharova, Larionov, and their syncopated rhythms and arithmetic movements, was immediate.

Many leading avant-garde artists like Gris, Picasso, Braque, the Delaunays, Matisse, Lèger, Derain and Gabo worked with Diaghilev.

Fashion, with Paul Poiret at the forefront, and design rapidly echoed this new aesthetic. In fashion it was translated into a greater freedom of forms, more violent colours in fabrics and the emergence of a new repertoire, such as turbans, divided skirts, “harem-skirts” and Persian cloaks, the leading exponent of which was Paul Poiret.

Clearly, this movement aided the acceptance and dissemination of Fortuny’s garments. They were initially worn by more broad-minded women, such as Isadora Duncan, Eleonora Duse and Ruth St. Denis, but were later donned by women from the world at large and Hollywood actresses, such as Lillian Gish, Ethel Barrymore and Natacha Rambova.

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When Fortuny opened his store in Paris in 1920, he published a small brochure in which he gave his clothing names like “Scheherazades”, “Persian jackets” and “velvet abayas”, displayed next to “Copt and Saracen” lamps, clearly announcing their origin (see Illustrations 11 and 12).

Illustrations 11 and 12. Silk velvet cushions and a North African-inspired bournous.

Source: Photographs by Eduardo Momeñe.

Proust, who must have met Fortuny in Venice or Paris through mutual friends Cocó de Madrazo, the artist’s cousin, and Reynaldo Hahn, whose family kept one of Fortuny’s muslin coats with Arab motifs that belonged to the writer, was undoubtedly the person who most lucidly analysed the keys to the garments and the artist’s ability to transform them in both the woman who wore them and the spectator who contemplated them: Now, those garments, although not the truly ancient clothing with which today’s women appear in costume and of which it is nice to keep as pieces of a collection (I was looking for one like that for Albertina), did not possess the coldness of ancient imitation. They were more in the manner of the decorations of Sert, Bakst and Benois, which at that time evoked in the Russian dances epochs of more beloved art with works that permeated their spirit yet were also original. Equally, Fortuny’s clothing, faithfully ancient but power-

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fully original, evoked the scenery, which he had to have imagined, of Venice full of the Orient, where those garments were taken, evoking, better than a relic from the Basilica of Saint Mark, the sun and turbans, the fragmented, mysterious and complementary colour.4 The nineteenth-century Orient seen through Western eyes had travelled a long way. Of the picturesque themes that were more escapist and fantasised about, other more “veristic”, with documentary intentions, evolved in the hands of Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, perhaps the last great Orientalist. An reinterpreted and updated Orient, a twentieth-century Orient that has moved closer, through the decoration of houses, museums and new palaces, through women’s clothing, to our real and daily lives. This Orient, Fortuny y Madrazo’s Orient, is no longer a fantasy; it has become an object, something of use that could come to co-exist with us.

Illustration 13. The actress and model Lauren Hutton with the bournous from illustration 12.

Source: Photograph by Barry Latigan.

The artist, through his work and wisdom, knew how to breathe new life into his fabrics, garments and lamps, turning them into objects that were modern and current and in some ways timeless, just like his source of inspiration.

4

Marcel Proust (1954). À la recherche du temps perdu… 3. La prisonnière. La fugitive. Le temps retrouvé texte...

Op. Cit., p. 369.

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BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR Guillermo de Osma (Bilbao, 1953) is an art historian, gallerist, the curator of over seventy exhibitions (including monographs devoted to Maruja Mallo, Oscar Domínguez, Joaquín Torres-García and Spanish avant-garde painting) and the author of, among other publications, Mariano Fortuny. His life and Work (Aurum Press/Rizzoli, 1980); Mariano Fortuny, Proust y los ballets rusos (Elba, 2010); and Mariano Fortuny: arte, ciencia y diseño (Ollero y Ramos, 2012). He is also chairman of the Bemberg de Toulouse Foundation.

ABSTRACT Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo was a multidisciplinary artist: painter, engraver, photographer, stage designer, electrical lighting technician, inventor and designer of legendary fabrics and garments that revolutionised the fashion world. He was heavily influenced by the Orient, from North Africa to the Far East. By and large, this interest, which profoundly defined his work, came from his father, the famous Orientalist painter Mariano Fortuny y Marsal.

KEYWORDS Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, Orientalism, multidisciplinary artist.

TRANSLATION Neil Fawle.

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THE GREAT MOSQUE OF PARIS. A POLITICAL PROJECT OF MAURESQUE ARCHITECTURE AT A TIME OF UNIVERSAL AND COLONIAL EXHIBITIONS IN FRANCE1 José Antonio González Alcantud

I

n the second half of the 19th century and the first thirty years of the 20th century, Paris gradually became an image of the same thing it wanted to represent. If it wished to be a permanent exhibition of the new and exotic, brought through universal and colonial exhibitions, ultimately in a kind of inverted image, it became the actual focal point as a major city furnished with all forms and exoticism and innovation. In a similar vein, Gaston Bergeret wrote a Journal d’un nègre à l’Exposition de 1900, in which a black man dressed in a frock coat and top hat, as depicted in Henry Somm’s 79 watercolours on this theme, visits an exhibition event. His thinking was: “An exhibition must be bigger than the previous one. The day will come when this exhibition will be Paris. It will be economical: there will be no need to enclose it with walls because Parisians will not pay to enter the exhibition; they will already be inside. They will, however, hand over a ticket to leave. They will be exponents, exhibitors and visitors, even in the eyes of their contemporaries”.2 Consequently, Paris became the victim of its own exoticist and colonial bulimia. The above serves as a preamble to the subject at hand: the Great Mosque of Paris in the framework of the universal and colonial exhibitions.

Among the landmarks preceding the construction of the Great Mosque of Paris (see Illustrations 1 and 2), the birth of the Société Orientale, in 1841, as a distant 1

This text corresponds to the partial results from the reserch projects: Project RDI “Process of modernization in Moroccan arts and crafts and their connections with Andalusia”, 1956-2012” (HAR2012-39327, Ministry of Economy and Competetiveness); and the Project of Excellence “Three vectors in the transition of modernity in Morocco and Andalusia in a compared perspective” (P11-HUM-7827, Regional Government of Andalusia).

2

Gaston Bergeret (1901). Journal d’un nègre à l’Exposition de 1900. Paris: L. Carteret, p. 5, [with 79 original watercolours by Henry Somm].

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protraction of Bonaparte’s plans for Egypt, stands alone. Its declared aims were scientific knowledge, support for French expansion and “investigation”, in the fullest sense of political espionage. The founding members comprised figures such as the writers Chateaubriand, Hugo and Lamartine; orientalist painters like Vernet, Dauzat and Decamps, the engineer Lesseps and General Bugeaud. The ideas pondered by Orientale societal members in 1846 included accommodating Muslims residing in Paris and Marseille by creating mosques in both cities —the places with the strongest ties to the Islamic world. The debates surrounding the compatibility or incompatibility of Islam with French society occurred at the very heart of that society.3 In the founding charter of the Société Orientale the objectives, presented in no uncertain terms politically, aimed to combat the ignorance of public opinion regarding French interests in everything concerning the Orient, particularly in reference to the rivalry with England.4 In fact, the Orientale was a society established for espionage and purely chauvinist propaganda.

Illustration 1. The Paris Mosque in 2012.

Source: Author’s photo.

3

Mohammed Telhine (2010). L’islam et les musulmans en France. Une histoire de mosquées. Paris: L’Harmattan.

4

Société Orientale de France (1842). Revue de l’Orient. Bulletin de la Société Orientale. First vol., p. 114.

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Illustration 2. Detail of artisan work on the Paris Mosque in 2012.

Source: Author’s photo.

The most active group in promoting —possibly classified as non-colonial up to a certain point bearing in mind the pro-colonial tendencies of the Société Orientale— was the positivist or “Comtian” group. The first French MP converted to Islam was a member of this group, as were figures like Ahmed Riza from Turkey.

The latter would intervene on numerous occasions at the end of the 19th century in Paris, defending the necessary entente between the French Republic and the interests of Muslims. In 1891, he was asked to give a speech before the grave of the founder of the positivist group, Auguste Comte, and regularly attended the meetings of the positivist society from Paris and the sessions of the similarly-minded Collège Libre des Sciences Sociales.5 Covertly, some have tried to see an influence on other groups such as the esoteric supporters of gnosis. One standout name was René Guénon, who converted to Is5

Sadek Sellam (2006). La France et ses musulmans. Un siècle de politique musulmane 1895-2005. Paris: Fayard, pp. 36-39.

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lam in around 1910, using the name sheyj Abd al-Wahib, after being initiated in the Sufi Tariqa by sheyj Sala mar-Radi.6 The connections between gnosis and certain branches of freemasonry would become a factor that would contribute to facilitating the authorizations of Paris City Council, above all.

Almost half a century later and in a similar direction to the Orientale, it would move towards the Comité de l’Afrique Française, established to maintain pro-colonial sentiments at the Universal Exhibition of 1889. Once more, its objectives included promoting the Parisian mosque. In May 1895, and promoted by this committee, the signatures of 25 figures, including the orientalist painter Benjamin Constant, the Arabist Henry de la Lamartinière and the architect Henri Saladin, and under the presidency of Jules Cambon and the vice presidencies of Théophile Delcassé and the Prince Roland Bonaparte, called specifically for the establishment of the mosque. From outside the committee, it is worth noting the support for mosque projects given by the eminent Islamologist Louis Massignon, who, despite his fervent Catholicism, corrected by mysticism, became a “defender of the indigenous” in the 1920s, especially after openly favouring the comprehensive methods of Lyautey’s colonization.7 Saladin was assigned to the first mosque projects. The anti-mosque unrest in the press was not long in coming and was fuelled by events from the previous year in the Armenian massacres at the hands of the Ottomans.8 Therefore, the matter remained a problem.

Moreover, support from one part of the French elite, particularly in Paris, and the interest in raising awareness of the Orient, specifically the Muslim world, continued to be in short supply. When, half a century after the Société Orientale was established, there was a consideration of the scant presence of Muslim art in Paris, the Exhibition of Muslim Art was established, held in 1893 in the Palace of Industry in the Champs Elysées under the presidency of the promoter of colonialism Jules Ferry.

The curator of the Museum of Algiers, M. Marie, was the main promoter of the event. In the catalogue preface, it stated how this manifestation “presents a set of decorative art expressions that have suffered from the influence of Islamism”, since the art “looked down upon started to bring about a wave of opinion in Europe akin 6

Didier Hammoneau (2014). L’Islam et la France: de Napoléon à René Guénon. Paris: Dar Albouraq, p. 268.

7

Christian Destremau and Jean Moncelon (2001). Louis Massignon. Paris: Perrin, pp. 255-259.

8

Mohammed Telhine (2010). L’islam et les musulmans en France. Une histoire de mosquées. Op. Cit.

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to that which the arts from the Far East benefitted from 25 years ago”.9 Thus, consideration was given to the need to create two Islamic art museums in France, one in the Louvre in Paris and the other in Marseille, once more key cities from colonial and Muslim perspectives. Moreover, France, brandished as a colonising power, was obliged to protect indigenous arts just as it had done in its own country.

In 1903, the Union des Arts Décoratifs would return to the unique —and on this occasion one of the curators of the new exhibition— Gaston Migeon, who was in charge of studying the collections of Islamic art in the Louvre, reflecting on the fact that the exhibitions that had come before, starting with a consideration of the Universal Exhibition of 1878, had responded to a certain lack of judgement, mixing insignificant objects, easily catalogued as “souvenirs” by travellers, with the most valuable pieces. Criticism of the ’93 exhibition was not long in coming: M. Marie had undoubtedly come to assemble a large number of objects that manifested the wealth, fantasy and taste that the peoples of the Orient had always displayed in decorating their everyday artefacts. There were artefacts of the highest and most noble artistic value, yet it appeared a vacuous and ill-judged affair, with a rigorous selection not sufficiently tempering the desire of the world travellers that had wished to publicly display the things they had acquired in their wanderings around the bazaars of the East. When certain enthusiasts of this marvellous art […] informed me, some months ago, of the idea to hold an Islamic Arts Exhibition, there was an immediate and unanimous agreement that the same mistakes should not be made.10 External reasons were cited as the cause of the standstill in the Paris mosque project, for instance the crisis with Turkey over the massacre of Armenians or the unstable situation in Algeria, and other internal ones, such as the crisis sparked by the Dreyfus Affair, which united Republicans and French Catholics. Work was resumed from 1905 onwards when certain media linked to the al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, in particular the Cairo press, started to talk about the initia9

Georges Marye (1893). Exposition d’Art Musulman. Catalogue officiel. Paris: Imprimerie A. Bellier.

10

Gaston Migeon and Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs (1903). “Exhibition of Muslim Arts”, Revue Les arts, May 1903, pp. 2-3.

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tive of building a great mosque in Paris.11 That same year the French law on the separation of the church from the state was passed, with its radical commitment to secularity in some ways contradicting the mosque project as it involved the de facto recognition of religion.12 This law is still in force today since most Muslim societies abide by the 1901 Law of Associations. To a certain extent, there is a latent opposition between these two laws, according to some analysts, between the democratic law of association and the undeniable division between political and religious power.

The direct relationship between the modernising process of the colonization of Morocco was corroborated by the manner in which the model of the Paris exhibitions, as a shop window on modernity, was transferred to Casablanca, Fez and Tangier, while the exhibition in Casablanca in 1915 and Fez in 1916 also added their objectives of modernity to the re-evaluation of the “vieux Maroc”, in view of the policy adopted by Lyautey. By the same token, these exhibitions were exclusively based on Moroccan arts and crafts, in an attempt to evaluate the artistic and artisan contribution of the colonised country, and even placed its art at the same level, or above, Islamic art in the Iberian Peninsula.13 Furthermore, the protection of the socalled “indigenous arts” prompted a rise in art collecting in the mother country, a pastime Prosper Ricard referred to in these terms: Anyone that is attentive to the sweet obsession —inoffensive as a matter of fact— of collectors who go so far as to consecrate a part of their pleasures, which ultimately aim to fulfil harmonious purposes. These are always satisfying to see, interesting to study, and penetrate inside us every day a little of the mysterious life that envelops us and which we throw ourselves into without fully understanding its movements.14

11

Jabila Sbaï (2006). La République et la Mosquée: genèse et institutions de l’Islam en France, in Pierre-Jean Huizard (ed.). Le choc colonial et l’Islam. Paris: La Découverte, p. 228.

12

Jocelyne Césari (1994). Être musulman en France. Associations, militants et mosquées. Paris: Khartala.

13

Rémy Labrusse (2007). De la collection à l’exposition: les arts de l’islam à Paris (1864-1917), in Rémi Labrusse (ed.). Purs Décors? Arts de l’Islam regards du xixe siècle. Paris: Musée du Louvre Éditions, pp. 71-72.

14

Prosper Ricard (1918). Les arts et industries indigènes du Nord de l’Afrique. I. Arts ruraux. Fez: Imprimérie Municipale (conference given on 5 February 1916 at the Collège Musulman [Dar Menebhi], Fez, p. 6.

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This boom in collecting was fuelled by the Protectorate’s policy of rubber-stamping —using a special seal— quality crafts in order to ensure they fulfilled quality requirements and were accepted by the public in metropolitan areas.

We will now look at the unique and specific relationship between the Paris universal exhibitions and the discovery of and increase in Islamic art in Europe. At the 1867 exhibition, the Egyptian pavilion comprised a reconstruction of the Selamlick Mosque. The star of the 1889 exhibition was the Algerian pavilion, which reproduced a type of minaret. We believe that the first location considered for the nascent mosque at the end of the 19th century was the Marble Warehouse, a space in Paris used to store construction materials and close to the exhibition area. Some authors put forward the hypothesis that the mosque was to be inserted into the exhibition ensemble.15 In the end, the hill of Chaillot, in the exhibition area, was occupied with numerous Orient-themed pavilions in 1900, to which the Palais du Trocadéro had to be added, with its minarets and in an ambiguous Byzantine-Mudejar style, and the renowned ensemble Andalousie dans le temps des maures, which, with the charm Islam could incite, was in harmony with France’s projects of colonial expansion, and of which the Saint-Simonianism movements were a key part.

Illustration 3. Stamps from the 1900 exhibition representing Andalousie dans le temps des maures.

Source: Private collection of the author.

15

Mohammed Telhine (2010). L’islam et les musulmans en France. Une histoire de mosquées. Op. Cit.

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There was also a significant architectural precedent to the Great Mosque of Paris, namely the small chapel devoted to the Indian Queen Ouda, who was murdered in the French capital as she tried to escape from the British imperial authorities in the mid 1850s. It was opened in 1858 as a funeral monument located in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.16 There was also a provisional temple in the Nogent sur Marne Colonial Garden (see Illustration 4), in the environs of Paris, erected between 1916 and 1918. None of these initiatives proved wholly satisfactory to the needs of the growing Muslim community in Paris and were transitory formulas that foretold a greater Islamic presence in Paris and responded to imperative needs.

Illustration 4. Mosque of the Colonial Garden, Nogent sur Marne (1916-1918).

Source: Études Coloniales [online], <http://etudescoloniales.canalblog.com/archives/2015/01/03/31250245.html>.

The mosque project garnered support from different key sources, some of which have been outlined above. One source was Paul Bourdarie (1864-1950), an active propagandist of France’s colonial causes in the Orient. In the years that preceded the start-up of the project in 1922, he was extremely keen to turn the issue into a priority. From 1906 onwards and from the different institutions he was affiliated with, as well as through his work as a teacher at the Collège Libre de Sciences Sociales and as permanent secretary at the Académie de Sciences d’Outre-Mer, he promoted the idea of the mosque. By and large, however, it was through the pages of La Revue Indigène that he became the “indigenophylic” nucleus, launching, with heart and soul, the idea taken up from the aforementioned 16

Ibid.

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propagandists that preceded him, at the end of the 19th century.17 Some anonymous leaflets materialised from Bourdarie’s promotion of the mosque in La Revue Indigène. Bourdarie observed the climate of unrest in Paris after the heroic participation of the Maghreb in the First World War, and noted support for the project from the mayor of Lyon, Herriot, and president Briand.18 Bourdarie presented the project in its infancy as follows: In May and June of 1915 I entered into relations with an architect, a pupil of the Girault Institute, M. E. Tronquois. Our conversations frequently revolved around Islam and the role of French Muslims on the battlefield. One day M. Tronquois offered the opinion that the true commemorative monument to their heroism and sacrifice would be the mosque.19 Shortly after, Bourdarie explained the background to the architect and both decided to start working on the idea, holding successive meetings in the summer of 1916 at the aforementioned journal’s headquarters.

This relationship with the gratitude shown to soldiers who lost their lives for France during the Great War has also been cited on numerous occasions as one of the reasons behind the opening of Muslim cultural centres (for worship). The idea of the Mosque in the Noget sur Marne Colonial Garden formed part of an episode of counter-propaganda in the face of German deployment, with the mosque from the Zossen prisoner-of-war camp built to facilitate German propaganda in the search to satisfy the needs of their Ottoman allies, primarily, with their imams declaring jihad to fight alongside Germany. For Michel Renard, monumentalization enabled the counter-propaganda to be reflected in images.20 17

Michel Renard (2006). Les debuts de la présense musulmane en France et son encadrement, in Mohammed Arkoun (ed.). Histoire de l’islam et des musulmans en France du Moyen Âge à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, p.

753.

18

Paul Bourdarie (1920). L’Institut Musulman et la Mosquée de Paris. Extrait de la “Revue Indigène” octubre-diciembre 1919. Thouars: Impr. Nouvelle. Para una actualización véase Alain Boyer (1992). L’Institut Musulman de la Mosquée de Paris. Paris: La Documentation Française.

19

Quoted by Michel Renard (2014). “Gratitude, contrôle, accompagnement: le traitement du religieux islamique en métropole (1914-1950)”, Bulletin de l’Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, No. 83, pp. 54-69.

20

Michel Renard (2015). “Mosquée, 1916; kouba, 1918; Mosquée, 1920. Le sacrifice monumentalisé” [online], Études Coloniales, <http://etudescoloniales.canalblog.com/archives/2015/01/03/31250245.html> [Consulted 20th April 2015].

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In parallel, there was an increased penchant for everything Muslim, from the perspective of Eastern exoticism. Consequently, in 1925 France’s National Library in rue Richelieu held an exhibition on Islamic art in which the contents of the library were opened to the general public.21 In July 1926, Gaston Migeon made an assessment, stating that, given the lack of previous interest, the collections of Muslim art were devoid of scientific cataloguing, save those in the Louvre and Cairo Museum. Now competent teams had been created, for example in Algeria with Georges Marçais at the helm, and in Morocco with the Institut des Hautes Études Marocains, under the initiative of Lyautey and with eminent professors in its research department, such as Henri Terrasse, Alfred Bel and Robert Ricard. During the period leading up to the opening of the mosque, Migeon would say: “the interest in the issue of Muslim art has never been so alive in France. The public collections are fervently admired and studied. The exhibitions [are] visited with speed, public sales are non-stop and fought over, and the studies in the field of archaeology are valiantly handled the wise”.22 It was an ideal moment that also reflected Lyautey’s interest in the Moroccan world, and the Maghreb in general, as well as an openness to other more distant worlds, such as Afghanistan, where the French archaeological mission had been operating successfully. Without doubt, France led Islamic cultural colonialism, initially driven by Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt. Its interest in this entire field was enormous.

Despite this support, the mosque had other reasons for coming into being as a project that would endure until the present day. One fundamental reason was the ability to use it to control —through the ulemas— all manifestations of “political Islam”, which did not affect the French cause. The Service des Affaires Indigènes Nord-Africaines became aware of this and, between 1924 and 1945, it was the French institution entrusted with controlling Muslims, especially Algerians, who in those years quite possibly numbered one hundred thousand in the mother country.

Therefore, in rue Lecomte a hospital reception centre was set up to isolate sick or homeless immigrants. “The accommodation, hotels, cafés and restaurants frequented by immigrants were under strict surveillance”, demonstrating that around forty

21

Gaston Migeon (1925). “L’Exposition d’Art Oriental de la Bibliothèque Nationale”, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, vol. xi (41), pp. 317-330.

