Esquisses Decoratives

Nanotectonica

Figure: Chapiteau, Esquisses Decoratives, 1896. Figure 4 (bottom): Clou, Esquisses Decoratives, 1896.

René Binet, Paris 1904

Esquisses Décoratives is a portfolio of architectural details and decorative items designed by René Binet. An expression of French Art Nouveau style the publication features intricately rendered drawings of various industrial design pieces including furniture, jewelry, ceramics and wallpaper (Figure 1). Binet’s work is an early example of the influence Ernst Haeckel has had on representations of nature in art, design and architecture throughout the 20th century. Esquisses Décoratives is directly based on Haeckel’s Art Forms in Nature and resembles the precedent publication in several ways. The highly stylized form of specimen illustrations introduced by Haeckel is continued in Binet’s drawings of artifacts. In many cases the detached, solitaire appearance of natural objects in one work is mirrored by the decontextualized presentation of design objects in the other. The composition of the individual drawings on the folio pages is distinctly arranged in both cases, so that natural and decorative objects appear staged. The most striking similarity however lies in the morphological continuity between the natural specimen and the artifacts depicted in these publications. Binet makes direct use of the formal repertoire and the geometric syntax laid out by Haeckel, and in many cases he refers to the same species discussed in the taxonomic illustrations, chiefly radiolaria. Binet has made no secret of this affinity. In a letter to Haeckel discussing Esquisses Décoratives he writes:

The book that I will be publishing will clearly demonstrate the high value of your works, and it will assist those, who do not know very much about the history of these infinitely small creatures, to understand the significance of artistic forms.6

The art critic Gustave Geffroy, who wrote the preface to Esquisses Décoratives, argues that Binet’s fascination with Haeckel’s work is not simply based on an aesthetic alliance, but that the architect’s work embodies Haeckel’s particular version of evolutionary theory.

Rene Binet was a prominent architect and painter of the Art Nouveau. Trained as an architect under Victor Laloux at the École des Beaux-Arts, he constructed various magasins du printemps (department stores) in Paris. His most significant built work however, was the main entry for the 1900 Paris Exposition on the Place de la Concorde. The monumental gateway that housed the many ticket offices for the exhibition was inspired by various motifs from flora and fauna. The overall form and structural part of the building with its particular arch-dome hybrid is arguably derived from Haeckel’s radiolaria. These tiny sea creatures also occur on a smaller scale in the building at the level of surface ornamentation. Although the radiolaria took center stage as inspiration, various other creatures and animal parts were depicted in the rather eclectic design, among them shells and flowers, cells of a beehive, vertebrae of a dinosaur and peacocks. In addition, the structure incorporated commissioned sculptures of human figures, many representing common themes of world fairs such as labor, progress and national identity. A main feature of the design was the use of electrical light that achieved particularly immersive effects. Electricity was a prominent theme for the structure, narrated both through lighting effects as well as in symbolic sculptural representations. The sometimes heroic and sometimes esoteric discussion of electricity in Binet’s gateway design has been linked to Ernst Haeckel’s particular theory of electricity as the originating and continuing force of life.7

The gateway marked the moment of entry to the world fair as a fantastic and strange experience. It presented a large variety of symbolic imagery that did not form a coherent message, but rather a multiplicity of sometimes conflicting ideas. In particular, the structure expressed diverging concepts of nature. On the one hand it adopted a rather rational position within the emerging discourse on evolutionary theory, depicting nature motives of evolving organisms; on the other hand it expressed a more mystical and pseudo-religious view of nature, expressed in exotic and idiosyncratic motifs. Here

Figure 5 (top): Brique, Esquisses Decoratives, 1896. Figure 6 (bottom): Voussure et Arc. Esquisses Decoratives, 1896. a parallel can be drawn to the conflicting forces in Ernst Haeckel’s theories. Haeckel was possibly the most influential proponent of evolutionary theory claiming secular objectivity in his visual and textual arguments for this scientific approach. However, he developed a particular branch of the theory, and derived from it a general critique of dualism. He declared monism as the link between religion and science and founded the Monist League, a religious society. [see Propaganda in Artform]

Suggested readings:

‘René Binet – Esquisses Décoratives & the Protozoic Façade of Porte Monumentale’ posted on May 25th, 2013.

Lydwine Saulnier-Pernuit et Sylvie Ballester-Radet (dir.), René Binet, 1866-1911, un architecte de la Belle Époque, Sens, éd. Musées de Sens, 2005, 140 p. [catalogue de l’exposition des Musées de Sens du 3 juillet au 2 octobre 2005].

Binet, René, & Geffroy, Gustave. (1900). Esquisses décoratives. Librairie centrale des beaux-arts. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.5479/sil.702168.39088009903998

Olaf Breidbach, Robert Proctor. Rene Binet: From Nature to Form. Prestel, 2007. 379133784X, 9783791337845

Proctor, R. W. (2009). A World of Things in Emergence and Growth: René Binet’s Porte Monumentale at the 1900 Paris Exposition. In C. O’Mahony (Ed.), Symbolist Objects: Materiality and Subjectivity at the Fin-deSiècle (pp. 220-244). Rivendale Press.

Gustave Geffroy, preface to René Binet, Esquisses décoratives (Paris: Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts, [n. d.]), pp. 6-7

Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (ed.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 263-307 (304).