FROM ALSACE TO INDIA (original) (raw)
Related papers
Nancy as a Center of Art Nouveau Architecture, 1895-1914
2011
The small city of Nancy, France, is arguably the center where Art Nouveau architecture had the most lasting impact. Nancy’s Art Nouveau was a divergent form of modernity that was defined by regionalism and a distinct sense of place, which its proponents championed as the key elements of an authentic architecture, allowing Nancy to challenge Paris as the dominant French artistic center in the two decades before World War I. Most of Nancy’s architects were graduates of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and grounded in the language of classicism and its associated professional standards. Much of Nancy’s Art Nouveau had a conservative character that garnered praise from the national architectural press. Nancy’s architects were also disciples of Emile Gallé, the founder of a regional association of artists, industrialists, and designers called the Ecole de Nancy, dedicated to the promotion of Art Nouveau. Nancy’s architects freely collaborated with other artists of the Ecole on their buildings, and a sense of pride in their province led them to study local flora, the and regional legends and politics, using the iconography of plants and narratives to make architecture legible to a wide public. The rooting of the work of Nancy’s architects in their region and the alliance they formed with local industry were successes that Parisian Art Nouveau architects were never able to match. Consequently, in Paris, Art Nouveau was quickly discarded, while in Nancy it was celebrated as an integral piece of regional identity and an important national achievement until 1914.
2005
During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, two major schisms between the papacy and the empire erupted. The first struggle, the Investiture Controversy, lasting from 1077-1122, set the Church against the Holy Roman Emperor on the issue of the right to choose and install bishops. The second papal/imperial conflict concerned the question of papal supremacy over Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1159-1179). Because these two conflicts impacted both imperial and papal territories, the churches on imperial soil had to choose to support either the papacy, the spiritual head of the church, or the emperor, the secular lord of these imperial territories. As part of a territorial campaign to win and maintain the loyalty of Alsace, the homeland of the Hohenstaufen family, Barbarossa directly concerned himself with the affairs of several churches in the region. At the same time that Barbarossa exerted his influence on these churches, artistic programs emerged attesting to the success of the emperor’s territorial politics. The church of St. Peter and Paul at Andlau (1160) in Lower Alsace is of key importance for understanding later sculptural programs designed to please Frederick Barbarossa in the area. Three sculpted motifs at Andlau can be specifically linked to imperial ideology: the Christus Triumphans, the Traditio Legis, and Dietrich’s Rescue of Rentwin. Each of these themes had traditional associations with both the pope and the emperor and had been employed by popes during the Investiture Controversy to advocate papal supremacy over the emperor. Barbarossa and his supporters readapted these three motifs in Alsatian sculptural programs to reiterate the emperor’s traditional God-given right to authority in the sacred and secular realms.