22

Gaston Migeon (1927). Manuel d’art musulman. Arts plastiques et industriels. Paris: Auguste Picard, second edition, pp. 8-9.

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thousand Maghrebi people were being watched by the police.23 This culminated in the creation of a special investigative police unit to monitor Muslims coinciding with the opening of the mosque. According to Sadek Sellam, this corroborated that “the French police were inspired by the board of the Service des Affaires Indigènes de Argel”, who promoted strict surveillance of this type of “official Islam”, benefitting affiliated mystical groups and trying to avoid any “Bolshevik” or nationalist influence, interpreted as being prone to a kind of “atavistic fanaticism”.

In view of this control, the Pan-Arabist nationalists from L’Etoile Nord-Africaine organised protests, which culminated in a rally held on 14 July 1926 at the Grangeaux-Belles hall, bringing together around two thousand people. The terms underlined were the following: that the Paris Mosque was a crude colonialist manoeuvre and visitors to the hammam, the souk and restaurant would “desecrate these holy places of Islam as if they were night clubs”.24 The real instigator of this whole movement from the Maghrebi side was sidi Kaddour ben Ghabrit (1868-1954) (see Illustration 5), who was born in Tlemcen, Algeria. He was a dragoman, or translator, in Tangier. When he was subsequently named vice-consul of France in Fez, he achieved French supremacy in the sultan’s entourage in the period prior to the Algeciras Conference 1906.25 Ghabrit was a key subject in Maghrebi politics during the classical colonial period, even being appointed the head of protocol to the Sultan of Morocco. To some degree, he ended up occupying the role of the Briton Caid MacLeod, who would inform the sultan of Western innovations, for his own personal pleasure, as well as provide information on modern arms and military instruction for the few military troops he had. The Fasis, the aristocratic bourgeois from Fez, admired him for his astute political management and his manoeuvres in every direction. Yet, more than anything, he was a confidant to the French, given that his work was largely to their overall benefit.

23

Sadek Sellam (2006). La France et ses musulmans. Un siècle de politique musulmane 1895-2005. Op. Cit., p. 188.

24

Ibid., p. 182.

25

Hamza ben Driss Ottmani (2010). Kaddour Benghabrit. Un maghrébin hors du commun. Casablanca: Marsam, pp. 78-79.

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Illustration 5. Sidi Kaddour ben Ghabrit in his office in the 1930s.

Source: Islam en France [online], <http://www.phoenixhollo.com/fr/Kaddour_Benghabrit_2.html>.

Ghabrit was the main promoter of the Paris Mosque in its final phase, working as a representative of the Société des Habous des Lieux Saints. This society had been formed on the initiative of Algeria’s colonial government to acquire food and shelter in Mecca and the Medina for pilgrims from the Maghreb. Ben Ghabrit had visited holy places on behalf of this society in order to acquire food and accommodation for Maghrebi pilgrims. When the French government finally decided to offer financial support for the mosque project and the Paris City Council awarded land from an old disused hospital, located behind the Jardin des Plantes, ben Ghabrit set in motion all the mechanisms of power he could muster to ensure the project was a success, including festive celebrations to raise funds.

Nevertheless, Ghabrit continuously came up against hidden obstacles from those in the colonial Administration who did not want the project to go ahead.

Thus, when he went to withdraw the funds obtained from the collections and paid into the State Bank in Morocco, he was told that they had been blocked on the orders of the Resident-General. While the issue was being resolved, ending with a written warning issued to certain high colonial civil servants, and the funds were being freed up, the pasha of Marrakesh, Thami el Glaoui, loaned the money to get the work started.26 Considerable obstacles remained and were frequently resolved in the shadows, or openly, by Islamophobic Catholics —who could be referred to as “Saint-Sulpican”— who had dealings with the Institut Catholique 26

Ibid., p. 178.

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in Paris, located in the environs of the Church of the Saint-Sulpice, the most reactionary centre of Catholicism in Paris. In the 1950s the discourse applied to the Paris Mosque began to change is it was presented as a place of reconciliation for inter-religious dialogue,27 in addition to France’s mistrust because the society of habous assets legally resided in Algiers, in some way signifying that there was autonomy in the management of “French” Islam.28 At any rate, looking back, the theme of the great mosque was of such importance that Kaddour ben Ghabrit turned it into an essential part of his “political” work, controlling its use and protocols before, during and after the opening of the mosque.

Today, he is buried in the mosque’s courtyard in recognition for his work.

From a material standpoint, if the first mosque projects were assigned to an architect specialised in Hispano-Mauresque architect such as Henri Saladin (1853-1923), the second and definitive mosques were entrusted to a confidant of Lyautey, the architect Maurice Tranchant de Lunel (1869-1932), who was the organiser of the Service des Beaux Arts in Morocco from 1912 and was who fully aware of the need to consolidate the traditionalist discourse of the ancestral and picturesque vieux Maroc.29 Tranchant was a true dilettante who devoted his time to building villas in Nice, painting (see Illustration 6) and a man of the world with numerous trips behind him. He viewed Morocco as a peaceful country with an “elastic and distant authority” called Makhzen, and, thus, an ideal place for artists given that individual freedom reigned without the limits of social conventions.30 In this mission, Tranchant, from the Service des Beaux Arts, devoted his work over the course of 1913 to adapting official residencies, colonial offices and, in general, every kind of building that represented the power of the Protectorate in a “Moroccan” style, with the stated aim of creating the effect of imitation among both indigenous people and foreigners.31 The idea of “imitation” originated from the sociologist Gabriel Tarde, developed in

27

Philippe Lefrançois (1951). Paris à travers les siècles. Paris: Calman-Lévy.

28

Gilles Kepel (1991). Les banlieues de l’islam. Naissance d’une religion en France. Paris: Seuil, p. 67.

29

José Antonio González Alcantud (2010). The French Factory in the Hispano-Mauresque style, in the Mediterranean Gallery of Distorting Mirrors, in José Antonio González Alcantud (ed.). La invención del estilo hispanomagrebí. Presente y futuros del pasado. Barcelona: Anthropos, pp. 11-77.

30

Maurice Tranchant de Lunel (1924). Au pays du paradoxe. Maroc. Paris: Bibliothèque-Charpentier, pp. 19-20.

31

Archives Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (maaee) 1928-1937. Paris. Dossier 263. Maroc. Affaires Politiques.

Rapports Mensuels du Résident Général, May-October 1913.

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his book Les lois de l’imitation,32 which had been read by Lyautey. Gustave Le Bon’s thesis on the masses, Alfred Fouillée and his core ideas, and Gabriel Tarde’s ideas of imitation had a profound influence on senior military commanders and colonialist leaders, all of whom were very conservative socialists.

Illustration 6. Watercolour by Maurice Tranchant de Lunel.

Source: Martian Shaker Blog [online], <http://martian-shaker.blogspot.com.es/2008/01/maurice-tranchant-de-lunel-1869-1944.html>.

The work on the mosque was undertaken by Maurice Tranchant de Lunel, at the request of Ben Ghabrit (see Illustration 7). Tranchant, a widely travelled adventurer, had unequivocally captured the architectural “style” that had served as a reference to 32

Gabriel Tarde (1890). Les lois de l’imitation étude sociologique. Paris: F. Alcan.

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create the appropriate “atmosphere” of the “Caliphal” project under the tutelage of France, particularly with regard to the decadent Turkish “Caliphate”, protected by Germany, and the emerging Saudi Arab “Caliphate”, under the guardianship of Great Britain. Thus, for Tranchant it was abundantly clear: the Fez Madrasas, and more specifically the Madrasa Bu Inaniyy, were his Hispano-Mauresque model, his canon.

Finally, he would leave specific matters of the mosque in the hands of Maurice Mantout, who had been his assistant in Meknes. Mantout, in turn, would also work with the architects Robert Fournez and Charles Heubès. The Maghrebi artisans actively participated, as expected, in the construction and beautification of the mosque. Mention must also be made of the fact that different artisan industries participated significantly in the completion of what is today the Hasan II Mosque in Casablanca. A mosque, therefore, was not just a building; it demanded the mise en scéne of all society in order to breathe life into it. During its construction, artisanal work was crucial, in much the same way as architectural work in the gothic cathedrals was paramount.

Illustration 7. Tranchant de Lunel’s drawing representing the Paris Mosque (1921).

Source: Agence Rol. Agence Photographique. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département Estampes et Photographie, EI-13 (754), <http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb435376868>.

The construction of the mosque, which started in 1921 (see Illustration 8) under the direction of the architect Fournez and his contributors, was monitored by the

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press with some interest. In particular, in 1924, the journal La construction Moderne wrote a detailed report once the decorative work had got under way, describing how the “indigenous artists” followed Maghrebi tradition by engraving gypsum boards, since the European artists were still unable to execute this meticulous and painstaking work: “Tout est fait au ciseau avec la même patience durant plusieurs mois”.

There was also mention of the work in cedar from Batna (Algeria): “For many months teams of skilful Muslim labourers have been working on this complicated work with impressive patience, giving the ensemble an unrivalled regularity of execution”.33 Only one exception was made in reference to the decoration, in reference to the carpentry; it was said that the drawings, executed without any pre-prepared blueprint, were of “Persian inspiration”.

Illustration 8. The first stone of the mosque, in the presence of Marshal Lyautey and the sultan’s representative, el Mokri, and Moroccan delegates (1922).

Source: Agence de Presse Meurisse. Agence Photographique. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département Estampes et Photographie, EI-13 (2727), <http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb415818566>.

When construction was completed, it was time for protocol. This was the point when words took on greater density and meaning. The reminders must be considered. For instance, during the activities organised for the inauguration of the mosque (see Illustration 9) and in the presence of Muley Yussef and the director 33

Antony Goissaud (1924). “Institut et la Mosquée de Paris”, La Construction Moderne, No. 5, year xl, 2 November 1924, p. 66.

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of the cabinet of the Municipal Council of Paris president, M. René Weiss, justice was done to the historical events that came before this work. However, it is important to also remember that, as Michel Renard recalls, Weiss’s work was not original and took much of its historical information from the articles of Paul Bourdarie in La Revue Indigène: In the Ardennes, in Buzancy [writes Weiss], in a place called Mahomet, you can still see the ruins of the mosque that a crusader, Pierre d’Anglure, Count of Bourlémont, held prisoner by the Saracens, built at the beginning of the 13th century in remembrance of the freedom that he had been granted.34 Above all, Weiss pointed to the recognition of those who were its promoters at the end the 19th century: The idea [an old French idea] of founding a mosque appears to have been done for the first time in November 1849. It was launched by one of the most active Islamicising groups: Société Orientale Algérienne & Coloniale. But it would not truly enter the domain of its execution until 1895. It was with the appearance of Harry Alis, the creator of the Comité de l’Afrique Française, and the person who attempted to give Islam a charming and eye-catching testimony, right in Paris, using a religious building at a time when France evolved into a huge Muslim power because of the development of its empire in North Africa. A tragic death did not allow the founder of this project to start the work, but his vision encouraged skilled workers from France’s colonial cause, whether members of parliament, sages, explorers, diplomats, generals, artists.35

34

René Weiss (1927). Réception à l’Hôtel de Ville de Sa Majesté Moulay Youssef, Sultan du Maroc. Inauguration de l’Institut Musulman et de la mosquée. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, p. 24.

35

Ibid.

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Illustration 9. The inauguration of the Paris Mosque.

Source: abc, 21 July 1926, p. 1.

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The illustrious founding fathers of the mosque project included many preeminent figures, notably D’Arenberg, Aynard, Delcassé, Étienne, Roland Bonaparte, De Noailles, Roustan, La Martinière, Galliffet, Thomassin, Benjamin Constant, all of whom were members of the Comité de l’Afrique Française. From the outset, they were also joined by the city of Paris, represented by the Prefect of the Seine, M. Poubelle, and the municipal councillor M. Villain, all presided by the general governor of Algeria, Jules Cambon.

The previously mentioned rivalry with Germany over capturing the will and backing of Muslims could be noted in the discourse. Weiss was aware of the new problem of the growing Muslim population and even the increasing number of Europeans who converted to Islam: The affluence of immigrants and the frequent conversions to Islam have given rise to the need to build mosques in various countries in recent years. They have been built in Woking (England) and Detroit (United States). In Germany, the Berlin shrine has replaced the one that was in the l’Halbmond camp, in Zossen. Australia possesses other permanent establishments in Perth and Adelaide; seven removable mosques. It is worth noting that none of the places of open prayer, which are extremely weak, can satisfy the pious desires of the converted, for instance in Berlin, to subdue the loyalty of our tireurs (North African troops), prisoners at that time; you cannot compare the monument that France and Paris have devoted to Muslim populations.36 In this regard, it is worth recalling the acts of 1926 in which the preliminary speech given by Ali Halid Bey, president of the Muslim Fraternity of Paris, during the guidance ceremony held on 1 March 1922, mentioned the existence of those mosques that, according to certain opportunists in France, the Germans had erected in the concentration camps close to Berlin, and which served the Russian, French and English Muslims. The truth is that the 1926 act reveals how, in contrast to the projects considered opportunist by the Germans, the Paris Mosque had been conceived as a long-lasting project, not a circumstantial one.37 France did not want 36

Ibid., p. 23.

37

Idem, p. 39.

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an ephemeral alliance with the Islamic world; it wanted to lead it using its colonial administration in the Maghreb.

Moreover, this undoubtedly points to the reasons behind the Paris Mosque not being built in an Ottoman style, due to the events of the First World War and the massacre of Armenians at the hands of the Turks. As Weiss asserts: The plans of the future mosque [inspired by the Turkish style] have been established by M. M. Baudy & Saladin. It appears that the monument should have emerged from Parisian soil when, in June of 1896, the world was shaken by a painful event: the Armenian Massacres. It was not the right time to carry out the work that had been designed.38 French journals and newspapers echoed the magnificence of the inauguration in Paris. M. Jean Leune, a specialist in religious matters, noticed that the religious ceremony was held at 14:00 hours, with the arrival of the Moroccan sultan at the ceremony being reported in the press due to its grandeur and profound significance.

The presence of the sultan’s black guard stood out for its exoticism. L’Illustration dedicated its front page to an image of his arrival in Gare de Lyon in Paris, where the ministers Doumerge, Herriot, Briand were waiting, as well as generals Guillaumat and Gouraud. In the same edition, on page 67, it stressed how Muley Yusuf had succeeded his “father” Muley Abdelaziz —in actual fact he was his stepbrother and had had to fight against him for the Moroccan throne— and how it was the first time a “Moroccan sultan appeared pacifically”, i.e. not in search of exile, as had been the case with Muley Abdelaziz and Muley Hafid, his ancestors and brothers exiled in France and Spain, respectively. It also emphasised the emotion felt by Muley Yusuf upon making his “grandiose” entry, with ostentatious “hurrahs” being shouted in Toulon, in the protected area of Paris. On page 72, six photographs of J. Clair-Guyot at different stages of the journey were printed: the first, in an act of submission on the part of prominent figures before the departure from Morocco; the second, on the ship with Resident-General Steel, who accompanied them; and the third, their arrival in Toulon. Afterwards, already on French soil, there is a photograph on the train driven with Steel, another with the provost Ghabrit in the Champs-Elysées and, finally, an image at a grave to honour an unknown soldier, where a bronze crown was left.39 38

Idem, pp. 24-25.

39

L’ilustration, No. 4.350, 17 July 1926.

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L’ilustration also highlighted the amicable and informal way Lyautey received the sultan at his house in Thorney, in the region of Lorraine, where he invited two priests, introducing them by saying: “Sir, you are aware of how I have respected your religion in Morocco: the same as here, to show you that we are respectful in France with ours; I have the pleasure of introducing Abbot Lacasse, priest of Thorey, and Abbot Morlaincourt, who has come to greet you on behalf of the Bishop of Nancy”.40 To underline the fact, the front cover of L’ilustration featured a photograph of Lyautey, who is referred to as “the African”, at his Thorey property in Lorraine.

The recently resigned resident-general in Morocco acted in this capacity, as the true manager of the inauguration, administrating the whole ceremony in his shadow.

Lyautey continued to have the last word, despite having left Morocco.

The photographs in L’ilustration of the procession of 14 July feature the sultan and General Primo de Rivera, the Spanish dictator. This is followed by another with Aristide Briand and Miguel Primo de Rivera alone —both had signed the agreement at that time to put an end to the war with Abd el-Krim— resulting in the demarcation of previously ambiguous borders in the Protectorate. In two photographs, Sultan Muley Yusuf is greeting Petain and Gouraud. Another three are in reference to the inauguration of the mosque, two featuring the cemetery of Moroccan soldiers killed by France in the Great War and one showing a mausoleum, whose first stone was laid by Muley Yusuf. In another one Lyautey can be seen on his property, while a further three show Verdun, where the sultan and the crown prince were decorated.

L’ilustration is just one example of the interest the sultan’s visit aroused in France.

Another aspect of particular significance was the protocol crossover with the visit of General Miguel Primo de Rivera. Primo de Rivera took the opportunity to sign a Franco-Spanish agreement that would end the Rif war, enabling the demarcation of territories. First, he made various statements in the French press, echoed by the Spanish newspapers, in which he expressed his satisfaction at the collaboration undertaken with France.41 Primo de Rivera was joined by Generals Orgaz and Jordana, as well as Ambassador Quiñones de León.42 The previous day he was invited to a reception held by Aristide Briand to mark the arrival of the Moroccan sultan for the

40

L’ilustration, No. 4.351, 24 July 1926.

41

La Vanguardia, 17 July 1926.

42

L’ilustration, No. 4.351, 24 July 1926.

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unveiling of the mosque.43 The following day, Primo de Rivera once again coincided with the Moroccan sultan in the procession in Champs Elysées, although he was not included among the guests invited to the opening of the Great Mosque; as far as we know, neither Primo de Rivera nor anyone from his entourage attended —France controlled and administered the symbolic power with great care.

Another problem in the sphere of international relations was the leadership of the Moroccan Sultan over the Bey of Tunisia, sidi Mohammed el Habib, and the religious authorities in the whole region because of their capacity as “knight commander of the believers”. France, as indicated above, with its idea of the “Maghrebi Caliphate” decidedly backed the aspirations of the sultan as the “knight commander of the believers”, a role that the traditional Algerian and Tunisian authorities could not employ. Therefore, the sultan and the bey could not coincide at the unveiling of the mosque, yet at the same time there was a need to satisfy the susceptibilities of the Tunisian leader. Thus, the visits and inaugurations were staggered. L’ilustration published three photographs depicting the meeting between the bey and sultan in Marseille.44 On the same day, as the bey arrived the sultan left —if they crossed in the right place, this would not cause a disturbance. Therefore, France implemented a protocol that was “prudent and thorough, where Arab diplomacy played its role, aligning details”.

On 21 August, there is evidence of the Bey of Tunisia’s visit to the Paris Mosque, in the company of the prefect Lucien Saint and Ghabrit, for the opening of the Conference Room of the Muslim Institut. The donated seat was a reproduction of the Mosque of Kairouan. In his speech, Ghabrit mentioned that the bey was a man who was highly committed to the culture “of the spirit and with the most modern sciences”.

While the Moroccan sultan was seduced by the French experience, to quote verbatim his words: He has expressed his joy over the profound impression the last three weeks in France have left on him. Despite the brevity of the visit, he has met all the countenances of this great and beautiful country, people he only knew before from the books and narrations of those involved. He has travelled through its cities and countryside, admir43 44

abc,

15 July 1926.

L’ilustration, No. 4.354, 11 July 1926.

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ing its places and landscapes, moving closer to all forms of Western civilization. He has attended celebrations, sporting events and international festivities, troop inspections; he has examined economic and industrial activity, he has visited museums, monuments, and castles and, out there, today’s France meets the France from the past in its religious history.45 He went to Chamonix, where he admired a glaciar; in Aix, he attended modern dances, and to “complete his Western education” he went to play the fashionable game baccara. When his trip came to an end, talk would be of the beau voyage du sultan du Maroc [“the beautiful journey of the Sultan of Morocco”].46 Of course, in the Moroccan monarchy the sultans were captivated by the modernity and grandeur of France.

The next sultan, Mohammed ben Yusuf, heir to Muley Yusuf upon his death in 1927, returned to the now habitual visits of the sultans in L’Hexagone. Between July and August 1928, he travelled anonymously through the country in the company of his friend Sidi Mohamed el Mokri and eluding, in parallel, a meeting with Ghabrit.47 Then, in 1931 he visited the Colonial Exhibition of Porte Dorée, accompanying Prince Muley Hasan, the future Hasan II. After stopping at the Angkor Palace and heading to the Moroccan pavilion, he continued his morning visit by going to pray at the Parisian mosque.48 Thus, the mosque appeared familiar with the annual visits of Moroccan sultans and other representatives from the Muslim world.

The whole Paris project, which focused on converting the French capital into a reference point for the Muslim world, benefitted from the weakness of the great centres of religious thought in the Maghreb, particularly the Zitouna Mosque and Islamic university, in Tunisia, and the Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and University, in Fez. The latter in particular was placed progressively under the control of the modernisers, at the request of tolba students, who saw their privileges jeopardised with the opening of Muslim schools in Fez and Rabat, which, under French control, were

45

L’Illustration, No. 4.352, 31 July 1926.

46

L’Illustration, No. 4.353, 7 August 1926.

47

Archives Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (maaee) 1928-1937. Paris. Dossier 73 CPCOM/2.

48

L’Illustration, No. 4.615, 16 August 1931.

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oriented towards attracting the Moroccan elites.49 Therefore, there was a strong mutual understanding between the sultanate and the Lyauteyan projects to combine modernity and traditionalism. Even today there is a desire to prove that there is no contradiction between both concepts.50 The deep-rooted mutual understanding between the sultanate and the French Republic can even be seen in the discussion paper of the Istiqlal nationalist party, which after analysing the rise of pro-independence ideas and colonialism’s reluctance to let go of its prey, tiptoes around the major figure of Hubert Lyautey, who was not discredited, despite being the most qualified representative of purest colonialism.51 The mosque, after its inauguration, highlighted the importance of a virtual “Maghrebi Caliphate”, managed by the Khalifan sultanate. This supremacy would turn the link between Morocco and France into something more than essential, with potential competitors even being dismissed, for instance a mosque planned for Marseille with similar dimensions, opposed by ben Ghabrit if it were not to be governed from the Société des Habous, which he presided over and which, although established in Algeria, was mostly oriented towards Morocco.52 France, as a Muslim nation, oriented its policies to revolve around the most Western side of Islam, bearing in mind that it had lost influence over the Arab Wahhabism of sheikh Husein, who had tended to turn towards the British world due to the policy of Colonel Lawrence to support Arab independence against the Ottoman Turks.

The issue of the mosque was important internally since its inauguration took place four years from the centenary of the French occupation of Algeria, in 1930, and with the great colonial exhibition of ’31 in the making, managed by the very same Marshal Lyautey. There was a need to revive the colonial pact in order for it not to have the pure and simple connotation of “colonialism”, jointly renounced

by Arab nationalists and “Bolsheviks”. Moreover, there was a need to balance the most radical offensives of French Catholicism, which culminated in Algiers during the centenary and which sparked numerous protests due to its lack of intelligence 49

Pierre Vermeren (2007). “La réforme de l’université Qarawiyyin de Fès sous le Protectorat français au Maroc, 1912-1956”, Cahiers de la Méditerranée, No. 75, pp. 119-132.

50

Charles Saint-Prot (2010). La tradición islámica de la reforma. Barcelona: Bellaterra.

51

L’Istiqlal (1951). Marruecos, antes del protectorado, durante el protectorado, fracaso del protectorado [Spanish edition]. S. l.: Office of documentationa nd information (Impr. especial del Istiqlal), pp. 47-52.

52

Michel Renard (2006). Les debuts de la présense musulmane en France et son encadrement, in Mohammed Arkoun (ed.). Histoire de l’islam et des musulmans en France du Moyen Âge à nos jours. Op. Cit., p. 766.

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and sensitivity.53 As regards the mosques, at least in the Colonial Exhibition of Porte Dorée, which ended up as an exaltation of the French colonial empire,54 a replica of the Djenné Mosque (see Illustration 10) was erected, another Somalian mosque and a third in a Moorish style, all with their respective minarets. The staging of the Colonial Exhibition was even greater than the universal exhibitions. As Léandre Vaillat in a special edition of L’ilustration pointed out, in order for the “regional character” of colonial architecture to be appreciated, strictly colonial buildings had to be close to the entrance, where they represented a transition between Parisian and vernacular architecture “in such a way that the hiatus is not felt so much and the visitor is ready for the formula adopted by the curator (Lyautey) for its publicity: “Le tour du monde en un jour” [a tour of the world in one day]”,55 a concept that was played out in all the universal exhibitions embodying a type of diorama.

Illustration 10. The Mali Mosque in the Colonial Exhibition of Porte Dorée, 1931.

Source: Oliver and Lambert Arch., Charles Garnier.

53

Jacques Berque (2001). La Mahgreb entre deux guerres. Vol. ii. Túnez: Ceres, pp. 363-391.

54

Pascal Blanchard et al. (2011). Exhibitions. L’invention du sauvage. Paris: Actes Sud/Musée du Quai Branly.

55

Léandre Vaillat (1931). “Les œuvres métropolitaines”, L’Illustration, No. 4.603, 23 May 1931.

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The colonial exhibition, which took place between May and November of 1931, was extremely well received by the public, despite opposition from the surrealists and communists who organised an alternative anti-colonial exhibition. With competition from Louis Aragon, they had called it “La vérité sur les colonies”, taking advantage of the Soviet constructivist pavilion at the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in 1925. However, on this occasion the star was art “nègre”, encompassing both African and Oceanian influences. The exhibition did not contain any significant references to Islamic art.56 Nevertheless, this reference was apparent in the colonial exhibition, where there was the desire to portray the image of the modernising achievements of France in its colonies, as well as recurrent references to the ambiance of exoticism the urban masses knew how to appreciate.57 One of the most important visitors was the aforementioned Moroccan sultan, who in a speech before Lyautey, his general commissioner, admitted: “We cannot forget that with your arrival in Morocco the Khelifan Empire was under threat of ruin. Its institutions, arts and its unsteady Administration were all crying out for an organiser from your temple to set it on the right way and direct it towards its purpose.”58 There was recognition, therefore, of the debt the “Maghrebi Caliphate” had towards this “viceroy” of monarchical convictions and methods who had saved it from a turbulent period spanning 1894 to 1917, when internal fighting for Khalifan power had threatened to drive it to ruin.

Of course, it is worth pointing out that Lyautey’s project possessed cultural depth that still causes surprise among his biographers, whether in a favourable light not.

As highlighted by one of his most important biographers, Daniel Rivet, the Resident-General did not want to fixate on Moroccan tradition but rather fuel its renaissance as culture.59 This brought about a back-and-forth architectural movement, described by a visitor in the following terms: A new architectural doctrine emerges from these public and private monuments. What an evolution since the French occupation! The first constructors to come from the mother country discovered Hispano-Mauresque architecture. Amazed, they made 56

Catherine Hodeir and Michel Pierre (1991). L’Exposition Coloniale 1931. Brussels: Complexe, pp. 125-134.

57

Ibid., pp. 47-52.

58

Arnaud Teyssier (2004). Lyautey. Paris: Perrin, p. 516.

59

Daniel Rivet (1988). Lyautey et l’institution du Protectorat français au Maroc, 1912-1925. Vol. ii. París: L’Harmattan, p. 130.

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it pseudo-Moroccan, just as the Spaniards from the 16th century had done with Mudejar. The sultan’s palace in Rabat, built by the architect of the Great Mosque of Paris, is an example of a composite style. Yet the 20th century French were not the 16th century Spaniards, who could instinctively make it Mudejar because of the mix of Andalusi blood. Something needs to be found. Architecture born in Europe would have been more suited to Morocco than the Paris skyline; a kind of return to ancient architecture, the starkness of the planes and the layout of the structures; no vane decorations, the calm of the façade in opposition to the bustling street, a penchant for uniform lines in the distribution of mass and void. This originated in the starkness of the façades in the Orient and not in the systematic spirit; adopted by the Moroccan constructors it seems as if it has returned to its homeland.60 As regards the Parisian population, the mosque, as with other cultural buildings, such as the Muslim schools in Rabat and Fez and the Institut des Hautes Études Marocains, were presented as one of Lyautey’s achievements. This was how it was described by ben Ghabrit in a text inserted into the popular history of the colonies intended for the general public.61 Meanwhile, Daniel Rivet emphasised that this “restless agnostic [Lyautey] and undoubtedly theist” with nihilistic suicidal tendencies, who searched for a cultural synthesis of monotheism, “when he participated in the opening of the mihrab of the Paris Mosque, his invocation to the only God is nothing more than a rhetorical figure, without, therefore, being a testimony of impassioned faith in the manner of Massignon”.62 Equally, Lyautey’s presence, promoted by laic French people, confirmed the impossibility of assimilating anything related to the Muslim world and its differential character.63 Thus it remained abundantly clear that a political-cultural operation was involved.

60

Léandre Vaillat (1934). Le périple marocain. París: Flammarion, pp. 59-60.

61

Albert de Pouvourville (coord.) (1931). Histoire populaire des Colonies Françaises. Le Maroc. Vol. ii. Paris: Circa.

62

Daniel Rivet (1988). Lyautey et l’institution du Protectorat français au Maroc, 1912-1925. Op. Cit., p. 123.

63

Naomi Davidson (2009). “La mosquée de Paris. Construire l’islam français et l’islam en France, 1926-1947”, Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée, No. 125, pp. 197-215.

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José Antonio González Alcantud

Nevertheless, the real triumph was for Paris as it symbolically personified a type of “celebration” in which the actors came from very different locations in France’s colonial empire. It reached a point where more serious things, such as the history of work and the demonstrations of the latest technical discoveries, were progressively expelled from the Paris exhibitions, particularly after 1900, the year in which they were sent to Vincennes. Consequently, the exhibition venue became an authentic trade fair attraction, imposed, according to Pascal Ory, “with insolence”.64 This was the danger perceived by the detractors of the Paris Mosque: its transformation into a unique “boîte de nuit” where Parisian high society would go to enjoy themselves, in its souk, hammam and restaurant (see Illustration 11). In this sense, its use was even satirised by the Arab nationalist poet Mahmud Bayram al-Tunsi.65 The absence of workers and migrants in the mosque, as well as its conception, made it an symbol of triumphant exoticism in Paris, thanks to the universal exhibitions, and intended for tourists and the bourgeois (see Illustration 12).

Illustration 11. Hammam restaurant “Chez Brahim” in the Great Mosque of Paris.

Source: Institut Musulman et Mosquée de Paris, postcard.

64

Pascal Ory (1982). Les Expositions Universelles de Paris. Paris: Ramsay, p. 123.

65

Mohammed Telhine (2010). L’islam et les musulmans en France. Une histoire de mosquées. Op. Cit., 2010.

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The Great Mosque of Paris. A political project of mauresque architecture at a time...

Illustration 12. Cover for a series of tourist postcards (1926).

Source: Institut Musulman et Mosquée de Paris, postcard.

All of the foregoing helps us affirm, as cultural anthropologists interested in the field of aesthetics, those hypotheses whose origin can be traced back to the end of the 19th century, and which have become topical once again today, and according to which art and society were one. This was confirmed by Charles Lalo at the time and has also been corroborated by Roger Bastide today: “Art, without doubt, is relatively autonomous in relation to society but it does not stop being a social institution”.66 By looking through the cracks,67 as in the case of the Paris Mosque, anthropology establishes the bases of new analytical dimensions, particularly in the sphere of the hermeneutic interpretation of historical fact.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR José Antonio González Alcantud (Granada, 1956) is a professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Granada, director of the Observatory of Cultural Futurology at the University of Granada and corresponding academic of the Royal academy of the Moral Sciences and Politics of Spain. His most recent works include: Lo moro.

Las lógicas de la derrota y la formación del estereotipo islámico (2002); La fábrica de los estereotipos. Francia, nosotros y la europeidad (2006); Sísifo y la ciencia social. Var66

Roger Bastide (2006). Arte y sociedad. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, p. 55.

67

José Antonio González Alcantud (2015). Travesías estéticas. Etnografiando las artes y la literatura. Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada.

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José Antonio González Alcantud

iaciones de la antropología crítica (2008); El mito de al-Ándalus (2014) and Travesías estéticas. Etnografiando la literatura y las artes (2015). His coordinated work includes: El orientalismo desde el sur (2006); La ciudad: paraíso y conflicto (2007, con Juan Calatrava); La Conferencia de Algeciras en 1906. Un banquete colonial (2007, con Eloy Martín Corrales); La Alhambra, lugar de la memoria y el diálogo (2008); La ciudad magrebí en tiempos coloniales (2008); Granada la andaluza (2008); La invención del estilo hispano-magrebí (2010), and Andalusíes (2015, with Sandra Rojo).

ABSTRACT The Paris Mosque is a project that was initially devised at the end of the 19th century in light of France’s colonial expansion, at a time when France started to consider itself a “Muslim nation”. Nevertheless, this wish, which gained significant support among France’s political and cultural media, did not materialise until the First Wold War showed the importance of politically leading the Muslim world, particularly because of competition with Germany in this territory. Given the distribution of strategic interests, France could only lead the Maghreb, where it was present until 1830, with any degree of certainty. The Alaouite Sultan of Morocco was in the most legitimate position to uphold this alliance, while the direction of the Paris Mosque, construction on which began in 1921 thanks to the drive of Lyautey and Ghabrit, fell under this “Hispano/Mauresque-style” cultural model. Thus, France was guaranteed control of the Western “Caliphate”. The universal and colonial exhibitions contributed to the success of this project, turning Paris into an authentic diorama of world cultures.

KEYWORDS The Great Mosque, Lyautey, Ghabrit, Hispanic/Mauresque style, “caliphate”, “Muslim nation”.

TRANSLATION Neil Fawle.

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SPANISH ARCHITECTURE IN NORTH AFRICA FROM A HERITAGE PERSPECTIVE Ramón de Torres López

T

he Mediterranean is a dialogue between the earth and sea. Cultural contacts between its people, maintained throughout history, have sculpted it into a space for relations and communication and have connected both shores. There was a common civilization that, without distinguishing Andalusia from the Maghreb, facilitated the circulation of men, ideas and desires. Today, the remnants of al-Andalus still remain, providing a historical reality that is a source of study, both in modes of thought and in the arts. Spain’s relations with the Maghreb, and in particular with Morocco, continue to be the focal point and main interest; the present bears the footprints of mutual permeation and shared history. For centuries there has been a two-way flow, creating cultural traces that are an expression of Andalusi-Maghrebi civilization, jointly participating in the Morisco substratum and the subsequent interventionist presence of Spain in northern Morocco, which, over time, has evolved into a Maghrebi migratory presence in Spain.

The impact of al-Andalus in Morocco remains firmly rooted in both city and country and forms part of the country’s socio-cultural fabric. The profound integration of this legacy in daily life is reflected in the awareness and behaviour of the Moroccan people, whose identity could not be understood without it. This cultural impact was, and continues to be, significant in cities such as Meknès, Tétouan, Tangier, Chefchaouen, Larache, Rabat, Salé and Ksar el-Kebir.

In the north of Morocco in the first half of the 20th century, this legacy was complemented with the establishment of the Spanish Protectorate, which promoted decisive architectural and urban interventions, primarily in the cities of Tétouan, Larache, Ksar el-Kebir, Chefchaouen, Villa Alhucemas and Villa Nador. Therefore, to delve deeper into the key characteristics of the heritage of Spanish architecture and town planning in North Africa, our analysis must necessarily focus on Morocco.

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Within this perspective, it is fair to say that traces of Spain are still alive in northern and central Morocco, present in multiple and varied form. Residential architecture and town planning are the most emblematic features of this legacy.

To complete the analysis, consideration must be given to the recognition of its heritage, which is at the core of the Regional Government of Andalusia’s International Cooperation Programme, which, since 1990, has been implemented specifically in the cities of Tétouan, Chefchaouen, Larache and Ksar el-Kebir, encompassing actions to restore built heritage, complemented with development and dissemination activities on the cultural values of different cities.

The urban scene: the medina versus expansion The inseparable concept of architectural design and town planning, like different moments in the same operative reality, determines the current urban reality.

Joint and permanent action in both spheres offer the Andalusi medina and urban expansion as two urban models that convey the legacy of Spanish architecture and town planning in northern Morocco.

The treatment of the medina, as an urban concept with Hispano-Muslim origins mainly seen today in Tétouan and Chefchaouen, together with the impact of Andalusi architecture on numerous Moroccan medinas, were key issues when considering urban development in cities during the Spanish Protectorate. In contrast to the French Protectorate model, designed by the town planner Henry Prost, who proposed moving urban development away from the medinas to promote the cities’ specialization and differentiation in specialist industries, the Spanish model, developed in Tétouan and Larache before Henry Prost put forward his plans, proposed the juxtaposition and direct relationship between the medinas and the outskirts.

Both decisions involved different problems: the French model led to the segregation of the population according to different social, economic and cultural realities and favoured the proliferation of neighbourhoods and shanty towns; the Spanish model, meanwhile, initially adopted actions to conserve heritage, creating the Heritage Advisory Board for Artistic and Historical Monuments, and to demolish part of the section of historic walls in Tétouan to improve accessibility and mobility and due to the unsuitable location of military installations alongside the remaining conserved walls.

The first Spanish urban expansion projects were carried out between 1913 and 1914 in Tétouan and Larache. In the first project adopted an orthogonal morphology whereas the second based expansion on a radial design. The Office for Public

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Spanish architecture in North Africa from a heritage perspective

Works defined three areas or architectural provinces: Tétouan and the surrounding areas (Martil River and Chefchaouen), the area of Lucus (Larache, Asilah and Ksar el-Kebir) and the eastern part (Villa Alhucemas and Villa Nador). Tangier, as an international city, operated autonomously, while urban development in other cities was finally undertaken in the 1920s and used the new city-garden trend as a model to improve quality of life; the model was also proposed for Chefchaouen, a mixed model combining urban expansion and a city-garden in Ksar el-Kebir. In Villa Alhucemas, where there had been no previous settlement, and in Villa Nador, where there was a small town, expansion work was planned in an orthogonal grid. In Tangier, in 1925, Henry Prost drafted the plan that, reordering the area to the south and southeast, designed the urban expansion model based on the guidelines applied in cities under the French Protectorate.

In Tétouan, Larache and Ksar el-Kebir, where urban development was designed in direct relation to the existing medinas, empty spaces were created that, as public spaces, acted as a hinge or junction between two urban models. In Tétouan and Larache, these empty spaces emerged as squares, while in Ksar el-Kebir an avenue served as the articulating functional space for expansion.

For a more in-depth analysis comparing the urban models of the medina and the area of expansion, Tétouan must be considered as the most representative example.

It was founded in 1487 by Ali al-Mandri, a military leader from Granada. The urban structure and architecture of the medina are the result of five centuries of history and its Andalusi heritage remains almost intact. Together with the medina, Spanish urban expansion was carried out between 1912 and 1956 when Tétouan was the capital of the Spanish Protectorate. It represents one of the most interesting examples, from an architectural and urban point of view, in the whole of North Africa, not only because of its nature and the structure of its built heritage, but also because it accurately brings to life the spirited and intense union between the Islamic city or medina and the Western city, or Spanish urban expansion, with clear parallels with numerous cities in Andalusia. The medina and urban expansion together represent the articulation of two urban organisational systems that respectively strengthen their value: the medina or the development of a city from a full space —the block—, based on the principle that this part is closely linked to everything and where the public and private spheres cross over in a complex manner; and the expansion or development of the city from an empty space —the street— and from the dichotomy between a part and the whole, between the public and private spheres. While urban expansion was the result of prior planning, where the territory located to the west

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of the medina was structured through a series of main roads over which a grid was established, designed as a model in which streets were the primary linear element for generating public urban spaces and enabling direct access to housing, located in blocks and filled according to pre-established subdivisions, the medina was the outcome of a focal concept, where once the location of the mosque, Alcazaba, walls and doors had been decided, the urban space was organised around configured residential blocks, without determining their form and based on the needs of family units. According to this concept, private or intimate space in housing prevails over the street, which takes on the characteristic of a space for accessibility.

The medina is the result of the successive juxtaposition of neighbourhoods with subsections comprising neighbouring communities brought together by special links —family, place of origin, trade unions, economic activity— and have all the necessary institutions available for social life. They have a nuclear structure, located around the mosque, prayer room or zawaya and are normally equipped with a bathroom, oven, barber’s shops and stores selling fruit, vegetables, spices, etc. The city developed by occupying the space that was closest to the mosque, or the streets that converged from its doors, which gave rise to urban forms that were noticeably circular. The road network, which was interwoven in subordination to the prior occupation of individual or family space, systematically gave rise to crossroads of three streets, the outcome of the arrangement or agreement between these circular forms.

It gave rise to complex cities, with inconsistent geometric structures and unexpected urban forms, for instance the materialization of content from Islamic law. Indeed, regulations governing common property, inheritance assets, rights of use, the inviolable sanctity of the family home and the occupation and use of public space played a particularly decisive role in the creation of the medina.

The Andalusi house The best-conserved examples of Andalusi houses in Morocco can be found in the Medina of Tétouan and reveal its origins and evolution. This domestic architecture consists of a series of houses with patios or courtyards, clearly influenced by the cultural legacy of the Moriscos that immigrated at the beginning of the 17th century.

They are examples of spatial and stylistic arrangements, inserted into Mudejar cultural tradition.

This type of house is complemented by a courtyard or patio with eight pillars and arches. Small houses have rectangular courtyards and present particular features on their floors, elevations and divisions. The house of the Naqsis governors, a family

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with Andalusi origins who ruled the city from the end of the 16th century to the last third of the 17th century, boasts a combination of Hispano-Muslim architecture and traditional residential architecture from Fez. The courtyard is made up of repeated elevations on the ground floor and first floor. The short sides have arches with two centres, while the longer sides have semi-circular arches. Yet the most striking feature of this house are the corners of the courtyard, which are broken by eliminating the pillars at angles, causing the corresponding arches to intersect. This innovative technique, which minimise the pillars in the courtyard, establishes an analogy with experiments tested in Spanish Mudejar architecture. This spatial arrangement was used as a reference in the construction of the Abdeslam Uazani House and in other houses located in the Blad neighbourhood, the oldest in the medina.

The House of ulema Ben Qarrish, built by a Morisco family that had immigrated at the beginning of the 17th century, features elevations in the patio, in reference to late Mudejar architecture, built with arches on the ground floor and pillars and beams above.

This type of patio house is characterised by its plain constructive style, semi-circular arches but no tiled mosaic decorations or sculpted stuccos, and by the proportion of thick pillars. The basic materials used are bricks, coated with high-calcium lime, and wooden joist frameworks.

This Andalusi architecture marks the origin of the subsequent evolution of the house-courtyard in TĂŠtouan, closely linked to the building techniques, systems and resources used in Andalusi, Ottoman and local tradition, as well as other spheres of Moroccan and European culture. This development brought about the transformation of the courtyard or patio as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;rootâ&#x20AC;? and main part of the house. The search for the essence of this architecture, for the everlasting, rediscovers the inherited roots and forms. The courtyard is configured as a form carved by time, amassing structural arrangements and spatial values that turn it into the initial component from which the form stems. Thus, the courtyard or patio can be understood as a composition system that is the foundation on which the house is designed and which expresses its ability to control and dominate a place.

The architecture of the Spanish Protectorate The Spanish Protectorate architecture in the north of Morocco is encompassed within the dynamics of the global expansion of capitalism, expressing the transfer of formal and typological models from Spain in opposition to traditional Moroccan architecture, which underwent a process of transformation, or disappearance, in its normal

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development. The transposition of models, initially carried out uncritically, as mere formal repetition, underwent a permanent process of adaptation that materialised into a set of variations that strived for a visual synthesis with Moroccan architecture. The consumption of images at a time of social and cultural change established an on-going dialectic relationship between modern construction needs and the need for harmonization with the Islamic city environment, which prompted mixed responses.

As from 1913, official Spanish organizations chiefly promoted the application of a mixture of Islamic-rooted details to shape a Neo-Arab movement, in co-existence with models of historicist eclecticism that were prevalent in Spain. Subsequently, Rationalist stylistic and figurative references were developed, such as modernist imagery.

From 1943 onwards, a new formal transmutation was determined, demonstrating the transcendence of political decisions in the rapid evolution of symbolic values of form, while typological or technological transformation took place gradually.

From that perspective, well-defined stages in architectural output during the Protectorate can be identified, prolonging the characteristics of the architecture produced in Spain, and with the corresponding variations in its application in the cities of Khalifan Morocco. In the first phase, coinciding primarily with the first two decades of the twentieth century, Tétouan became the hub of Neo-Arab forms that were used in institutional buildings; Arab-influenced components provided a benchmark, not only for this phase but also in representing the common denominator of the urban landscape of Protectorate cities from 1913 to 1956.

In parallel to this trend, traditional architecture was developed and defined according to the latest historicisms characterising the first third of Spanish architecture, in which a historicist and academic style was established based on a fundamentally traditional structure. The final glimmers of nineteenth-century historicist architecture, which had embraced history as a key element of legitimation, were strengthened in the early decades of the 20th century with the nationalist resurgence brought about by the Crisis of ’98. The Spanish Franciscan missions established in Morocco from the middle of the 19th century were a precedent to historicist architecture after the Protectorate was established.

The second stage, essentially spanning the 1930s, represents the introduction of the emblematic aspects of the first movement of Spanish rationalism, whose first achievements may be attributed to the Catalan movement of the Group of Spanish Architects and Technicians for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture (gatepac) and the group from Madrid. In Morocco, a small number of architects accepted the end of eclecticism and considered an architectural revival with

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Rationalist images of modernity and progress, occasionally combining them with experiences synthesised with Art Deco and with the craftsmanship and components of Moroccan tradition.

The third stage began in 1943 with the consolidation of the political and administrative structure of the new regime, which replaced previous models with others that were considered to be exponents of the most genuine and characteristic qualities of Spanish idiosyncrasy. The most accurate expression of this architectural nationalism could be found in national Neo-Herrerismo and baroque styles for the official architecture of government buildings, as well as in forms of Spanish regional architecture combined with Moroccan tradition in domestic architecture.

From the 1950s onwards a new generation of architects embarked upon the task of technical renovation, partially substantiated by the exploration of the possibilities offered by the use of reinforced concrete. They undertook a series of works linked to the second movement of Spanish rationalism, with a proliferation of education facilities and social housing developments on the outskirts of cities.

Actions to conserve heritage The urban development model that articulated urban expansion with the medinas required a series of actions to improve and conserve certain components of Moroccan heritage. To this end, in 1916 the Heritage Advisory Board for Moroccan Geography and History was formed, followed by the Heritage Advisory Board for Historical and Artistic Monuments in 1919, which was responsible for cataloguing the main heritage buildings. The initiative was complemented with the development of arts and crafts, with the creation of the Tétouan School of Arts in 1919.

This received an enormous boost in 1928 when the painter and member of the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts, Mariano Bertuchi, was appointed director and also took on the role of Indigenous Fine Arts inspector.

Reference must also be made to the actions that resulted in the destruction of sections of the historic walls of Tétouan and Larache, and the walls in Ksar el-Kebir in their entirety, to generate urban spaces conceived as public spaces of transition and convergence with the new and existing city.

From 1913 onwards, a series of projects in Tétouan were undertaken by the architect Carlos Óvilo, the head of Civil Constructions, to consolidate the sections of the walls that had been conserved, the restoration of the Loukach Madrasa and the rebuilding of the cemetery gate. The most significant conservation work was carried out in the Khalifa Palace, consisting of a series of consecutive phases that were car-

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ried out by Óvilo between 1913 and 1916. Later, in 1942, further work was carried out on the Palace by the architect Francisco Hernanz and, between 1948 and 1954,

by Juan Arrate.

In Larache, this continued with the adaptation of the Castle of the Storks as the military headquarters, the remodelling and expansion of the San Antonio Castle and its later restoration as a civil hospital, while in Ksar el-Kebir the Shrine of Sidi Ali Bu Galeb was restored in the 1920s.

A further display of interest in historical heritage can be seen in the preliminary report the architect Manuel Latorre Pastor requested from Leopoldo Torres Balbás when attempts were made to modify the gate of Tangier in the walls in Tétouan.

The Neo-Arab movement In the first decade of the Protectorate, the Neo-Arab style was promoted for educational purposes and through respect for Moroccan architectural tradition, and also as an expression of a taste for Andalusi and Neo-Arab forms that had permeated through Spain. The Spanish pavilions complied with this movement, for instance the pavilions of Ortiz de Villajos at the International Exhibition of Paris in 1878, of Modesto Cendoya at the Universal Exhibition of Brussels in 1910, and of Pascual Bravo at the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris in 1925. Interest in Andalusi art and Islamic architecture also prompted the release of a series of publications distributed in Spain, for instance the 1907 publication by H. Saladín on Muslim architecture. These publications were accompanied, in the Spanish Protectorate, by the work carried out in 1915 by Juan Beigbeder and Antonio Got on Tétouan architecture.

Neo-Arab components were used both decoratively and as a hallmark applied to conventional spatial and structural arrangements, forming part of a more elaborate general programme. They mark an imprint that would transversally run through, with varying degrees of intensity, almost all architecture produced between 1913 and 1956. The identification of Neo-Arab elements with Khalifan Morocco was reinforced in the different pavilions representing the Protectorate at the Exhibitions held in 1916 in Ceuta and Melilla, and the Ibero-American Exhibition of Seville in 1929, whose pavilion was promoted by the municipal architect of Tétouan, José Gutiérrez Lescura, with the artistic collaboration of Mariano Bertuchi, in which both combined religious, commercial and palatial art.

From 1917, Tétouan became the structural focus of Neo-Arab forms applied as a reference point in the railway station, indigenous dispensary and Spanish schools.

The station, converted into the Art Museum, remains a reference in the city’s urban

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landscape. It was built by the engineer Julio Rodríguez Roda, who reinterpreted a series of components from local tradition for his repertoire: the minaret, the gate, the horseshoe and mixtilinear arch, the green tiles. The minaret became a significant landmark on the corners of the raised central section and the lower sections at the side. The gates defined the main routes, while the arches formalised the platforms and the colour scheme of the walls of tiles served as a counterpoint to the white of the ensemble of wall faces. These criteria, using local components in architectural composition, would become a reference point from that time on.

In the 1920s, architects began combining Neo-Arab components with elements of Art Deco, which, as a combined decorative system, focused on the simplification and geometrization of details. The main works in this period in Tétouan were undertaken by the architects José Gutiérrez Lescura and Carlos Óvilo.

Gutiérrez Lescura, a municipal architect and the first director of the School of Arts, worked with specialists from the aforementioned school in his main works; for instance, the Spanish Theatre of Tétouan, built in 1923, in which a characteristic theme of his work is apparent, namely the adjoining open observation point with horseshoe and mixtilinear arches. The theatre, with a capacity for 2,200 people, included a decorative scheme incorporating decorations by Mariano Bertuchi in the proscenium arch.

Another noteworthy collaboration between Lescura and Bertuchi came in 1929 when they worked on the Plaza de España in Tétouan, which no longer exists today.

The restoration work, carried out after Leopoldo Torres Balbás’s critique of the existing square in 1923, included the creation of gardens with a central plaza, in which there was also a shrine finished in green tiles.

The Industrial School of Indigenous Arts was built by Carlos Óvilo in 1925 and had a big impact at the time because of its interior decoration featuring coffers and tiles made by teachers and students from the very same school. The building, with symmetrical floors and a central cornered section finished with several side panels, highlights the contrast between the whitewashed parameters and pointed horseshoe arches and finishes with green ceramic eaves. Other significant works in the Neo-Arab architecture of Tétouan include the Post Office and Telegraph Building (1927), by Alejandro Ferrant, the State Bank of Morocco (1927), by José Larrucea, the Monumental Cinema (1929), by Federico Tárrega, and the building for Salomón Benalal (1932) by Carlos Óvilo.

In Larache during the 1920s, the architect Andrés Galmés built a series of more restrained Neo-Arab-style works, in the process opening up a transitional phase with Rationalist architecture. In the Larache Central Market (1924-1928), Galmés oc-

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cupied a 60 x 60 m block. In the central pavilion, he positioned fruit and vegetable stands, while in an open perimeter street the fish stalls were at the front and the meat and poultry stalls were at the sides. His conception of the central pavilion was flanked by a series of towers finished with green tile coverings. Arab-style features were incorporated into the galleries of arches over pillars and the powerful green tile eaves, in contrast to the whitewashed wall face (see illustration 1).

Illustration 1. Larache Central Market.

Source: Photograph by José Morón.

In the Post Office and Telegraph Building of Larache (1928), Andrés Galmés gave prominence to the chamfered corner with a turret finished with open walls between stylised pilasters. In the side sections, adjoining balconies were dispersed over wooden corbels, alternating different types of hollow lintelled arches to compose a building that combined Neo-Arab features with modern components. This combination saw the proliferation of the villas in the Mohammed V street, where a series of independent pieces were proposed to assemble pure structures. The

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Arab-rooted components —eaves, framed walls, arches and pillars— nowadays appear subordinate in the ensemble.

The most salient works in Ksar el-Kebir are Carlos Óvilo’s Post Office and Telegraph Building (1924), the Alfonso XIII Schools (1926), by José Larrucea, and the Local Intervention and Board of Municipal Services (1926), also by José Larrucea.

In Chefchaouen the architect Manuel Latorre built the Hispano-Arab Schools through a synthesis of simple, pure structures in white, typical of the local architecture with handcrafted components.

The architecture of eclecticism Occurring at the same time as the production of Neo-Arab architecture, eclectic architecture was developed, using history in a fragmented way as a rich and varied repertoire of materials and as a breakaway from the orthodoxy of nineteenth-century academic tradition.

This architecture was developed by a broad range of actors: the friar architects from the Franciscan order, the military engineers that built the barracks and the architects operating in the urban expansion of Tétouan and Larache, where historicist eclecticism occurred in parallel with Neo-Arab architecture. While formal hybrids were produced, the types of buildings, supporting structures, spatial organization and building techniques remained unchanged.

A precursor to historicist eclecticism was the Franciscan order, which established itself in the Moroccan coastal cities that were linked to international trade. In 1856, in Priego (Córdoba) the Missions School was created to prepare friars for religious service in other countries. Between 1880 and 1896, José Lerchundi took charge of organising the structure of Franciscan missions in Morocco. Tangier was the centre of the expansion and the city with the highest the concentration of the most representative churches: Purísima Concepción (1880) by Manuel Aníbal Álvarez and San Juan (1882), by Antonio Alcayne. Furthermore, the buildings of the Spanish Hospital (1886) and the Catholic Schools (1833-1886) were both constructed by Antonio Alcayne, the first friar architect. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Francisco Serra built the Espíritu Santo Convent (1904) and the House-Mission and Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Church (1907) and Francisco Ferreras the Alfonso XIII Schools (1913).

In Tétouan, in the Feddán, the Abdellah el-Hach Zawaya was restored as a catholic church (1860), and next to it the Church of the Inmaculada Concepción (1866-1871).

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Churches were also built in Larache, Rabat, Casablanca, Safi and Essaouira.

During the Protectorate period, the Church, under the initiative of friar Francisco Serra, worked in coordination with the political and military authorities to build churches in Ksar el-Kebir, Nador, Asilah, Chefchaouen, and Villa Alhucemas. Military engineers also participated in this work, building the Perpetuo Socorro Church (1930) in the Military Hospital in Tétouan. Because of its location in Tétouan, the capital of the Spanish Protectorate, specifically in the Muley el Mehdi Plaza, at the heart of the urban expansion, the most salient church is the Nuestra Señora de las Victorias, built in the middle of the 1920s by Carlos Óvilo, who used Mudejar-style architecture to reference the spatial model of the Santa María la Blanca Synagogue in Toledo. It had three naves through horseshoe arches on polygonal pillars and a transept with cimborio. On the outside it has a bell tower on the corner with Mohammed V Avenue, the main road connection in the urban expansion, and lattice walls and coating simulating masonry.

The architecture built by military engineers is characterised by the exporting of models, disseminated by the School of Engineers of Guadalajara, where, giving priority to functionality, diverse pre-established solutions of historicist eclecticism were formulated. This criterion was used to build different facilities in Tétouan, using brickwork and masonry. Noteworthy constructions include the Military Hospital (1915) the R’kaina Barracks (1916), by Emilio Navasqües, and Martín de la Escalera’s expansion of the Military Casino (1924).

Historicist eclecticism also inspired the construction of a large number of privately promoted buildings for rented housing on the outskirts of Tétouan, with Carlos Óvilo the architect par excellence. Between 1914 and 1932, he designed a series of buildings for the Hebrew bourgeois using a construction system out of load-bearing walls and wrought beams. He also devised a varied colour scheme using tiles, renderings, stuccos and sgraffitos, constructing the building for Francisco Picayo Rivera (1914), which was later the headquarters of the Post Office, Public Works and the Spanish Cultural Centre, and recently converted into the headquarters of the Cervantes Institute. Other constructions include the Cohen and Sananes Building (1915), the Benatar Building and the Picayo Building (1919).

After 1921 his rented housing projects multiplied, and between 1927 and 1932 his work took on more monumental characteristics —boosted by economic prosperity in the city— developed in the area around the Muley el Mehdi plaza. In this final stage of his work in Tétouan, he worked on variations to façades by producing large observation points, where the decorative system is concentrated in a composition

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where the ground floor is a dressed plinth, acting as a base for a vertical arrangement of giant pilasters in what was a code of baroque expression.

In Tangier, it is also worth highlighting the Cervantes Theatre (1911-1913), by Diego Jiménez. It was built from reinforced concrete, using resources of modernist expression in the form of artwork through painting, sculpture and handcrafted components of ceramics, with forging and man-made stone.

The first rationalism movement With the arrival of four architects, trained at the School of Architecture of Madrid between 1921 and 1924, a new wave of architecture appeared in Morocco under the Protectorate. The transfer of rationalism was linked to the future of each architect. In 1925, José Larrucea worked in the eastern region before arriving in Larache in 1927 to replace Andrés Galmés as head of Civil Constructions in the Lucus region. In 1929 Manuel Latorre was assigned to Chefchaouen, despite residing in Tétouan, and Francisco Hernanz was assigned as head of Civil Constructions in the eastern region. In 1934, José Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo arrived in Tétouan.

These architects faced a socio-cultural void since the historical principles of Rationalist expression from the modern architecture movement put forward socio-economic proposals that were hard to implement in both Spain and Morocco. This meant they approached their work more from a socio-aesthetic avant-garde perspective than a conceptual one, and made use of the Rationalist movement driven by gatepac and the group from Madrid to transfer their achievements to the sphere of the Protectorate.

The change contributed to both the depletion of the proposals of eclecticism and the modification, in 1930, of official construction regulations in the area, which recommended maximum architectural simplicity on façades in order to be in keeping with the pre-existing urban landscape and the use of white on outer walls to visually harmonise towns and cities. The new Rationalist architecture had to supress the horseshoe arches, cornices, pediments and mouldings as decorative and ornamental components and cease to use the colour schemes provided by tiles and façade coatings. The Rationalist repertoire comprised a horizontal window with pillars halfway down, a canopy, bearings and intersections between cubic and cylindrical structures to give the impression of dynamism, and a breakaway from closed spaces to transcend exterior spaces.

In the region of Lucus, José Larrucea sought to synthesize Rationalist expression and components of Mediterranean and local tradition. He built a series of

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schools in the area that were promoted to develop schooling: in Ksar el-Kebir, the Sidi Bu Haned Hispano-Arab School (1934) and the Sidi Ali Bugaleb School; en Arcila, the Juan Nieto School Group (1929), the Marzok and Madraza Coránica Sidi Ali School. Additionally, different schools were promoted in rural areas.

In Larache, he undertook the ordination for the northeast front of the Plaza de España (1930), a hugely important project for the city as it intervened in the convergence of the medina and the urban expansion. It required the demolition of two bastions of the wall. Respecting the access gate to the medina, he designed a gallery of semi-circular arches to define a central elliptical portico flanked by two housing blocks.

He also designed different public buildings that combined Rationalist language with arches, latticed walls and other local components in the projects of the Board of Public Works and Mines —the present-day town council— (1928), the Pavilion of Colonization and Tourism (1929), the Nuestra Señora del Pilar Church (1931) and the Lal-la-Mennana School (1935).

In Tétouan, José Larrucea replaced Carlos Óvilo and, between 1932 and 1936, constructed public buildings, housing and villas. In this phase, the following corner buildings stood out: the High Court and Tribunals (1932), the Benarroch and Bentata Building (1935) and the Isaac Benarroch Building (1936).

Francisco Hernanz designed the school programme in the eastern region, building the Segangan schools (1930), the Unitary School of Targuist (1930), the Hispano-Arab School of Frajana (1934), the Hispano-Arab schools of Dar Kebdani (1934) and the School of Eimzouren (1934). For this programme he employed architectural designs with a visual impact, akin to the Rationalist avant-garde, using intersecting cubic and cylindrical structures, despite the small scale and modern economic resources available.

In Larache between 1936 and 1943, he carried out different projects for public administrations, including most notably the Cine Ideal cinema and the Casa del Flecha —currently the Spanish Consulate— one of the most important buildings in the first rationalism movement in Morocco. He emphasized the entrance to the consulate, situating it at the corner of the floor and applying a slender polygonal tower finished with a low curved eave. The tower enabled two side sections to be articulated, thus emphasizing the horizontal nature of the adjoining windows on the ground floor. The dynamic interplay and the contrast established between the parts accentuate the height of the tower. In Tétouan, he carried out a range of public buildings, for instance the Archaeological Museum (1940) and the District Office

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of Education and Culture (1940), where he devised a complex programme consisting of an ensemble of open blocks between gardens.

Manuel Latorre began working in Chefchaouen in 1929. From 1930 to 1938 he worked intensively in Tétouan, where he built the standout Isaac Israel Building (1931) and the General Library and Archive (1933). Perhaps the Casa Latorre (1935) was his best example of Rationalist expression as it included his own home, designed as a free-standing structure inside the plot with a structure that stood apart from the façades, according to the direction it faced and exposure to the dominant winds. Within the structure, he included projections and recesses to obtain a dynamic effect, which was even more prominent on the main façade.

Between 1938 and 1943, Latorre worked in the eastern region, where the Rationalist movement co-existed with the Neo-Arab movement. His most significant work was the Nador Yacht Club (1940), a small-scale building in which he re-used the Rationalist lexicon.

José Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo arrived in Tétouan in 1934 as the head of Municipal Services. His most notable works include the public buildings and social housing with a Rationalist lexicon open to European references at the time and brimming with volumetric intersections, curved forms and the predominance of horizontality. Examples include the Colegio del Pilar (1935), Casas Bloques (19391942) and the General Library and Archive of Tétouan (1943). In terms of private projects, he also built numerous housing blocks, the most representative being the Chalé Benet (1937) and the Chalé Benazaquén (1940). In the field of social housing he undertook various developments, for instance in the neighbourhood of the Generalísimo (1936-1939), located in the Málaga neighbourhood on the edge of the city. It comprised a two-floor block, five groups of single-family terraced houses and public spaces that organised the ensemble. The houses, with constructed surfaces ranging between 50 and 60 m2, were designed with a variety of layouts, open kitchens and small bathrooms located in the courtyards.

In Tangier, it is worth highlighting the Graduate Schools-Spanish School (1930)

by Rafael Bergamín and Luis Blanco, which featured a set of pavilions in open blocks, conceived as pure white structures and organised in a broad landscaped space.

As a unique movement, the work of Emilio Blanco, a military inventor and delegate for Indigenous Affairs, is also noteworthy and was carried out in the Rif region in an attempt to establish a Rif style through a series of aesthetic components from imported civilizations and cultures and hybridised with Art Deco. By using an asymmetrical composition of pure structures, he used chromatic effects in contrast to the

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style employed in the mosques of Eimzouren, Amarden Snada and Axir and the offices of Arba de Taurit, his main works.

The architecture of nationalism The formal mimetic codes, both easily comprehended and idealistic, are the root of the ability to represent, in architectural terms, the ideology of the super structure, which began to appear in the 1940s in Spain. There was a need for architectural images that connoted its political ideology and were interwoven with the imperialist nationalism the Catholic Kings had upheld during the Great Spanish empire.

At this early stage, guidelines were required to reorientate national reconstruction, and it was the epic imperial architecture with Herreran nuances, deriving from the architect Juan de Herrera, who was decisively involved in the work on the El Escorial Monastery, which would become a symbol of the formalization of a constructed image, where the epic, power, tradition, realism and order were encompassed within a unique formal process.

Different movements appeared within nationalism, inspired by Neo-classicism in compositional terms and executed using a sombre and hierarchical ornamental language, taking on its most precise form in Spanish Neo-Herrerismo, which resulted in stereotyped and banal designs. The proposed designs for individual housing consisted of a formal embracing of anonymous Mediterranean architecture, reproducing an ambiguous rationalism of uses and functions which, with structural solutions, was related to a popular formal search, thus giving rise to a new nationalist movement initiated by second-generation architects.

Once the initial obstacles of reconstruction had been overcome, a small number of architects began to review the poetics of European rationalism prevailing at that time, backed by publications from the School of Architects in Madrid and others published on an isolated basis in Barcelona. The meeting with European culture shaped the second movement of Spanish rationalism in the 1950s.

These currents of post-war nationalism were clearly expressed in Morocco under the Spanish Protectorate, where the architect Pedro Muguruza was entrusted with the task of transferring new architectural models. The style was imposed by virtue of the ordinances of 1944 and the action plans for different cities. These new architectural guidelines promoted the formalist mimicry of new codes. As a result, pediments, pinnacles, cornices, tiled roofs and whitewashed wall faces in architecture took on a monumental dimension in public buildings, reinforced by the proliferation of covered arcades. Social housing neighbourhoods were built, where self-suf-

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ficiency and the hierarchical organization of public services took precedence. Between 1943 and 1951 in Tétouan, the architect Juan Arrate, appointed head of the Architecture Service, developed a series of public buildings that resoundingly emphasized the new and hybridised Neo-Herreran codes with Neo-baroque elements.

His most noteworthy projects included the Office of Economy and Public Works (1945), the Varela Pavilions (1948) and the Post Office and Telegraphs (1947-1949).

Casto Fernández Shaw arrived in Tétouan at a time when projects to transform the city were being promoted. His first project was the Tétouan Beautification Plan (1940-1946), in which he proposed the construction of a large building in the city centre, the construction of a fish market and souk and cheap housing. As part of this construction plan, he built the Central Market and the La Equitativa Building, two hugely important buildings in the city.

In the Tétouan Central Market (1941), designed in collaboration with José Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo, the architecture boasted reinforced concrete with open masonry walls, with domes and towers that aimed to recall the eastern origins of the architecture and that of the classic Spanish towers. With a hexagonal floor, in three tiers, inside it opened out onto a courtyard with a covered dome and in the perimeter it had a system of skylights. In order to integrate the building into the same context, it had an arch and lattice as Arab motifs. The La Equitativa Building (1945), constructed after five proposals had been considered for the integration of the building in the block, was adapted to cater for modern needs by constructing a housing block that was integrated into the environment of an Islamic city through the construction of a watchtower topped with a dome and a series of Islamic-rooted details (see illustration 2).

The work developed in Tétouan by Alfonso de Sierra, who was the last municipal architect in the city, is notable for its commitment to social housing expressed in his analyses of housing in the medina and working-class neighbourhoods. His proposals for the modernization of Moroccan housing were considered in various projects, for instance in the Mulay Hasan neighbourhood (1953), where he built four hundred houses of different types, combining blocks with low buildings. Respecting the living habits of the Tétouan people, he explored solutions for balanced modernization using new technological resources.

Delfín Rivas, the last head architect from the Architecture Service, also strove to dignify neighbourhoods located around the area of urban expansion. One of his most noteworthy projects was the Ben Karrich Anti-tuberculosis Sanatorium (1939), located between Tétouan and Chefchaouen, in which he used architectural styles

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reminiscent of the first rationalism movement, characterised by simplicity and the adaptation to the required programme, with galleries opening out onto the garden around the building.

Illustration 2. La Equitativa Building.

Source: Photograph by José Morón.

The main architectural projects in Larache and the Lucus region were ascribed to Enrique Blanch, who arrived in Larache in 1943 and held architecture posts in the Board of Municipal Services and the Rural Boards of the Region of Lucus. His work is characterised by its popular formal expression, brimming with Neo-Herreran touches, which he aimed to insert into the geographical context, the best example of this approach being the Fish Market building (1948).

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In Ksar el-Kebir, the most representative work is the Grain Market (1953), by Fernando Chueca Goitia.

In the eastern region, the most salient works of post-war nationalism correspond to the activity of the military engineers, who worked on different barracks in the Lucus area. In Tangier, the Spanish Hospital (1950), designed by José Ochoa in a Rationalist style, was restored in a project carried out by the team of Juan Arrate, who adopted a Neo-baroque style. A similar style was followed for the General Consulate of Spain (1950), in which Luis Martínez Feduchi constructed a building with a Neo-classical composition imbued with details from the Neo-baroque lexicon.

The second rationalism movement Within the context of economic growth in Spain in the 1950s, a small number of second-generation architects, aware of the need to introduce modern consciousness, together with other cultural minorities from the world of painting, sculpture, poetry and literature, searched for a connection with the avant-garde currents of European thought. The architects that started and promoted the second rationalism movement also aimed to respond to migratory phenomena that considered town planning as a solution to planning problems, in spite of the fact that European Rationalist models were not readily adaptable to the national reality.

The second rationalism movement also appeared in Morocco, where technical renovation gradually emerged in the 1940s with the more widespread use of reinforced concrete. Road and military engineers served as benchmarks in this renewal process, particularly Julio Castro and Eduardo Torroja. The most representative architect in the second rationalism movement was José María Bustinduy, the municipal architect in Tétouan from 1949 to 1955. His architectural output was characterised by its precision, an inclination towards modernity and a prevailing stylistic starkness that influenced his Rationalist vocabulary. His most noteworthy private housing projects include Chalé Benatar (1950), the Sananes Building (1950), the al-Jazaer Building (1950) and the Chalé Poyal (1952). His most important public works included the Bus Station (1955), the Tétouan Town Hall (1948), the housing for the Spanish Air Force (1952-1953) and the García Valiño (1955) social housing.

In Larache, Hermenegildo Bracons, the municipal architect from 1951 to 1957, worked on architectural renovation projects, the most noteworthy example being the Llodra Cinema (1956), which was complemented with a housing block in the front. In the field of social housing he completed a series of initiatives that culminated in a housing project for Muslim fishermen (1955).

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In the eastern region, in the small mining town of Segangan, the Spanish Mining Company of Rif promoted housing and innovative-style buildings, characterised by their coherent structures and functional designs. Noteworthy works include the group of one hundred houses of Sidi Bu Sbar (1956) and the mosque (1956), by Claudio Verdugo, as well as the churches of Setólar (1957) and Uixan (1957), by Eduardo Caballero Monrós.

In Tangier, various Spanish architects plied their trade, producing notable Rationalist buildings such as the one in Holanda Street (1950-1951), by Francisco de Asís Viladevall, Martínez Chumillas’s Goicoechea Building (1950) and the cathedral of Nuestra Señora de Lourdes (1950-1961), by Martínez Feduchi.

The acknowledgement of heritage The combined architectural, historical, economic, symbolic and social value of this architecture, as well as its use and vale as a teaching resource, reveals its significance from a heritage standpoint. This architecture gained greater recognition in 1990 with the launch of the International Cooperation Programme by the Regional Government of Andalusia, which signed a technical and financial collaboration protocol —still in force— with the Tétouan City Council to promote the recovery of heritage, social, architectural and urban assets in the medina and area of urban expansion.

The programme includes the restoration of architecture and public spaces, the provision of facilities and the improvement of infrastructures. Coordinated historical, architectural and urban development actions, in the form of studies, research, records, cataloguing and promotional activities, are being performed to lay the foundations of knowledge and the circulation of universal values in the fields indicated.

The programme is completed with training activities to improve technical skills and methods for architectural and urban development projects via courses, seminars and meetings.

In Tétouan, the experience was transferred to the cities of Chefchaouen, Larache, Ksar el-Kebir between 1994 and 2004, and is still in place today. The collaboration protocols signed with the city councils articulate a system for the coordination, monitoring, control, planning, evaluation and dissemination of actions. Different coordinating architects have been assigned for the development of these actions, such as Ramón de Torres (Tétouan), Carlos Sánchez (Chefchaouen), Francisco Torres (Larache) and Guillermo Duclós (Ksar el-Kebir), who work with local technical teams and different social collectives. The actions carried out and under way in the

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medinas and urban expansions help to improve the living conditions for the inhabitants of these areas, whilst also preserving their populations by integrating them into their environment and conserving the cultural identity of their historical and cultural heritage.

The acknowledgement of heritage, which has acted as a catalyst in this process, has been strengthened with the international recognition of the initiatives. In 1997, the Medina of Tétouan was declared a World Heritage Site by unesco, coinciding with significant progress in restoration work under the programme. In 2014, the United Nations’ Tenth International Award for Best Practices was held in Dubai and acknowledged the Cooperation Programme developed in Tétouan in the “Best” category.

BIBLIOGRAPHY BRAVO NIETO, Antonio (2000). Arquitectura y urbanismo en el norte de Marruecos. Seville: Department of Public Works and Transportation, Regional Government of Andalusia.

DUCLÓS BAUTISTA, Guillermo and CAMPOS JARA, Pedro (2001). Larache.

Seville: Department of Public Works and Transportation, Regional Government of Andalusia.

MALO DE MOLINA, Julio and DOMÍNGUEZ, Fernando (1994). Guía de arquitectura del ensanche de Tetuán. Seville: Department of Public Works and Transportation, Regional Government of Andalusia.

VV. AA. (2001). Guía de arquitectura de la Medina de Tetuán. Seville: Department of Public Works and Transportation, Regional Government of Andalusia.

VV. AA. (2011). Recuperar la ciudad histórica. Tetuán. Xauen. Larache. Alcazarquivir.

Seville: Department of Development and Housing, Regional Government of Andalusia.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR Ramón de Torres López is an architect and coordinator of the International Cooperation Programme of the Regional Government of Andalusia in Tétouan (Morocco).

His most representative works in Almeria are the restorations of the house of the poet José Ángel Valente, the cathedral, the Alcazaba, the El Alquife lintel and the Casa del Cine. In Morocco, his most noteworthy projects include the restoration of housing, facilities and public spaces in the Medina and the urban expansion in Tétouan.

His most relevant publications include Arquitectura subterránea de Andalucía (Se-

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ville: Department of Public Works and Transportation, Regional Government of Andalusia 1989); “Spatial and Poetic Material in the Medina of Tétouan”, in the Guía de Arquitectura de la Medina de Tetuán (Seville: Department of Public Works and Transportation, Regional Government of Andalusia, 2001); and “The Alquife Lintel: Architecture and Heritage” in El cable inglés de Almería (Seville: Department of Public Works and Transportation, Regional Government of Andalusia, 2007).

ABSTRACT Architecture and town planning form the most emblematic expression of the remnants of Spain recognised in Morocco today, a testament to mutual permeation and shared history. For centuries there has been a two-way flow that has created cultural traces as an expression of the Andalusi-Maghrebi civilization, jointly participating with the Morisco substratum, and the subsequent Spanish interventionist presence in northern Morocco. Joint and permanent action in the inseparable architectural and urban concept offers the Andalusi medina and urban expansion as two urban models that convey the legacy of Spanish architecture and town planning in the north of Morocco, with representative examples of Andalusi houses, the Neo-Arab movement, the architecture of eclecticism, the first Rationalist movement, the architecture of nationalism and the second Rationalist movement. The acknowledgement of its heritage was advocated after 1990 with the Regional Government of Andalusia’s International Cooperation Programme to promote restoration actions on built heritage, complemented with development and training activities in different Moroccan cities.

KEYWORDS Spanish architecture, medina, urban expansion, Morocco.

TRANSLATION Neil Fawle.

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THE ALHAMBRA AND CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE Emilio Cachorro Fernández

Universal paradigm Corbusierian notes

O

ne of Théophile Gautier’s clearest memories of his route across the Iberian Peninsula, in the mid-18th century, was his trip through Granada to visit the Alhambra. Numerous pages of his Voyage en Espagne1 are dedicated to this and he describes with sensitive precision each one of its intricate nooks and crannies, particularly emphasising the amazing and exemplary water system: Les Arabes ont poussé au plus haut degré l’art de l’irrigation; leurs travaux hydrauliques attestent une civilization des plus avancées; ils subsistent encore aujourd’hui, et c’est à eux que Grenade doit d’être le paradis de l’Espagne, et de jouir d’un printemps éternel sous une température africaine. Un bras du Darro a été détourné par les Arabes et amené de plus de deux lieues sur la colline de l’Alhambra.2 A paragraph that was transcribed, decades later, by a young Le Corbusier who, still not yet fully formed, was searching out the best sources with which to cement his architectural ideology, with a wealth of experience already under his belt in1

Théophile Gautier (1843). Tra los montes. Voyage en Espagne. Paris: Magen.

2

Translation: “The Arabs have elevated irrigation to the highest form of art; their hydraulic works attest to a more advanced civilization; they still exist today, and it is for precisely these that Granada is Heaven in Spain, enjoying an eternal spring with African temperatures. A branch of the Darro was hijacked by the Arabs and brought more than two leagues to the Alhambra hill” (material collected in Christopher Schnoor [ed.] [2008].

La construction des villes: Le Corbusiers erstes städtebauliches traktat von 1910/11. Zúrich: gta, p. 420 [reference [LCdv 263] 34]).

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cluding his celebrated trip to the Orient in 1911. Something directly associated with a drawing he made of the Patio del Generalife [Court of the Generalife],3 dated 1915, with the footnote “Cour du Generalife à Grenade. Extract from Cordoue et Grenade, page 111”, to reflect the fact it was drawn up from one of the images illustrating the Cordoue & Grenade publication,4 consulted in the Saint Geneviève library in Paris, which provides an in-depth analysis of Andalusian architecture and, in particular, the Alhambra enclosure (see Illustrations 1 and 2). Work that the great modern master personally set eyes upon in the summer of 1930, thanks to the stopover he made in the Moorish city, accompanied by the painter Fernand Léger, his brother Albert, and his cousin, and then partner, Pierre Jeanneret. The route was similar to that suggested by Josep Lluís Sert, the first half dedicated to following the Mediterranean coast down to the Andalusian region,5 to where he would return a year later, together with his latter travelling companion, to cross to Algeria through Morocco, where he got to know the towns and villages of the M’Zab valley. Proof of the former also lies in the series of postcards of the monument he gathered,6 through which he demonstrated his great fondness for its general view as seen from the Albayzín neighbourhood (repeated in two versions, one of which is in double, colour format), outlined against the Sierra Nevada in the background, the Patio de los Arrayanes [Court of the Myrtles] (looking towards the south), and the entrance to the Galería de Retratos del Generalife [Generalife Portrait Gallery].

And Muslim architecture, in general, constantly inspired him, theoretically as much as in practical aspects. He himself recognised this, with regard to his supporting argument for the Ville Savoye in Poissy (1928-1931), where he definitively revealed the essence of his calling, breathing life into what were such fundamental ideas to him as the architectural promenade, combining space and time into a fourth dimension, something he explained by saying: L’architecture arabe nous donne un enseignement précieux. Elle s’apprécie à la marche, avec le pied; c’est en marchant, en se déplaçant 3

Fondation Le Corbusier, B2-20-348. Later included in Le Corbusier (1992). La construction des villes. Paris: L’Age d’Homme (edit of the unfinished manuscript he wrote between 1910 and 1911 during his stay in Germany, where he was undertaking architectonic and artistic urban development tasks).

4

Ch.-Eug. Schmidt (1906). Cordoue & Grenade [Colección Les Villes d’Art Célèbres]. Paris: H. Laurens, p. 111.

5

According to a sketch outlined in his notebook (card B8 p8-V and card B8 p9).

6

Fondation Le Corbusier, C1-20-39, L5-4-4, L5-4-5 and L5-4-7, respectively.

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que l’on voit se développer les ordonnances de l’architecture. C’est un principe contraire à la architecture baroque qui est conçue sur le papier, autour d’un point fixe théorique. Je préfère l’enseignement de l’architecture arabe.7 Illustration 1. Patio del Generalife [Generalife Court]. Le Corbusier: “Cour du Generalife à Grenade. Extract from Cordoue et Grenade, page 111” (1915).

Source: Fondation Le Corbusier, B2-20-348.

Illustration 2. Patio del Generalife [Generalife Court]. Original photograph redrawn by Le Corbusier (1915).

Source: Ch.-Eug. Schmidt (1906). Cordoue & Grenade. Paris: H. Laurens, p. 111.

7

Translation: “Arab architecture has much to teach us. It is appreciated while on the move, with one’s feet; it is while walking, moving from one place to another, that one sees how the arrangements of the architecture develop. This is a principle contrary to Baroque architecture which is conceived on paper, around a theoretical fixed point. I prefer the lesson of Arab architecture” (in Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret [1935]. Oeuvre complète, vol. 2: 1929-1934 [Ed.: Willy Boesiger]. Zurich: H. Girsberger, p. 24).

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Also, his review of Gautier’s text is considered a conceptual record of works like Ville Verte (1930), a city-park model for the residential sector of Ville Radieuse, for their contribution to the landscape of undeveloped areas and gardens. And, in a more specific order, for example, an additional photo, that also figures in Le Corbusier’s archives, of the so-called Patio de los Mirtos [Court of the Myrtles],8 this looking northwards, leads us to find correlations with some of his designs. In particular, through the unique tripartite structure of this space, with the pond at the bottom in the foreground, the palatial gallery in the mid-ground, and the Torre de Comares [Comares Tower] in the background, where he thought he had found the lyricism of human invention; a composition that, according to José Luis Daroca,9 corresponds to what he embodied in the roof of his Unité d’habitation in Marseilles (1947-1952), the site of the nursery, which he resolved in a similar way, with a sheet of water under an open portico visually finished off by a clean, massive, concrete elevator shaft (see Illustration 3).

Illustration 3. Le Corbusier. Unité d’Habitation, Marsella (1947-1952). Roof.

Source: M. Loetzsch, <https://flic.kr/p/32z2fq>.

8

Fondation Le Corbusier, L5-4-6.

9

See José Luis Daroca Bruño (2012). Influencias mediterráneas en las cubiertas de Le Corbusier: de la Acrópolis de Atenas a la Unidad de Habitación de Marsella [Doctoral thesis supervised by Víctor Pérez Escolano] [online].

Seville: University of Seville, <http://fondosdigitales.us.es/tesis/tesis/2207/influencias-mediterraneas-en-las-cubiertas-de-le-corbusier-de-la-acropolis-de-atenas-la-unidad-de-habitacion-de-marsella/#description>, pp. 297-298 and p. 417 [Consulted 31st January 2015].

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Emotionalism of Luis Barragán So, although there are many verifiable Islamic references in the work of the Swiss-French genius, some of which are closely linked to the Alhambra, much deeper is the imprint left by this on some of his colleagues, the epitome of which is, undoubtedly, Luis Barragán.10 The Mexican, whose surname is Moorish in origin,11 travelled to Europe after finishing his studies, from 1924 to 1925, and ended up in France, where he got to know the work of Ferdinand Bac and his Villa Les Colombières project in the vicinity of Menton, property of Émile and Caroline LadanBokairy; and in Spain, particularly in Granada, where although he was impressed by the beauty of the gardens in most European cities, he was especially captivated by those in the south, including the Generalife, which sparked his enormous interest in landscape.12 This was a stay that he would repeat in 1931, when he visited the previously mentioned work on the Costa Azul and got to know its creator personally; and between 1952 and 1953, when he travelled to Morocco, down as far as the northern Sahara, to tour the kasbahs. On his first trip, he acquired some recently published books, amongst which were two by Bac: Jardins enchantés. Un romancero [Enchanted gardens. A Ballad],13 a personal version of one of the stories from One thousand and one nights, of which he bought more than half a dozen copies (from a print run of less than a hundred) to give away on his return, demonstrating the enormous impact it had on him; and Les Colombières. Ses jardins et ses décors [Les Colombières. Its gardens and decorations],14 a monograph on Bac’s design for a mansion of the same name (1919-1925).

According to this French writer and expert, garden architecture, which he described as “Mediterranean”, contains within it the entire universe; and its art is

10

See, amongst other publications, Emilio Ambasz (1976). The architecture of Luis Barragán [Exhibition catalogue]. New York: MoMA; and vv. aa. (1995). Barragán. Complete work. Seville: Tanais; as well as the reflections his tour of Granada by Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas (1991). “Luis Barragán visita la Alhambra”, AQ Arquitectura Andalucía Oriental, No. 7. Granada: Official School of Architects of Eastern Andalusia, pp. 142-157.

11

See Antonio Riggen (ed.) (2000). Luis Barragán. Escritos y conversaciones. Madrid: El Croquis, p. 69.

12

Ibid, p. 54, such as data specifically mentioned in the curriculum he signed for the presentation of the city of Lomas Verdes project (1968), in collaboration with Juan Sordo Madaleno.

13

Ferdinand Bac (1925). Jardins enchantés. Un romancero. Paris: Louis Conard [Calmann-Levy Prize from the French Academy].

14

Ferdinand Bac (1925). Les Colombières. Ses jardins et ses décors. Paris: Louis Conard.

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where we discover the greatest serenity the work of man is capable of generating.15 An idea of such extreme importance in the work of Barragán that he incorporated it into his brief but eloquent acceptance speech for the Pritzker Prize in 1980, in a specifically dedicated epigraph, in which he alluded to the Pedregal de San Ángel in Mexico City (1945-1952) and its relationship to the red fortress:16 Taking a walk between the cracks in the lava, and protected by the shade of imposing walls of living rock, I suddenly discovered (oh, what a charming surprise!), the small, secret green valleys, the ones the farmers called “joyitas”, little gems, surrounded and limited by the most whimsical, beautiful and fantastical stone formations carved from the molten rock by the powerful caress of a prehistoric gale. So unexpected was the discovery of those valleys that it produced in me a sensation similar to that I had when, walking through a dark, narrow tunnel in the Alhambra, I came upon, serene, silent and alone, the Court of the Myrtles in that ancient palace. Somehow I had the feeling that what it contained was exactly that which should be in a well-managed garden: nothing less than the entire universe. This memorable epiphany has never left me […].17 An experience that forged his firm conviction that it is possible to construct private-feeling gardens in residential complexes, setting them out like in the Generalife, using common areas based around groups of spaces where delightful corners abound.18 But, more than anything, it forged a strong belief in the so-called emotional architecture, which would have so much influence on him during his career. Its manifesto was formulated, to coincide with the inauguration of the “El Eco” exper15

See Antonio Riggen (ed.) (2000). Luis Barragán. Escritos y conversaciones. Op. Cit. pp. 40 and 59.

16

Planning work that he abruptly abandoned, where he was a member of the development company and coowner of the land.

17

Idem, p. 60. An experience he remembered fairly frequently according to that which can also be seen in the narrative part of Idem, p. 115: “To visit the Court of the Myrtles in the Alhambra, one walks through a tiny tunnel (I could not even stand straight), and, at a given moment, independent of the aroma of myrtles that wafted through tunnel, my vision filled with the wonderful space of the porches strongly contrasting in this courtyard with the blind walls and the sound of the water. I have never since forgotten this emotion”.

18

Idem, p. 38 (from “Gardens for environment. Jardines de El Pedregal”, speech given in California in 1951).

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imental museum in Mexico City (1953), by its creator, his friend and compatriot Mathias Goeritz,19 who lived in Granada from 1945 to 1948 in a house close to the Torres Bermejas, balancing his work a German teacher with his artistic production, in which the monumental environment was very much present.20 The aim was to move away from extreme rationalism in favour of spiritual sublimation, elevating architecture to an art from, in line with the contemporary and revised proposals of Le Corbusier. Barragán thought that the people who best understood functionalism were architects like the Austrian Frederick Kiesler, for its machine-like quality, being used by man but also for developing the spirit as part of an enjoyable life.21 Thus, he pursued the cause of emotion, using enclosed spaces to provoke continuous surprises and mysteries, constant discoveries, as in the courtyards of the Alhambra;22 which is what he achieved with a landscape architecture “made with walls and ramparts and a series of spaces where you pass through gate to another, from water features to a courtyard where there is yet water. Have you not visited the Generalife in Granada? I can still recall the marvellous aroma of the myrtles. All this is part of life’s pleasure. It is not that I feel my mission is to seek out pleasure, but I do believe it may be to project beauty, and that beauty gives rise to pleasure”.23 In his opinion, the vast English and French parks were very stately, but these could not compare with the spell cast by others, in spite of their lesser pomp. He did not consider Versailles as welcoming as the Generalife or Persian Gardens, because it was conceived for the entertainment of the court, a place to hold events; he considered the designs of André Le Nôtre exceptional but, due to their theatrical function, he felt that they had lost their meaning over time, that the contemplative factor prevailed over the liveable dimension. Even those pertaining to the great Italian villas were very scenic, with a “cardinal-like” quality.24 And what to say of the open gardens that cover the city of Washington, dead and insipid, that made him turn back his gaze lovingly to the green spaces of the Alhambra and, in general, towards 19

Idem, pp. 197-200.

20

For further information see, for example, vv. aa. (2014). El retorno de la serpiente y la invención de la arquitectura emocional [Exhibition catalogue]. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

21

See Antonio Riggen (ed.) (2000). Luis Barragán. Escritos y conversaciones. Op. Cit., p. 78.

22

Ibid, p. 134 (from “La buena arquitectura es bella. Entrevista”, conducted by Marie-Pierre Toll, 1981).

23

Idem, p. 111 (in a conversation with Elena Poniatowska, 1976).

24

Idem, p. 113.

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all eastern gardens, for which he employed the Anglo-Saxon term home, thereby alluding to its welcoming spirit, similar to a true home.25 In fact, he perceived Arabic gardens to be magical, intimate and personal places, of pure seclusion; their [hidden] corners seemed perfect for reflection while at the same time providing defence and shelter, and the diffuse limits stimulated the imagination. Barragán asked, as have so many others: what lies behind the trellis? Where will the path take me? Our interest is further stimulated when we see how the crowns of the trees project over a wall. We should be wary of open spaces that are discovered at first sight, and try to regain the privacy and, consequently, the peace and quiet absent in modern life.

A quiet atmosphere that is not only compatible with, but which emphasises the appearance of melodic sounds. In this sense, he also believed that architecture has an important musical component,26 in addition to a spatial one, activated by elements like water, able to envelop us with the help of screening walls that isolate us against the aggressive or hostile street. Its flow is a whisper of rest and recreation, as he appreciated through the Alhambra’s countless fountains and channels, the source of some of the strongest impressions he took back from his trips and the germ of many of his projects,27 including most notably the open spaces of El Bebedero and El Campanario in the residential zone of Las Arboledas (1959-1962), the Fuente de los Amantes (1966) and the Cuadra San Cristóbal (1966-1968), next to Casa Ergström, a house in the Los Clubes residential area (see Illustration 4). All these examples are located in Atizapán de Zaragoza, Mexico City, and were developed with an equestrian bent, for riders and horses, as rest areas and drinking troughs, employing all kinds of hydraulic possibilities: springs, streams, aqueducts, channels, grooves, cascades, and fountains, whose austere combination of vegetation, walls, colour, texture and light, in refined neoplastic language, shapes a sensual and stirring oasis.

This was a concept he was able to transmit even to such prestigious colleagues as Louis I. Kahn, as can be seen, for example, in his design for the square of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California (1959-1965), where Barragán acted in an advisory capacity (see Illustration 5). Indeed, it was the American who underlined the atemporal character of this work, expressly mentioning his housestudy in Tacubaya, Mexico City (1947-1948); a feature that can be attributed to his newly professed admiration for the Alhambra group, as well as popular con25

Idem, pp. 15-16 (from “Apuntes de Nueva York. Ideas sobre jardines”, transcription of a text he wrote in 1931).

26

Idem, p. 124.

27

Idem, p. 131 (in conversation with Jorge Salvat in 1981).

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structions. In his opinion, the Arab palaces may be six hundred years old, but their architecture is timeless, you cannot label it and it does not confine the visitor to the present,28 but rather catapults you to the past and the future, to miraculously experience the three times concurrently.

Illustration 4. Luis Barragán. Fuente de los Amantes [Lovers’ Fountain], Los Clubes, Atizapán de Zaragoza (1966).

Source: E. Palma, <https://flic.kr/p/6rMFn7>.

Illustration 5. Louis I. Kahn. Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California (1959-1965).

Source: Salk Institute for Biological Studies, <www.salk.edu>.

28

Idem, p. 110.

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Guarantee of continued devotion Later generations were strongly influenced for much the same reasons. Without leaving Latin America, it is enough to mention Rogelio Salmona from among his fellow Mexicans, who also toured Andalusia and arrived in the Maghreb in 1953, in a break from his Parisian stay as one of Le Corbusier’s collaborators, and who was captivated by the Islamic constructions. His pilgrimage through the Granada region, while he was still in a formative stage, would mark his professional future, to the point of his maintaining the fact that the Alhambra confirms that the real reason behind architecture is enjoyment, by showing a predilection for traditional materials, particularly brick, and water as assiduous project variables, in addition to the courtyards, which he did not hesitate to affirm are “a tympanum of the place [an aljibe29 from Heaven, as María Zambrano would say]”.30 In this way, he achieved perfect harmony between the climate and local building systems, as evidenced by his Casa de los Huéspedes de Colombia in Cartagena de Indias (1980-1982), designed together with Germán Tellez, and reminiscent of both the Mayan city of Uxmal and Sabika hill. It was conceived as a plan for the original garden, and its exuberant vegetation and freshness, achieved through aquatic culverts and water features, with or without movement, both in the exterior and interior, transport us to the Arabic gardens of southern Spain.31 A trait also testified to by his details, like the parapets with flashings on the postgraduate building of the Human Sciences Faculty of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota (1995-2000), which invoke the Escalera del Agua del Generalife [Generalife’s Water Stairway], in an emphatically tactile unfurling. This latter building and other works in that country’s capital city, like the Archivo General de la Nación [General Archive of the Nation] (1988-1994) add a repertoire of forms that reveals close ties to the Palacio de Carlos V, inasmuch as they are structured around unambiguous circular voids (see Illustration 6), alluding yet further to the memories contained in this documentary deposit due to its historical content.

29

[tn: Originating from Arabic and describing a kind of water deposit or tank].

30

vv. aa. (2006). Rogelio Salmona: espacios abiertos/espacios colectivos. Bogota: Colombian Society of Architects, p. 36.

31

See Ibid, p. 46.

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Illustration 6. Rogelio Salmona. Postgraduate building of the Human Sciences Faculty of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota (1995-2000).

Source: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, <www.bogota.unal.edu.co>.

Returning to the old continent, Álvaro Siza is another who was left in awe by his first trip to Granada during the 1940s accompanied by his parents. He describes the city as “mythical”, and it contributed to his finally deciding to study architecture. As he himself wrote: “[…] In the eyes and mind an almost unreal dream persists: The Sierra Nevada gently and impassively dominating a floating Alhambra. For me, that image is etched onto the eyes of a boy”.32 Staying next to that building, they were seduced by its gardens, courtyards, fountains, austere and warm walls, and also by its interior embellishment. It was a visit that he would repeat in 1976, this time with the gaze of a well-informed architect, lodging in the Washington Irving hotel, where he found the famous stories by the North American writer as a bedside book, a text that invited to him to read certain stirring chapters, the perfect ingredient for that longed-for solitary experience which, he acknowledged,33 led to enchanting nostalgia and romantic contemplation.

32

Álvaro Siza Vieira (2014). Textos. Madrid: Abada, pp. 364-365 (from his acceptance speech for the Premio Nominaciones de Arquitectura de Granada for Edificio Zaida, presented by the Colegio de Arquitectos de Granada on 13th December, 2005).

33

Álvaro Siza Vieira (2014). Discursos pronunciados en el acto de investidura de Doctor Honoris Causa del Excelentísimo Señor D. Álvaro Siza Vieira [Speech by Juan Domingo Santos] [online]. Granada: Universidad de Granada, <http://digibug.ugr.es/bitstream/10481/31969/1/C-062-016%20%2828%29.pdf> [Consulted 17th January 2015].

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He remained impregnated by the timeless and universal lessons given by the Alhambra, some of which emerged in his countless works: including those relating to fluid spaces, the interior-exterior dialogue and calming presence of water, and conditioned by and conditioning the topography. But what would stay with him most was the skilful control of light, the basis of his prodigious alternation of bright and shade, with “courtyards where the sun shines and the shade of the walls and the porches protects you” and with a “sequence of rooms where the light is made gradually less intense, until it is almost penumbra”,34 forming a complex system, proportionally multiplied by the diversity of zones and uses. What also figures is the education resulting from a comparison of the Palacio de Carlos V with its pre-existing Moorish counterparts, the violent opposition of which is perfectly is justified by the historical inflection of a drastic change in power, demonstrating that the continuity of the language or scale is not the only way to achieve harmony, but rather that it also arises from a relationship balanced between fate and expression, contextualising work, in this case, as a sign of social, cultural and political transition, with a measured urban balance between autonomy and belonging.

On the other hand, younger architects like John Pawson, a minimalist particularly devoted to the Japanese tradition, also declared his fascination for the sober and confident use of materials, and the indirect treatment of light that characterises the Alhambra, which the Englishman reflected graphically in Minimum (1996),35 where he highlighted the idea of simplicity in art, architecture and design, using a route through different chronological and geographical contexts that are represented, in one case, by said building, which includes a wide-angle image of Patio de Comares [Comares Court] to illustrate the section “Containment. How architecture defines space”, along with such important projects from the last century as Farnsworth House,

by Mies van der Rohe (Plano, 1945-1951), the Convent of La Tourette by Le Corbusier (Eveux-sur-Arbresie, 1957-1960), Nakayama House by Tadao Ando (Nara, 19831985) and his own design for the Calvin Klein store (New York, 1993-1995).

Spanish architecture of post-war period The Alhambra Manifest The Spanish crisis in first half of the 20th century was also strongly felt in architecture, and was the trigger for a widespread post-conflict rethink. Understanding 34

Ibid.

35

John Pawson (2003). Minimum. London: Phaidon, pp. 178-179 and 302-303.

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the situation as just another chapter deriving from colonial separatism, a point of severe disorientation was reached where there arose a deep-seated need to reformulate the principles of the discipline, reaffirmed at that time based on excess nationalist superficiality or “pure-bloodedness”, and further bolstered, if possible, by the establishment of the dictatorship. One of the main forums for debate was fostered by the journal Revista Nacional de Arquitectura, led by Carlos de Miguel through his itinerant critiques “Sesiones de crítica de la arquitectura”, held on a regular basis from 1950 onward, the high point of which would be the meeting held in Granada a couple of years later.

The conference in the Andalusian capital, that took place over two intense days (14th and 15th October 1952) within the Arabic precinct itself, brought together more than twenty participants, linked principally to the Madrilenian school, facilitating a blend of experience including professional veterans, like Secundino Zuazo, and the new generation led by Rafael Aburto, Pedro Bidagor, Francisco Cabrero, Miguel Fisac, José Luis Picardo and Fernando Chueca Goitia, the latter of whom was responsible for organising the seminars (see Illustration 7).36 The conclusions were formalised through the signing of the famous Manifiesto de la Alhambra [The Alhambra Manifest],37 that marked a doctrinal position synthesising the postulates of a new architecture which did not, in the end, realise its definitive impetus, as is commonly asserted,38 of regaining the true vernacular spirit as an inalienable quality that had, unfortunately, become lost in prescriptive and traditionalist hotchpotches.

36

See Fernando Chueca Goitia (1952). “La Alhambra y nosotros”, Boletín de Información de la Dirección General de Arquitectura, Madrid, pp. 10-13. The same author had already anticipated the ideological framework of the theory behind the manifest, five-years previously, as evidenced by Fernando Chueca Goitia (1947). Invariantes castizos de la arquitectura española. Madrid: Dossat.

37

See vv. aa. (2004). El Manifiesto de la Alhambra. Granada: Colegio de Arquitectos de Granada [original edition from 1953]. A detailed development of the discussions was reflected in vv. aa. (1953). “Sesiones de crítica de arquitectura. La Alhambra”, Revista Nacional de Arquitectura, No. 136. Madrid: Colegio de Arquitectos de Madrid, pp. 13-50.

38

See Juan Calatrava (2000). “El Manifiesto de la Alhambra”, Arquitectos, No. 154. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Colegios de Arquitectos de España, pp. 128-131 (edition dedicated to Fernando Chueca on the occasion of his being awarded the Medalla de Oro de la Arquitectura (Gold Medal for Architecture) in 1998); and Ángel Isac (ed.) (2006). Monografías de la Alhambra 1: el Manifiesto de la Alhambra. 50 años después. El monumento y la arquitectura contemporánea. Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife.

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Illustration 7. Attendees at the meeting “Sesiones de crítica de la arquitectura” held in the Alhambra (October, 1952). Group photo.

Source: Personal archives of Joaquín Prieto-Moreno Ramírez.

To this end, the initial basis synthesised the permanent values that architecture in Granada, spearheaded by its monumental works, binds to itself, subdivided equally into topics for study: the human, for its intimacy, modular aspect, contemplative (and unrepresentative) root, and quality more of space than facades; the natural, for its integration of landscape, the garden penetrating the house and vice versa, in a pseudophilosophical relationship contrasting with the organic feel of Frank Lloyd Wright, a consequence of the zealous treatment of water (in its three successive stages: rising, flowing, and pooling, in other words the spring, the stream and the pond), in addition to colour and light; the formal, for the types of plants, set free as in modern architecture, while maintaining the original nuclei of courtyards, geometric austerity and overlapping volumes, like in Cubism; and the mechanical, for the logical and strict construction, thinner than the classical and Renaissance, by reducing materials with a present-day criteria of judicial economy of means, to the point of linking the slenderness of the old marble columns with the new metal and concrete pillars, without affecting their preservation and easy maintenance.

A rereading of the space was proposed, with “the eyes of an architect”, something unprecedented up to that moment due to its consideration as a “redoubtable reservoir of essential architecture”, using an updated approach that accepted its total

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timelessness and avoided outmoded academic models in favour of language with no stylistic pretensions of historicism and that was, particularly, free of both ornate romantic sentimentalities and archaeological retrospective frozen in time; in other words, open to the expression of our era. It was realised that the hidden possibilities of the Andalusian architecture had not been explored, being limited to an aesthetic fashion or quaint fad from the nineteenth century, which should give way to the emerging sensitivity capable of revealing the profound modernity of the Alhambra, anticipated in all the universal elements the building contains for the new era.

This is so true that its parallels with avant-garde works were described as astonishing because of the significant and multiple coincidences across a whole range of spaces, shapes, structures, dimensions, rhythms, and materials. More specifically, in the meetings he drew parallels between the walled hill and the three main characteristics defining the International Style according to Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson Related:39 the “principle of volume”, or “principle of surfaces defining a volume”, to the extent that the heavy walls are relieved by floating solutions, enveloped by light elements like archways that attenuate mass, whose spatiality is comparable to that which comes from the most advanced technologies; the “principle of regularity” since order is created with elementary prisms, but diversified in accordance with their function, playing with size and proportions, but without forcing the symmetry, and, in all cases accepting the human size as the reference scale; and the “principle of absence of applied ornamentation”, understood not so much as a lack, but as a selective localization, an organic consequence rather than a skin overlying an architecture where the decor, always geometric and abstract, appears completely respectful and subordinate In short, a perfect harmony between the Moorish palace and the contemporary world that makes Chueca come to compare the flamboyant and precipitous North American buildings,40 in terms of their outward appearance, with the Alhambra’s towers, due to their purity and sobriety of volume. And yet also in this, as is normal, one can detect sensitive compositional differences from the urban hue, among which stands out “the convex” modern arrangement against the “concave” aspect of the Grenadine buildings, in other words the outside contrasted with the inside.

The last century saw the appearance of emphatically isolated blocks, with their own 39

See Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson (1932). The International Style: Architecture since 1922. New York: W. W. Norton.

40

vv. aa. (1953). “Sesiones de crítica de arquitectura. La Alhambra”, Revista Nacional de Arquitectura, Op. Cit., p. 24.

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personalities, like the emblematic seat of the United Nations in New York (19471952) by Wallace K. Harrison, recently constructed at that time under the advice of, among other people, Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, whose genetics, according to Pedro Bidagor,41 seem more attuned to the strength of the Palacio de Carlos V than with its neighbouring buildings, which dilute its presence in favour of a deliberate concatenation of environments, replacing the monotony and rigidity with a phenomenological diversity that not only does not diminish the unitary harmony, but enriches it. A bifurcated path that, nevertheless, in the medium- or long-term, must equally converge, because the architectonic individuality is obtained through an intermediate space that, sooner or later, stops being neutral, to become instead a place of coexistence and enjoyment.

Also, from the conclusions drawn on constructive aspects, it follows that the materials originally used in the Alhambra evidence a significant correspondence with the modern, even more so in the version reviewed after World War II, due to the enormous rationality of choice, inasmuch as they are totally adapted to their fate and preferredly autochthonous, a quality reconsidered after the decontextualization of previous decades; to its sizing, from rigorous cost optimization criteria and technical performance; and to its image candidly corresponding with its intrinsic features. A harmony that once again becomes apparent in the landscaped areas (also treated as a specific subject in the conference), from their consideration as domesticated nature, crucial for mitigating barren climates like that of Andalusia, where the Arabs represented Paradise through vegetation, scent, water, and murmuring sounds, incorporated into the residences to share the divine joy, just as modern architecture does, connecting with the landscape thanks to its huge panes of glass. That too, in line with Barragán’s thinking, limits itself to being a living room whose ceiling is the sky; no infinite gardens, characteristic of absolutist times, when royal entourages had to be celebrated, because “the garden is the quiet casket of the Godhead”.42 Local influence Urban propagation Leaving aside the Neo-Arabic pastiches that merely plagiarised, to a more or less literal degree, all kinds of decorative elements with Islamic roots, the most radical example of which is the flamboyant Alhambra Palace hotel, the crowning glory of 41

Ibid.

42

vv. aa. (2004). El Manifiesto de la Alhambra. Op. Cit., p. 55.

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Realejo, built by Modesto Cendoya early last century, where, paradoxically, half the signees of the Manifiesto de la Alhambra stayed, there are countless references, constantly incorporated into Grenadine architecture, to characterise each enclave of a plot already extended to the metropolitan level, thus rendering an affective tribute to its main symbol, from which emanate continuous lessons that are taken, at discipline level, as an inexhaustible source of inspiration: regional symbiosis, order and balance, bodily disintegration, irregular silhouettes, interstitial spaces, visual depth, games of sun and shade, modest materiality, textures and earthy colours.

In this sense, modernity perpetrated one of its more distinguished works in the carmen, or garden residence, of the Fundación Rodríguez-Acosta (1916-1930), designed by the same architect, although now together with Teodoro Anasagasti, Ricardo Santacruz and José Felipe Jiménez Lacal, in collaboration with the artist who shares its name, and the seat of that distinguished foundation, very close to Torres Bermejas. Its supposed abstraction, resulting from the combination of volumes in its main elevation, with views of the city, that seek to adapt in scale and greater depth by contrasted lighting through two central bodies set forward with respect to another, central element, is no impediment to demonstrating its strong link to the nearby Puerta de los Siete Suelos, which gives the group a compositional balance that remains intact through time, even after having been extended.

Indeed, its new bay, that incorporates the Instituto Gómez Moreno (1978-1982), is the work of one of the historic city’s most committed architects. In effect, the career of José María García de Paredes in Granada provides us with a perfect synthesis of Arabic architecture.43 In this way, as the culmination of a long process, the neighbouring Manuel de Falla auditorium (1962-1978) was executed with equal subtlety in the carmens, the garden residences of Matamoros, Santa Rita and Gran Capitán, next to the musician’s former home. Its architect, Falla’s nephew, felt that the privileged position should be a decisive design factor that should be fully integrated, hence he opted for “a bunch of forms growing from the interior spaces like those of the Alhambra in a basic concept entirely at odds with the noble Renaissance palace of Pedro Machuca, in which the four facades determine the enclosure”;44 a group with clear geometric expression where blind walls predominate, like in the Alcazaba 43

See Ricardo Hernández Soriano (ed.) (2001). José María García de Paredes en Granada [1962-1990]. Granada: Colegio de Arquitectos de Granada.

44

José María García de Paredes (1995). El Centro Manuel de Falla de Granada, in Ángela García de Paredes (ed.). Auditorio Manuel de Falla, Granada, 1975-1978. Almeria: Colegio de Arquitectos de Almería, p. 77 (of section 4, “Emplazamiento”, of the building report, drafted in 1978).

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and Torre de Comares, with openings to the outside only on the lower floors, linked to terraces and balconies, as notes Josep Lluís Sert,45 where the brick and roofing tile impose their brown tones evoking the ancient constructions. In short, it is a building inlaid into the slope, in which Paredes interprets Falla austerely and precisely, betraying delicate echoes of the Alhambra: fragmented roofs; bent entryways, through the untouched garden of cypresses and bamboos; a restrained scale of hallways, open to the heavens by means of skylights; a light quartering of its modest pavement; introversion that accentuates the timely views of the fertile valley; and many more, too many to number.46 However, more interminable still is the list of works that ought to be included in this section, whose more recent examples can be illustrated by other notable constructions. First would be Zaida building (1993-2006) by Álvaro Siza,47 located between Acera del Darro and Carrera del Genil, used for residences and offices, made reality after “[…] a long road marked by unforgettable visits to this city, […] by the long dusks that transfigure the Alhambra and Sierra Nevada, glorifying the Mirador de San Nicolás viewpoint”.48 Created as an architectonic and landscaping response to the surroundings, turning its gaze to the citadel and the garden residence of the Fundación Rodríguez-Acosta, something that justifies the northeast roof garden, because as the author notes: “[…] At the end of the day, from the place where the Zaida was constructed, I watched the hill and the cypresses that almost obscured the white bulk of the Fundación, the Sierra Nevada in the background. While I was drawing, I imagined not mine, but the enchantment of Lorca, seated on the terrace of the new building”49 (see Illustration 8). An attraction that, although not recognized in the same way, also had consequences on a formal level, considering that is volumetric fracturing is as striking as the Fuente de las Batallas, which once again evokes the Puerta de los 45

See Josep Lluís Sert (1992). “Auditorio Manuel de Falla, Granada, 1974-1978”, Documentos de Arquitectura, No. 22. Almeria: Colegio de Arquitectos de Almería, pp. 25-34.

46

Ángela García de Paredes (1995). Crónica. Auditorio Manuel de Falla, Granada. 1962-1994, in Ángela García de Paredes (ed.). Auditorio Manuel de Falla, Granada, 1975-1978. Op. Cit., p. 13.

47

For more details, see Álvaro Siza Vieira (2008). “Edificio Zaida y casa patio, Granada, España, 1993-2006”, El Croquis, No. 140, Madrid, pp. 112-125.

48

Álvaro Siza Vieira (2014). Textos. Op. Cit., p. 365.

49

Álvaro Siza Vieira (2014). Discursos pronunciados en el acto de investidura de Doctor Honoris Causa del Excelentísimo Señor D. Álvaro Siza Vieira. Op. Cit.

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Siete Suelos, as in other works by the Portuguese architect, including the church in Marco de Canavezes (1990-1997).

Illustration 8. Álvaro Siza. Edificio Zaida, Granada (1993-2006). Illustrative sketches from “Ver Alhambra ou ser visto de Alhambra”.

Source: Álvaro Siza.

Then, developed during this century, the Museo Memoria de Andalucía [Andalusian Memorial Museum] (2006-2009),50 by Alberto Campo Baeza, as a continuation of the main headquarters of Caja Granada, stands next to the ring road where it crosses the Genil river, like a three-storey podium building, organised around a great elliptical central courtyard whose axes coincide in size with the inner and outer diameters of the Palacio de Carlos V (see Illustration 9). And, although still in 50

More information in Alberto Campo Baeza (2009). “Museo Memoria de Andalucía, Granada”, A&V Monografías, No. 135-136. Madrid: Arquitectura Viva, pp. 56-65; and the webpage of Alberto Campo Baeza, <http:// www.campobaeza.com/the-ma-andalucias-museum-memory/?type=“catalogue”> [Consulted 24th January 2015].

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the planning stage, the future high-speed railway station next to Camino de Ronda (2010-…), designed by Rafael Moneo, is planned as a half-buried building where the access area emerges into a broad lobby like a viewpoint that, as an essential programmatic point, has its entrance oriented eastward to frame a panoramic view of the city, over the green area that will form the roof above the platforms, offering up the city and, especially, the Alhambra, Generalife and the Sierra Nevada to travellers an evocative image of welcome and farewell.

Illustration 9. Alberto Campo Baeza. Museo Memoria de Andalucía, Granada (2006-2009). Comparison with the Palacio de Carlos V.

Source: Webpage of Alberto Campo Baeza, <www.campobaeza.com>.

Own contributions With the figure of the architect-curator from the 19th century onward, initially taken over by the Los Contreras saga, the monument resurfaced from its abandonment subjected to romantic and stylistic restorations characteristic of the period, which gave way to the modern transition period with Modesto Cendoya, in which the Plan General de Conservación de la Alhambra (General Conservation Plan of

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the Alhambra) was formulated, by Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, in 1917 to demand respectful treatment, and which was developed in accordance with strict scientific criteria by Leopoldo Torres Balbás. After these events, and once the Civil War had passed, the contemporary stage would be reached with Francisco Prieto-Moreno entrusted with the tasks of achieving unity in the control of the site, conservation and restoration activities and new cultural uses,51 which prompted the conversion of the Palacio de Carlos V into the provincial fine arts museum and imperial residence (1951-1957), the Convento de San Francisco into a national parador (state-owned hotel) (1948), as well as the Generalife outdoor theatre building (1953).

With the advent of democracy, the rigor of the works was guaranteed through the drafting of the “Plan Especial de Protección y Reforma Interior de la Alhambra y Alijares” [Special Plan for Protecting and Renovating the Interior of the Alhambra and Alijares] (1985-1987), by José Seguí,52 and its later revision by Miguel Ángel Troitiño,53 in addition to the “Plan Director de la Alhambra y el Generalife 20072015” [Master Plan for the Alhambra and Generalife 2007-2015] (2007) under the coordination of Pedro Salmerón.54 One of the provisions most quickly acted upon would be the attempt to remodel the previously mentioned auditorium, a task entrusted to García de Paredes in 1989, revisiting two old ideas: the Greek way of orienting the spectators towards the best landscapes and, in a Renaissance key, ensuring said background is architectonic, in order to replace the stage with the perspective, since “the advantage of the Generalife theatre is evident, it is not necessary to construct the architecture as in Vicenza, because the architecture is already pres-

51

See Francisco Prieto-Moreno (1941). “La conservación de la Alhambra”, Revista Nacional de Arquitectura, No. 3. Madrid: Colegio de Arquitectos de Madrid, pp. 49-62. To complement this see Aroa Romero Gallardo (2014). Prieto-Moreno, arquitecto conservador de la Alhambra (1936-1978). Razón y sentimiento. Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife.

52

See José Seguí Pérez et al. (1986). Plan Especial de Protección y Reforma Interior de la Alhambra y Alijares.

Granada: Consejería de Obras Públicas de la Junta de Andalucía/Ayuntamiento de Granada/Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife; as well as the summary of this document in José Seguí Pérez (1988). “El Plan Especial de la Alhambra”, Geometría, No. 4-5. Malaga, pp. 1-67. He received the Premio Nacional de Urbanismo in 1987, awarded by the Instituto del Territorio y Urbanismo of the Ministry of Public Works (mopu).

53

See Miguel Ángel Troitiño Vinuesa et al. (1999). Estudio previo para la revisión del Plan Especial de la Alhambra y Alijares. Documento previo de síntesis y diagnóstico. Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife.

54

See Pedro Salmerón Escobar et al. (2010). Plan Director de la Alhambra. 2 vol. Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife; as well as the comments in María del Mar Villafranca Jiménez (2007). “El Plan Director de la Alhambra (2007-2015)” [online], e-rph, No. 1, <http://www.revistadepatrimonio.es/revistas/numero1/ gestion/experiencias/articulo.php> [Consulted 24th January 2015].

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ent in the towers and cypresses of the Alhambra”.55 This led him to rotate the stands to the southwest, with the audience facing the Torre de las Infantas. Ultimately, the proposal would be put on hold but it would serve as forerunner of other subsequent solutions originating out of a competition of ideas in the most important cases, and which have borne the most interesting fruit.

Master plan for the areas related to the new access Among its most important provisions, the Special Plan proposed to redefine the relationship between the constructed enclosure and open nature, bringing order to the lands located to the east, progressively but chaotically colonised by hotels and museums, with the aim of simultaneously regaining their identity and meaning as well as aesthetics, and taking advantage of the design to undertake specific renovations and more extensive facilities for arrival, parking and entry, aside from the resulting perimeter solutions All this was due to a drastic change in the approach that solved the serious problem of overcrowding by diverting traffic down Cuesta de Gomérez along Antiguo Camino del Cementerio from Carretera de la Sierra.

To this end, an international competition was held in 1988, the jury for which was formed by, among others, Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Victor Pérez Escolano and Carlo Aymonino (incorporated in the second phase), in the section between the Cerro del Sol and the olive grove of Cornisa de los Alijares.56 Around fifty architects, most of them renowned, presented proposals, including Giorgio Grassi, Cesar Pelli, Paolo Portoghesi, Maurice Culot, and others from the national scene like Juan Daniel Fullaondo, Antonio Fernández Alba, José Ignacio Linazasoro, Gabriel Ruiz Cabrero and Manuel Trillo de Leyva, in addition to the preselected Antonio Sanmartín, Maria Medina, Alberto Ferlenga, and the Maatwerk Buro group. These latter four would be joined by the finalists Eduard Bru and Daniele Vitale, who were respectively responsible for the partial projects for Parque del Cerro del Aire and Parque de los Alijares y del Cementerio; the first forms a “limit”, not defined by an individual physical element, but by a sequence, dominated by a sloping terrace next to a forest for parking in, that ends 55

Ricardo Hernández Soriano (ed.) (2001). José María García de Paredes en Granada [1962-1990]. Op. Cit., pp. 125-126.

56

See Fernando Villanueva Sandino and Jesús Bermúdez López (1988). Concurso de ideas para la ordenación de zonas conexas al nuevo acceso a la Alhambra [Competition for ideas on the organization of the areas surrounding the new access to the Alhambra], documentation for participants. Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife; as well as a perspective on the selected proposals in (1991) AQ Arquitectura Andalucía Oriental, No. 7. Op. Cit.

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at the service building next to a new steel and marble access tower or electricity box; and the second involves a transition through “routes” that reinterpret place and landscape, reaffirm its semi-rustic and agrarian nature, coherent with its frontier location, outlined in the form of a comb, whose main route allows the inclusion of a variety of environmental and constructed episodes.

And, obviously, the team that won the competition for the overall solution, formed by Peter Nigst, Erich Hubmann and Andreas Vass, who would take on the development of the main access park and the Alhambra’s plaza, completed in 1997. Their strategy consisted in considering the genius loci from the “ruralization” of the urban, restoring the original topography with stepped platforms recalling the agricultural production in the region, not only referring to the orchards and crop fields through their division into terraces and paratas, but also incorporating the traditional resource of water with a simple yet complete hydraulic system of orthogonally arranged ponds, canals and aqueducts, that engages with that which it ingeniously and poetically supplies to the Alhambra.

Their elements become structural factors of a path network marked by the walls of the irrigated terraces, in a microclimate surrounded by restrained shapes, suitable scales and material nakedness (see Illustration 10). Based on this general, relatively conservationist design, the constructions become almost merely anecdotal, diluted in the context as small, simple systems.

Illustration 10. Peter Nigst, Erich Hubmann and Andreas Vass. Organization of areas relating to the new access to the Alhambra, Granada (1989-1997). Panoramic view.

Source: Hubmann-Vass Architekten, <www.hubmann-vass.at>.

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At the beginning of the last decade, it became apparent that information booths had to be set up below the car parks for visitors. The project, developed by Rafael Soler and Francisco Martínez in 2003,57 includes the Board’s suggestion to use wooden kiosks, simultaneously considering aspects such as integration and reversibility; the requirements of a welcome, meeting and rest area; simple structures; fragmented arrangement; light, transparent appearance; a sequential and perceptive relationship with the landscape; and open organization. So, four different sized containers, modulated in a herringbone pattern like marquetry boxes, were erected on concrete carpets furrowed by canals and flowerbeds that could be intermingled with trees.

Adaptation of the Palacio de Carlos V for exhibition and museum space The building that was initially intended to become the imperial residence, work on which was abandoned from the 17th to 20th centuries, has, throughout its life, been confirmed as an important focus of cultural activity. After being completing by Torres Balbás, it housed a small Arabic museum in 1928, the predecessor of the Museo Arqueológico de la Alhambra [Archaeological Museum of the Alhambra], opened in 1942, which in turn became the current Museum of the Alhambra and the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts in 1958. Attempts have been made to consolidate this use in recent decades by means of different staggered interventions that have taken place from the lower to the upper levels.

These include, most notably, the project to adapt a presentation room for visitors, developed between 1989 and 1992, to house an illustrative exhibition on the history of the monumental landmark through panels, scale models and reproductions of objects, as well as audiovisual projections. For this project, the semi-basement floor was chosen in front of the Puerta del Mexuar, enveloped by walls and a carved stonework vault, and with an old pond in the background. The approach outlined by Enrique Nuere Matauco and Juan Pablo Rodríguez Frade consisted,58 first and foremost, of eliminating all previous subdivisions to recover the perception of a single space organised around an asymmetric wall supporting a lightweight mezzanine, creating unprecedented views where the pre-existing contrasted with new elements like furniture.

57

See Rafael Soler Márquez and Francisco Martínez Manso (2005). “Quioscos de información en la Alhambra, Granada”, Documentos de Arquitectura, No. 58. Almeria: Colegio de Arquitectos de Almería, pp. 24-29; as well as the webpage of the two architects, <http://www.martinezysoler.com/#!__2equipamiento/puntos-inf-alhambra>.

58

See Enrique Nuere Matauco and Juan Pablo Rodríguez Frade (1991). “Proyecto de adecuación de una sala del Palacio de Carlos V para presentación de la Alhambra”, AQ Arquitectura Andalucía Oriental, No. 7. Op. Cit, pp. 132-141.

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The above served as a learning curve for the renovation of the Palacio de Carlos V [Palace of Charles V] as the “Museo de la Alhambra” in 1994, after the “Museo Nacional de Arte Hispano-Musulmán” [National Museum of Hispano-Muslim Art] came under the tutelage of the Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife [Council of the Alhambra and Generalife], according to a design solely attributable to Rodríguez Frade.59 The scope of work extended to the entire ground floor, where exhibition rooms were readied, including the crypt for temporary displays, in addition to the meeting area and an event room. The intervention sought to recover the historically unfinished image allowing a clear reading of the design and original structures by suppressing additions and leaving the stone blocks visible. Respect for authenticity is combined with the reversible nature of the new through functional necessity, the design of which emphasizes a contemporary language that avoids any confusion with the old, using the finest materials with little formal elaboration. The new treatment is perceived as something superimposed, with no links, like carpets covering the ground and ceiling, of marble and wood respectively, through which the conduits run.

Finally, the decision was taken to adapt the top floor to be the Fine Arts museum, between 1999 and 2006, also under the premise that new facilities would not compromise the property’s important value. To this end, the interdisciplinary team led by Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas based the design on both on the architectural value of the spaces and the historical consideration of the building’s various construction phases,60 understanding its development as a long process that lasted over four centuries, and which is still ongoing. Thus, vertical plasterboard cladding was used, leaving a chamber for conduits, on a substructure anchored to the slabs to avoid touching older stonework and surfaces (see Illustration 11). The recessed step, halfway up the wall, allowed the space to be divided both architectonically and as an 59

See Magdalena Álvarez Arza et al. (1995). El Palacio de Carlos V: un siglo para la recuperación de un monumento. Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife; Juan Pablo Rodríguez Frade (1995). La recuperación del monumento: rehabilitación y proyecto museográfico, in Ibid, pp. 107-164; and Juan Pablo Rodríguez Frade (2006). Rehabilitación del Palacio de Carlos V como Museo de la Alhambra, in Ángel Isac (ed.). Monografías de la Alhambra 1: el Manifiesto de la Alhambra. 50 años después. El monumento y la arquitectura contemporánea. Op. Cit., pp. 289-313. He received the Premio Nacional de Restauración y Conservación de Bienes Culturales in 1995, from the Directorate General of Fine Arts and Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture.

60

For more information consult Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas et al. (1997). “La investigación arquitectónica, el proyecto de arquitectura y el acondicionamiento ambiental en el proyecto de adecuación de la planta principal del Palacio de Carlos V de Granada”, Informes de la Construcción, No. 507. Madrid: csic, pp. 5-19; Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas (2004). “Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada. Palacio de Carlos V. Planta principal”, Mus-A, No. 3. Seville: Consejería de Cultura de la Junta de Andalucía, pp. 106-117; and Nicolás Torices Abarca et al.

(2006). “Museo de Bellas Artes. Palacio de Carlos V, Alhambra”, Documentos de Arquitectura, No. 61. Almeria: Colegio de Arquitectos de Almería, pp. 58-63.

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exhibition space, something which is accentuated by means of hidden projectors all around the edge, combined with natural light transmitting warmth and connecting the rooms with their monumental and landscaped surroundings.

Illustration 11. Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas. Museo de Bellas Artes [Fine Arts Museum] in the Palacio de Carlos V, Granada (1999-2006). Sequence with scale models of the proposal.

Source: Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas.

Atrium of the Alhambra More recently, the “Plan Director” [Master Plan] established the need to improve the visit through a significant remodelling of the reception area, whose importance required management through an international contest of ideas, “Atrio de la Alhambra” in 2010. The winner was chosen by a jury formed by Carlos Ferrater, Josep María Montaner, Víctor Perez Escolano and Gabriel Ruiz Cabrero. The guidelines included the consideration of the doorway to the complex, rearranging all the spaces and services (located in the entrance pavilion and the “Plataforma del Agua”) by better integrating them with the adjacent scopes and the landscape. It had to be conceived “as a space open to its surroundings and a landscaped hall that serves as a temporary shelter for the user”.61 From more than forty proposals, the first stage of the process was settled with the selection of five finalists: Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra, who solved the problem of 61

Extract included in the call presentation and guidelines published by the Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife [online], <http://www.alhambra-patronato.es/index.php?id=910> [Consulted 31st January 2015].

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the zone by means of a single decisive and zigzagging geometry, subdivided into linear strips at different heights which delimit a continuous space, fluid and full of light, turned into a route that cuts the floor like a stream, sloping along the orography; two more Sevillians, Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortiz, with a mimetic strategy reflecting the surrounding nature, diluting the edges of a work that accepts its auxiliary or subsidiary role, culminating in an impressive space with a pergola where it cuts into the vegetation, arranged on a floor angled in the same direction as the rows of cypresses, whose narrowing and shade increase the anticipation; and the Hispanic-Portuguese team of Antonio Tejedor and Manuel Aires Mateus, with a topographic manipulation that tries to hide itself, through a fracture in the land from which a plinth emerges, connected by an outdoor ramp, whose tectonic construction forges a landscape while announcing a space vaulted between two Cyclopean walls; and Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas together with João Luís Carrilho da Graça, who unfurl an intense conceptual and poetic force that makes altimetric reference to the work house in La Mimbre, which is based on the surroundings while at the same time organising its interior through a helical system of routes, like an entrance ritual, bordering a multipurpose space where the light produces a transcendental atmosphere, protected by a landscaped ceiling that also shelters a circular auditorium and the other rooms.

However, first prize went to “Puerta Nueva”, by Álvaro Siza and Juan Domingo Santos,62 who combine land, pre-existence, programme and flow into a contemporary, silent design well-adjusted in terms of scale. It consists of a series of staggered and partly buried volumes, adapted to the land and open to the monument, which develop longitudinally along two axes, and whose curve responds to the topographical peculiarities, presence of trees and a desire to understand the environment. It welcomes visitors with a horizontal podium that emerges from the body of the access together with other services, forming an upper terrace from which the first towers can be seen, interspersed with the lush vegetation. Below, a large double-height lobby leads to the opposite end where two parallel wings are surrounded by courtyards next to the Auditorium and the exhibition area, culminating in a generous plaza connecting to the “Camino de los Cipreses” [Promenade of the Cypress Trees], thus evoking Moorish architecture through a rich concatenation of spaces, transitions and elements, particularly walls and floors where the materials, with their textures and colours, are tinged by the play of light and shadow, our minds and senses are prepared to fully enjoy the phenomenology of heritage.

62

See vv. aa. (2015). Álvaro Siza Vieira. Visiones de la Alhambra [Exhibition catalogue]. Granada: Aedes Architecture Forum/Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife.

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Conclusions Based on the foregoing, it is clear that the monumental buildings of the Alhambra and Generalife have been strengthened, over the course of the last century, as a masterful and continuous lesson in contemporary architecture, serving as an endless source of inspiration for many of its most honoured exponents, particularly from Europe and Latin America, regardless of their country of origin. So, at the international level, following the conclusions Le Corbusier drew from the Arabic buildings, new perspectives on the monument have emerged in subsequent generations, attributable in particular to Luis Barragan, Rogelio Salmona, Álvaro Siza and John Pawson, in addition to the large number of Spanish representatives who signed the Manifiesto de la Alhambra, as well as the numerous designers of iconic projects in Granada, such as José María García de Paredes, Alberto Campo Baeza, Rafael Moneo and, of course, the people who intervened directly in actions related to the walled complex itself.

In every case, praise is given to the precise response that the complex imposes on each of the discipline’s internal demands, relating to the landscape, space, light, material, and particularly the treatment of water and other elements that lie at its very foundation. The presence of these elements bestows it with permanent not exclusive to any time or style, that elevate the fortress, beyond its unrivalled historical importance, to the category of paradigm for any type of work, regardless of how avant-garde and innovative the typology or compositional language, as in so many cases in which the wonderful legacy of the Alhambra can already be felt.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR Emilio Cachorro Fernández qualified as an architect from the University of Seville (1992) and received his doctorate from the Universidad de Granada (2010). He was an honorary collaborator in the Department of Architectural History, Theory and Composition at the University of Seville (1995-1997) and, since 2005, has been a senior lecturer in the area of Architectural Composition, which belongs to the Department of Constructions of the University of Granada. He is a member of the “Arquitectura y cultura contemporánea” [Architecture and contemporary culture] research group (HUM-813) and the “Arquitectura, escenografía y espacio urbano: ciudades históricas y eventos culturales” [Architecture, setting and urban space: historical cities and cultural events] research project (HAR2012-31133).

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ABSTRACT The countless analyses of the architectural configuration of the Alhambra and Generalife have focused much attention on their historical and stylistic as well as constructive aspects, but without sufficient examination of their relationship with the contemporary, something which is generally perceived as fairly remote in spite of these buildingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; proven ability to influence eminent professionals and works. This study looks deeper into this matter on three levels: internationally, from the modern antecedents that gave rise to a rereading of the enclosure; nationally, centred on the Manifiesto de la Alhambra as the culmination of collective reflection; and locally, differentiating the repercussions in the urban environment from the action taken at the monument itself. From all this one can deduce the full force of its extraordinary values, understood as timeless concepts of the utmost importance, that reinforce its status as the universal reference point for a long series of recent projects and, undoubtedly, future ones too.

KEYWORDS Alhambra, Generalife, modern architecture, contemporary architecture.

TRANSLATION Chris Ellison.

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SPANISH ARCHITECTURE IN THE ARAB WORLD Elena González González

A

rab countries have been a primary focus of a significant number of Spanish architecture and engineering firms for years. Driven by their potential development, the Arab world’s major capitals are now leading destinations in the internationalization plans of many of these companies. This presence has become much more evident in recent years, to the extent that those firms that years ago might have had a single project in an Arab country now receive the bulk of their work from these nations.

While we find Spanish projects from one end of the Arab world to the other, from the Atlantic to the Arabian Sea, the work of Spanish firms is focused particularly in two North African countries, Morocco and Algeria, due to their geographical proximity, and the countries on the Arabian Peninsula, mainly Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as the result of the exponential growth in construction experienced by the Gulf region in the last decade.

We presented the “On a Journey: Spanish Architecture in the Arab World” exhibition at Casa Árabe in June 2013, a project we curated along with the Higher Council of Architects’ Associations of Spain (cscae). As one of the strengths of our “Marca España” (Spain Brand), the exhibition was created to showcase the excellence and professionalism of the Spanish architecture sector. The exhibition also aimed to provide a platform for the possibilities for internationalization that the Arab world currently offers through the achievements of a large number of Spanish architecture and engineering firms in Arab countries. Although the exhibition was initially designed to cast a light on these architectural achievements for a Spanish public —it was on display in Madrid, Córdoba, Valencia, Murcia and Zaragoza— it soon took on an international scale. Thanks to the help of our embassies and the Cervantes Institute, the exhibition travelled abroad to a number of Arab countries: Lebanon, Qatar, Morocco, Kuwait and Jordan in 2014; Egypt and the Palestinian Territories in 2015. The exhibition thus became an excellent opportunity to discuss

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Spanish architecture outside Spain’s borders and the best way to encourage our companies to set their internationalization sights on the Arab world.

A total of 75 projects were showcased in the exhibition, some simply designs that never went beyond being mere ideas on paper, others that are now completed buildings. The exhibition included a surprising range and typology of projects: urban and regional planning (master plans, urban improvements plans and landscaping plans), tourism (hotels), residential (apartments, residential villas, single-family homes), facilities (campuses, stations, museums, hospitals, convention centres, etc.) as well as retail space and offices.

The exhibition (see Illustrations 1 and 2) included projects from renowned architecture firms like Nieto Sobejano, Fenwick Iribarren, Estudio Lamela, César Ruiz Larrea, Rafael de la Hoz and Campo Baeza; along with a number of up-and-coming firms that have made a commitment to internationalization in the Arab world, including AGI Architects, Hadit and AV62. Some of Spain’s leading engineering firms that have been working in the Arab world for decades were also represented, including Alatec, Sener, Idom and Typsa.

The exhibition also took into consideration another critical issue beyond the need for Casa Árabe to contribute to strengthening the Spain brand and give visibility to the vast amount of architectural work developed in Arab countries. For the institution, it was crucial to show the relevance of the legacy of Arab architecture as part of our heritage and also our Spain brand. Al-Andalus heritage becomes, in this case, a fascinating source of inspiration and knowledge for our professionals. While the designs of Spanish architects reflect an extremely modern aesthetic, there are a significant number of commissions for Al-Andalus-style housing.

The artistic and cultural heritage developed over the 900 years of Al-Andalus civilization was immense. The technical and creative skill in terms of the applied arts was often superior, rivalling the neighbouring Fatimid and Abbasid empires.

Rulers around the world longed to imitate its technique and own a piece produced

by Al-Andalus craftsmen. Its influence in Europe and the Arab world was such that Al-Andalus art has survived over the centuries as an artistic reference. It also left a deep imprint on Spain and, surprisingly, influenced later artistic styles centuries after the Al-Andalus civilization disappeared from the peninsula. Thus, the Al-Andalus aesthetic has served as the basis of Mudéjar (15th and 16th centuries), Morisco (early 19th century) and Neomudejar (late 19th century) artistic styles, which had a

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significant impact on the architecture of our country.1 Such an influence demonstrates the deeply rooted and on-going taste for the Al-Andalus aesthetic in Spain and leads us reflect on the scope of “the Arabic” as a visual and aesthetic benchmark in contemporary times.

The relevance of the art produced in Al-Andalus is unquestionable, and with the resurgence of Islamic art collections worldwide the world’s great museums unsurprisingly include a section devoted to Al-Andalus art as part of their collections.2 Any self-respecting Islamic art collection should include pieces from this period. The most coveted pieces are from the period of Córdoba’s Umayyad Caliphate and the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, although objects from the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties are becoming highly valued.3 While our country lost many artistic treasures in the second half of the 19th century, Spain still possesses the world’s largest collection of Al-Andalus art and is home to this period’s most important architectural monuments.

When we at Casa Árabe discussed curating this exhibition, the Al-Andalus architectural legacy emerged as a starting point. This cultural background, with its particular focus on the architectural, immediately became significant for all those architects and Spanish engineers working in the Arab world, a society that shares a common past with Spain. Therefore, the project by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos to build a museum to conserve the ruins of the palace-city of Madinat al-Zahra —located in the foothills of the Sierra Morena, just eight kilometres west of Córdoba— is the project that opens the exhibition, a reflection of its underlying significance.

1

After the fall of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada in 1492, the Catholic Monarchs and their successors continued to cultivate an Islamic taste for art. They turned to Muslim craftsmen to construct their buildings and produce a range of luxury goods, thus developing what is known today as Mudéjar art in Spain, a style that would continue throughout the 15th and 16th centuries. Morisco art, inspired mainly by the Alhambra’s palace style, later developed in the mid-19th century and had a major impact in Europe and the United States. Neomudéjar art emerged in the late-19th century; related to the eclectic architecture trends of the time, the Neomudéjar triumphed as a new architectural movement. These issues are masterfully discussed in Al-Andalus art expert Mariam Rosser-Owen’s Islamic Arts from Spain (Mariam Rosser-Owen [2010] Islamic Arts from Spain. Madrid: Turner Books).

2

Much of the debate held in recent years about the rethinking of Islamic art collections in international museums and the meaning of the category “Islamic art” is included in the publication coordinated by Benoît Junod, Georges Khalil, Stefan Weber and Gerhard Wolf (eds.) (2012). Islamic Art and the Museum: Approaches to Art and Archaeology of the Muslim World in the Twenty First Century. London: Saqi Books.

3

It is important to remember that Almohad art greatly influenced the architectural design of the Alhambra. The Louvre in Paris recently dedicated a large exhibition of what is probably the most significant collection to date of Almohad, Almoravid and Meriní art, entitled “Le Maroc médiéval. Un Empire de l’Afrique à l’Espagne”, sharing with a non-specialized public the significance of the art produced under these dynasties.

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Illustration 1. “On a Journey: Spanish Architecture in the Arab World” exhibition. Casa Árabe (Madrid).

Source: Alberto Gallego, Casa Árabe.

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Illustration 2. Scale model of the map of the Arab world included in the “On a Journey: Spanish Architecture in the Arab World” exhibition. Casa Árabe (Madrid).

Source: Alberto Gallego, Casa Árabe.

The Madinat al-Zahra Museum combines past and present, conserving a medieval 10th century urban layout through 21st century architectural design (see Illustration 3). This perfectly harmonious combination is the result of skilful work by the firm headed by architects Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano. Straight lines projected with Corten steel and concrete walls blend seamlessly with the landscape, allowing the layout of the Caliphate city, practically the only surviving example of a palatial Al-Andalus city, to remain recognisable. Undoubtedly, managing to design a new building that does not compete with the rest of the site is a success.

An example of conscious architecture, where a building and what it houses coexist in a mutually enriching dialogue (see Illustration 3). Therefore, it is not surprising that the architects won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2010; this is one of the highest international awards for architectural, urban planning and landscaping projects from or related to the Muslim world.

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Illustration 3. Madinat al-Zahra Museum. Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos.

Source: Photo by Fernando Alda.

This project, the only one in the exhibition located in a non-Arab country, is the preamble that will lead us to every corner of Arab world. This architectural journey could only begin in Spain, the European country with the strongest historical link to the Arab world, with the city of Córdoba in particular serving as the starting point of a journey that takes us south and east to our destination in the Far East. Hence the name of the exhibition: “On a Journey: Spanish Architecture in the Arab World”.

A journey back and forth, where the history of Al-Andalus, which began when the Moors arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in 711, now has its counterpart in a journey back to the Arab world that started with our Spanish professionals. In a sense, the cultural and scientific contribution Arab peoples made to our country is now being returned by the work of Spanish architects and engineers. It is a clear example of the still on-going cultural exchange between Spain and the Arab world, as are the projects featured in this exhibition.

Many projects have been identified and, while only taken as a whole can they give meaning to the aims of this exhibition, I would like to highlight a number of unique examples that help shape the exhibition’s narrative.

In Morocco, where the bulk of the Spanish engineering and architectural work is focused, I would like to mention the project being carried out by Rafael de la Hoz in Casablanca. Commissioned by the FinanceCom Group for the construction of several of its offices in Casablanca Finance City, this set of buildings includes a close to

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200-metre-high tower and two lower adjacent office buildings. De la Hoz presented his design at an exhibition at Casa Árabe’s Madrid headquarters in 2013 and we are pleased to see that work on the building will begin this year.

Another promising sign of the possibilities this country offers our professionals is that this will be one of the first projects that Rafael de la Hoz builds outside Spain. It is quite significant that such a high-standing firm chose to take its first international steps in an Arab country (see Illustration 4).

Illustration 4. FinanceCom Group headquarters in Casablanca.

Source: Rafael de la Hoz.

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The homes in Algeria by architect Alberto Campo Baeza are certainly one of the highlights of this exhibition (see Illustration 5). These are four homes built for the Spanish Embassy in Algiers that the Cadiz-born architect constructed in 1992. The four independent villas feature simple lines that match the trademark minimalist style of this architect specialised in single-family homes.

Illustration 5. Homes built for the Spanish Embassy in Algiers.

Source: Alberto Campo Baeza.

One of the exhibition’s most well-known architectural projects, the result of the designer’s international renown, is architect Rafael Moneo’s Souks Shopping Centre in Beirut, Lebanon (see Illustration 6). The new shopping centre is built on the same location in the Lebanese capital as the traditional souk which, located in the historic centre of the city, was almost entirely destroyed during the country’s 16 years of civil war. The building, completed in 1997 and which respects the original height of the historic souk, is a concrete structure surfaced in stone slabs with a herringbone texture that add a warmth to the entire building. The colour of the stone is reminiscent of Lebanon’s traditional stone homes made from limestone blocks, evidence that Moneo wanted to create continuity with local architecture, selecting materials that blend with the urban environment. The project is also based on significant efforts to recover the essence of the original souk, preserving the interior vaulted galleries and the latticework on the outer walls that lets natural light filter in.

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Illustration 6. Rafael Moneo. Souks Shopping Centre, Beirut.

Source: Photo by Duccio Malagamba.

Iraq sits at the eastern end of the Arab world, a county wracked by war and besieged by the threat of terrorism, yet with great potential for urban development as the result of the country’s reconstruction. Spanish architecture has a presence in Iraq with AV62 Arquitectos, a firm headquartered in Barcelona and headed by Victoria Garriga and Toño Foraster. This is a relatively young firm whose projects are garnering rave reviews in the industry for their respectful architectural designs and defence of a model of material growth geared towards rebalancing and sustainability. They won an international bid to completely remodel Bagdad’s Adhamiya district in 2012, which served to consolidate the firm’s presence in the country, with subsequent commissions in other Iraqi cities like Irbil and Mosul.

Together with North Africa, the Arabian Gulf is another region that has become the focus of the largest number of Spanish projects. Urban expansion in the Gulf countries started to increase in the 1960s, coinciding with the economic boom that a decade later would benefit a broader segment of the population. This economic boom is obviously the result of the oil production, a resource discovered in the region in the 1920s.

In addition to the natural growth of the major Gulf cities —to provide them with governmental, cultural and sports facilities— there are two upcoming in-

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ternational events that will serve as another massive boost to the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urban growth: the fifa World Cup in Qatar in 2022 and the Universal Exhibition in Dubai, uae, in 2020. Here, certainly, the experience and professionalism of the Spanish architectural sector and other professionals in related fields (construction suppliers, logistics companies, graphic and interior designers, curators, etc.) have much to contribute.

Many renowned international architects accept commissions in this part of the world and win bids with innovative proposals that challenge the rules of gravity, turning this region into a hub of innovation for the architectural world. Major cities in the United Arab Emirates like Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and Doha, the capital of Qatar, are home to a tremendous number of architectural projects, serving as an unparalleled international showcase for contemporary architecture.

Differences aside, we could compare this phenomenon with what happened in North Africa in the 1920s, when architects such as Le Corbusier and Auguste Perret, leaders of modern architecture, found cities in the Arab world like Algiers and Casablanca the perfect place to freely develop their new structural ideas.4 In the cities of Morocco and Algeria they found plenty of space for building and far fewer structural restrictions than in Europe, two ideal conditions for putting into practice what Le Corbusier called Mediterranean modernism. In the same sense, Gulf countries today provide the conditions required to carry out projects that are less feasible in Europe, with financing and a willingness to accept daring proposals two variables which undoubtedly encourage and attract international architects to the region.

Spanish architecture firm Fenwick Iribarren has been working in Qatar since 2008. An increase in business in the country led to the opening of an office in 2013, which, in turn, has facilitated the firmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s participation in local bids. The firm has carved a niche for itself with its specialization in sports, with the Education City (see Illustration 7) a prime example. This is a sports complex with facilities for different sports (tennis, swimming, football, athletics, etc.). It features a large stadium with a faceted diamond-shaped roof, designed to expand its initial capacity for 25,000 athletics spectators to a capacity of 40,000 for football. The complex was still in the final design phase when we presented the exhibition in 2013; we are now pleased to see that construction is already well underway and that this stadium will be one of the main venues of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

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vv. aa. (2003). Living under the Crescent Moon: Domestic Culture in the Arab World. Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Stiftung, pp. 265-277.

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Illustration 7. Education City, Doha.

Source: Fenwick Iribarren Architects.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention another Fenwick Iribarren project, also designed for Qatar and which, although it never progressed beyond the design phase and there are currently no plans to carry it out, is unique and revolutionary. This is the Cameldrome, a modern sports complex for camel racing, a millennium-old sport that is a long-standing tradition in Arab countries. Due to the long duration of the races a tiered system with a moving upper level that allows about 200 VIP spectators to follow the race live and at speeds of up to 60 km/h was proposed, thus eliminating the system of following the camels with SUVs required thus far. The Cameldrome, which also includes a camel museum, a residential area, a campsite and even a hospital for animals, is one of the most stunning projects in sports architecture. In the words of the firm itself, its design is “a synthesis between modernity and tradition by combining technology with the ancient sport of camel racing”.

There is another aspect of major interest, apart from the factors of technological innovation and cutting-edge design, which has conditioned many of the region’s

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projects and relates to the basic construction principles of local architecture. These are the solutions proposed to adapt buildings to the region’s particular weather conditions: extreme heat for almost half of the year, water shortages and sandy soils due to the desert’s proximity.

Undoubtedly, construction development in the Gulf countries has taken place in an extremely short period of time. This rapid and massive transformation of cities has also had a number of negative impacts, which has led to a raised awareness and interest in rethinking how to build in this region. The governments of Gulf nations are realising that oil, their main source of financing, will not last forever, making energy efficiency an already important issue on government agendas. This environmental awareness has been in vogue for years in Europe and the United States and incorporating concepts of sustainability into architecture has become a priority.

Some architects have designed solutions by studying traditional construction methods in these regions.

It is truly amazing to find that many principles of vernacular architecture (partly assimilated in the Middle Ages by Arab-Islamic architecture) are the best construction solutions today for their effectiveness and environmental friendliness. Thus, we see how the wind towers, called malkafs in Arabic, the latticework or mashrabiyas applied to façades and courtyards, as well as shukshaykhas, domes used for ventilation typically found in local architecture, are elements recovered by contemporary architects.

In line with this idea, I would like to draw attention to another project included in the exhibition, the Wind Burj (‘wind tower’) designed by the Office for Sustainable Architecture (osa), led by César Ruiz-Larrea Cangas and Antonio Gómez Gutiérrez. The Wind Burj is an avant-garde skyscraper inspired by Qatar’s traditional architecture. In this area of the Arabian Gulf there are two predominant winds, traditionally captured by solar chimneys used for air conditioning in local traditional architecture. The wind from the northwest blows in from the sea and is humid, while dry southeast wind blows in from the desert. With their high speeds, both winds can cool temperatures and increase humidity thanks to water features combined with landscaped courtyards. This principle is the source of inspiration for the design of the Wind Burj, which makes the most out of the wind’s energy potential.

Its truncated cone shape improves the capture of wind by 20%. This strategy captures energy and can dissipate solar radiation, saving up to 60% on the building’s total energy consumption. According to osa, this turns the building into the most advanced bio-climatic skyscraper in the world. We hope that this unique proposal will move beyond the design phase to become a reality.

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Regarding the recovery of traditional construction methods used in the Arab world, art and architecture historian Udo Kultermann warned us that “the recovery of these principles does not mean appropriating local materials and techniques, or raising awareness of ventilation and cooling methods with the idea that they must be preserved. It means re-establishing them in order to overcome the exploitation and cultural neo-colonialism that has had a strong presence in this region”.5 In this sense, it is important to note that the Arab world has produced great architects who strove to create a modern architecture conciliatory with their roots, like the Egyptian Hasan Fathy and Iraqi Mohammed Saleh Makiya.6 Their buildings are a benchmark of modern Arab architecture, which, despite their significant intellectual and material legacy, remain unknown to many Western architects. The work of these Arab pioneers, who successfully bridged the gap between the architectural essence of the past and present, can be enriching and forward-looking to those architects who work in the Arab world. There is certainly still much to learn and study about the Arab contribution to the history of modern architecture.7 It is also important to mention the work being carried out by Carlos Lamela as the head of Estudio Lamela in Oman. This little-known country, located in the southeast corner of the Arabian Peninsula, has massive potential for economic and tourism growth and is implementing a plan of rational and sustainable urban development. It is the Gulf country with the largest architectural heritage. With this in mind, the Sultanate of Oman has rejected the model based on the tall skyscrapers followed by neighbouring countries Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to create a skyline that coexists in balance with traditional architecture. Estudio Lamela won the bid for the design and construction of the new headquarters of Bank Sohar Muscat. A building shaped like a dhow, the traditional Omani boat, created from two 5

Udo Kultermann (1999). Contemporary Architecture in the Arab States: Renaissance of a Region. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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On the one hand, the Egyptian Hassan Fathy (1900-1989) is the precursor to the recovery of traditional architectural techniques and local materials, with an extremely advanced ecological awareness for his time and whose philosophy had a major international impact through his book Architecture for the Poor; an Experiment in Rural Egypt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. On the other hand, the Iraqi Mohammed Saleh Makiya (1914-) knew how to incorporate the technical knowledge on architecture he acquired in England with the cultural particularities of the Arab world. His architecture adapted to local needs with the design of modern and functional buildings. He constructed buildings in Iraq, Oman, Tunisia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

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The exhibition organised by the Vitra Design Museum in 2004 entitled Living under the Crescent Moon: Domestic Culture in the Arab World, exhibited in Germany, Spain, Holland, Morocco, Italy and Thailand, contributed enormously to knowledge of the history of traditional and contemporary Arabic architecture.

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horizontal structures set apart by their shape and the materials used. These structures play with the dual concepts of heavy-light, solid-empty: a light upper structure latticed with geometric patterns, and a lower stone-like structure with openings carved into the solid wall that houses three floors for the bank offices, the bank, the prayer room, restaurants, gardens and public areas.

Unquestionably, the success of this exhibition is linked to the achievements of these Spanish architect and engineering firms committed to breaking new ground in challenging locations. Clearly, working with and for a culturally different society and dealing with extremely protective zoning laws are aspects that work against internationalization in these countries. Despite all these obstacles, we were struck by the limited contact between firms and their lack of knowledge about previous or simultaneous experiences in the region. With the help of cscae, Casa Árabe had the opportunity to join and connect all these paths taken to create a single journey, turning individual achievements into the collective success of a community dedicated to building, design and urban planning created and carried out by Spanish professionals. We are confident that this effort will continue to produce important results and contribute to positioning Spanish architecture at the forefront of the international stage.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR Elena González González is the programming coordinator at Casa Árabe. She holds a degree in Arabic Philology from the Autonomous University of Madrid and a degree in Fine Arts; she also has a graduate degree in Cultural Management and Policy from the University of Barcelona. She also specialises in cultural management and contemporary art in the Arab world.

ABSTRACT This article analyses the objectives of the “On a Journey: Spanish Architecture in the Arab World” exhibition produced by Casa Árabe and the Superior Council of Architects’ Associations of Spain (cscae). It discusses the possibilities the Arab world offers for the internationalization of the Spanish architectural sector and the achievements of a large number of Spanish architecture and engineering firms in Arab countries. The importance of Al-Andalus heritage as a source of inspiration for Spanish professionals and as a relevant element of the Marca España (Spain Brand) are also demonstrated.

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KEYWORDS Contemporary architecture, art, urban planning, Al-Andalus heritage.

TRANSLATION Erin Spence.

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Edition Javier Rosón Text editing R. B. Hamilton Design and layout Zum Creativos Legal Deposit CO 1241-2015 ISBN 978-84-608-1444-3 © of the texts: its authors © of the photographs: their authors.

Cover photo of Kiosco morisco in Santa María de la Ribera © of the present edition: Casa Árabe c/ Alcalá, 62. 28009 Madrid (España) www.casaarabe.es Printed in Spain.

This publication is a partial reproduction of the collection of articles originally published in the Journal AWRAQ: Revista de análisis y pensamiento sobre el mundo árabe e islámico contemporáneo, 11 (first quarter of 2015). The full collection is available in electronic format at http://www.awraq.es/ Casa Árabe is a consortium comprising:

Andalusi and Mudejar art in its international scope: legacy and modernity

Andalusi and Mudejar art in its international scope: legacy and modernity

Casa Ă rabe es un consorcio formado por: