Abstract
Throughout the last century, France exported luxury products, and recently, the know-how of designers who have little local infrastructure to produce modern or contemporary design. It is an interesting case of a nation where l’art de vivre [the art of living] has been central for four centuries, but where the practice of design, in the contemporary sense of the word, has more recently established itself as essential to the art of living. In France, the doctrine of the ‘uniqueness of art’ and the legal protection of the creator are strong, but the recognition of the role of the latter only slowly took hold in the twentieth century. This chapter explores these developments in parallel with the changes in law described by Professor Tsukasa Aso in Chapter 14. The chapter shows that France can be defined as a nation that exploits, sometimes paradoxically, the French ‘spirit’— the one the eighteenth century defined as ‘pretty’, but also the one that established itself as political, social, critical and structural from the 1950s to the 1970s. The practice of design in France can be statutory and programmatic, industrial and critical. Designers regularly oppose the canons of a historical and patrimonial elegance and create counter-models that reorient them and allow their designs to acquire a position in the national cultural landscape.
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter, two-dimensional designs are referred to as ‘design’ [dessin] and three-dimensional designs are referred to as ‘model’ [‘modèle’], in accordance with French usage.
- 2.
Established by François de Neufchateau, Minister of the Interior at the time of the Directoire in 1798, these exhibitions were intended to sell, and to revive and encourage trade in, objects (sold untaxed) from the royal factories which had been damaged by the Revolution. They were also accompanied by festivities.
- 3.
See Elias (2005). A perfect explanation of the conservative forces at work in France.
- 4.
Souriau (1904).
- 5.
Le Corbusier (2006).
- 6.
Le Bouef (2006), p. 42.
- 7.
Colin (2010), p. 9.
- 8.
Pouillet (1911).
- 9.
The Institut National Métiers describes the 281 crafts in 16 areas. See Institut National Métiers. 281 métiers. https://www.institut-metiersdart.org/metiers-art/fiches-metiers. Accessed 25 Oct 2021.
- 10.
Silverman (1992).
- 11.
Pevsner (1948).
- 12.
- 13.
See Galica for over 70 fashion press titles. Gallica. Press de mode. https://gallica.bnf.fr/html/und/presse-et-revues/presse-de-mode?mode=desktop. Accessed 25 Oct 2021.
- 14.
See Gallica. Press de mode. https://gallica.bnf.fr/html/und/presse-et-revues/presse-de-mode?mode=desktop. Accessed 25 Oct 2021. For example, articles such as ‘Le home de M. Stephen Clark’s à New York’, ‘Un noble intérieur’, ‘Le home de M. Gaston Liebert’ in Vogue (15 Oct, 1920), pp. 33–38; or titles such as ‘Un tel décor repose sur des recherches outrancières des décorateurs modernes’ (‘Such a decor is based on the outrageous research of modern decorators’) in Vogue (15 Oct, 1920), pp. 37.
- 15.
‘Placcards et armoires dans les maisons modernes’ in Vogue (1 Oct, 1920), pp. 42–43.
- 16.
Evans (2013).
- 17.
Evans (2013), pp. 71–86.
- 18.
Kanowski (2008).
- 19.
Charles Christofle took out a patent for the manufacture of all-metal fabrics in 1837. He then made silver filigree pieces, hangings, epaulettes and braids for the army. On the strength of this diversification, he took part in the Exhibition of French Industrial Products in Paris in 1839. This led to his participation in a series of national and international exhibitions. In 1842, he acquired the patents that gave birth to silver and gold-plated metal. More solid and less harmful than traditional techniques, electrolytic silvering and gilding made it possible to manufacture silverware that was in every way similar to solid silverware. Therefore, for 15 years, Christofle was the only company in France able to manufacture silver-plated metal. His first customers included the French King, Louis-Philippe I. Industrial electroplating was developed by Henri Bouillet in 1852.
- 20.
Kanowski (2008).
- 21.
Bouilhet (1908–1912).
- 22.
Benjamin (2002).
- 23.
Williams (1982).
- 24.
Coquery (2016).
- 25.
René Guillerat, a lawyer with a passion for modernity and founder of the Salon des artistes-décorateurs, shared the management with his wife Charlotte Gauchet. After World War I, other Parisian department stores followed this departmental model, including, La Maîtrise (Galerie Lafayette), the Studium (Grands Magasins du Louvre), Pomone (Le Bon Marché).
- 26.
Sullivan (1896), pp. 403–409.
- 27.
Froissart-Pezone (2005).
- 28.
Marx (1913), pp. 31–32.
- 29.
Pezone (2005), pp. 13–18.
- 30.
The artists Félix Aubert, Alexandre Charpentier, Jean Dampt, Henry Nocq; the architects Charles Plumet, Henri Sauvage and Louis Sorel; the painter Étienne Moreau-Nélaton and the decorator and cabinetmaker Tony Selmersheim, among others.
- 31.
Froissart-Pezone (2005), p. 129.
- 32.
The SAD was founded on 7 February 1901 by some 40 artists who responded to the appeal launched in 1900 by the lawyer of the Association of Sculptors and Modellers, René Guilleré. It was an association under the law of 1901, and was recognized as a public utility in 1924. The terms ‘artist’, ‘designer’ and ‘decorator’ disappeared from the union designation in 1961.
- 33.
Another example is the 1909 law on the protection of designs and models. Article 1 of this law provided for the possibility of cumulative protection of the laws in the following terms: ‘Any creator of a design and his successors in title shall have the exclusive right to exploit, sell or make sell this design, under the conditions provided by this law, without prejudice to the rights that they obtained by other legal provisions and in particular by the law of July 19 and 24, 1793, amended by the law of March 11, 1902’.
- 34.
Fressonet (1981), p. 14.
- 35.
Guilleré (1902), 18.
- 36.
Despond-Barré (1988).
- 37.
Froissart-Pezone (2005), p. 217.
- 38.
Troy (1991), p. 132.
- 39.
Despond-Barré (1986).
- 40.
The artists and designers who have been part of the UAM are prestigious. We can find the architects Adrienne Gorska, Le Corbusier, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Pierre Jeanneret, Jean-René Pingusson, André Lurçat, André Hermant, Marcel Lods, René Coulon, Eugène Baudoin, René Herbst, Bernard Zehrfuss, Paul Nelson; the designers and artist-decorators Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand, Charlotte Alix, Pierre Chareau, Francis Jourdain, Louis Sognot; the engineer and builder Jean Prouvé; the artists Fernand Leger, Joan Miro, Alexander Calder, Gabriel Guevrékian, Gustave Miklos; the sculptors and decorators Jan and Joël Martel; the glassmaker Louis Barillet; the textile designers Sonia Delaunay and Hélène Henry; the jeweller Raymond Templier; the bookbinder and cabinetmaker Rose Adler; the poster artists A.M. Cassandre and Jean Carlu. In 1950, the association had 80 members.
- 41.
Migeyrou (2018).
- 42.
René Herbst, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Jean Lurçat, Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay collaborated on the sets of Marcel L’Herbier’s films: L’Inhumaine (1923), Le Vertige (1926) and René Le Somptier’s Le P’tit Parigot (1926). Paul Nelson designed Gloria Swanson’s bedroom in What a Widow! (Allan Dawn, 1930).
- 43.
Born in the bosom of the UAM, Formes utiles became independent in 1956.
- 44.
In the association’s documentation, the term ‘decorator’ is used as much as ‘model maker’. The transition in vocabulary was slow to take hold. Archives Nationales: 19850023/62: Statutes, Minutes of Meetings of ACMS, ACMS branding etc.
- 45.
In the Association’s statute, the moral value of the signature was summarized as follows: ‘To give the artist back his true place in the profession; to revalue his talent, to become a source of emulation, to give new talents greater opportunities to reveal themselves, to arouse the interest of the general public who will be able to compare and better realize the difference between signed and unsigned works’: Archives Nationales: 19850023/62: Statutes, Minutes of Meetings of ACMS, ACMS branding etc.
- 46.
Le Bœuf (1986), p. 91.
- 47.
In 2015, the International Council of Societies of Industrial Designers (ICSID) decided at its congress in South Korea to change its name to the World Design Organization (WDO).
- 48.
Le Bœuf (1986), p. 123.
- 49.
Le Bœuf (1986), p. 124. ‘In September 1959, the adoption of the term “industrial design” was proposed, even if […] the Americans also consider the expression “as limiting”. It seems better than the one used in Germany (Industrie Formgebung), in France (Esthétique Industrielle), in Italy (Stile Industria)’.
- 50.
Le Bœuf (1986), p. 61.
- 51.
Jean Prouvé exhibited a ‘double-shell’ house with load-bearing walls (facade panels, storage units) machined in the workshop, but to be assembled by oneself.
- 52.
Eugène Claudius-Petit was the Minister from September 1948 to January 1953. As Mayor of Firminy, he commissioned Le Corbusier to build the architectural complex that we know today.
- 53.
Eisen (2012).
- 54.
René Gabriel (1890–1950), a disciple of Francis Jourdain and a decorator, devoted himself from 1923 onwards to the production of furniture with very simplified forms. In 1935, he imagined a modular layout system, marketed under the name of ‘RG elements’. In 1947, he became President of SAD, and encouraged young designers. On his death, the Salon des arts ménagers created the René Gabriel prize, aimed at rewarding the best furniture intended for industrial manufacture. See also Ferret (2002) and Gencey (2018).
- 55.
Marcel Gascoin (1907–1986) was a member of the Union des artistes modernes where he exhibited for the first time in 1930. He created his own furniture publishing house in 1932. In 1938, at the Salon des arts ménagers, he presented for the first time a piece of storage furniture. He continued his research and carried out a study on the standardisation of everyday household objects, published in 1947 in the magazine Architecture d’aujourd’hui. He created the Gascoin storage system.
- 56.
Nordiska Kompaniet, a Swedish furniture publishing company in the 1940s, offered furniture by modern Swedish architects and in particular sets by Elias Svedberg and B. Söderberg.
- 57.
Geel (2008a), pp. 30–39.
- 58.
André Bloc founded the magazine Architecture d’aujourd’hui in 1930.
- 59.
This expression refers to a very important exhibition on Italian design, ‘Italy: The New Domestic Landscape’, held at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 1972 and curated by Emilio Ambasz.
- 60.
Foulon (2000), p. 340.
- 61.
Foulon (2000), p. 341.
- 62.
For details of this operation, see Geel (2007), pp. 12–20.
- 63.
All the French and international newspapers were invited to visit the fairs between January and February 1972: Geel (2008b), pp. 46–55.
- 64.
Geel (2008b), pp. 51.
- 65.
Catherine Geel (2021a).
- 66.
The CCI, was in part, modelled on the Design Council in the United Kingdom (UK) which had developed a series of product sheets to inform the public about various aspects of products and appliances, particularly English household appliances. The CCI adapted and published the product sheets. Initially handwritten (4000 to 7000 according, to François Mathey), they were later digitized which required a large team.
- 67.
Leymonerie (2016).
- 68.
Documentary resources description and report of the CCI exhibitions. See Bibliothèque Kandinsky – MNAM-CCI, Centre Pompidou. https://archivesetdocumentation.centrepompidou.fr/ead.html?id=FRM5050-X0031_0000086#FRM5050-X0031_0000086_e0000032. Accessed 25 Oct 2021.
- 69.
Interview with Françoise Jolland on her career at CCI, Paris, on 12 Mar 2021.
- 70.
Marechal (2021).
- 71.
- 72.
Leymonerie (2016).
- 73.
Leymonerie (2016), pp. 91–104.
- 74.
Leymonerie (2016), pp. 139–149.
- 75.
See survey of one hundred industrialists and designers in Coll. (Mar–Apr 1972).
- 76.
‘The agency offers its clients a contract in three phases, each of which ends with a billing stage. At the end of the first phase, the CEI undertakes to present three main ideas in the form of a drawing, from which the client indicates the one he prefers, which then becomes his property’: Leymonerie (2016), 147. In phase 2 the designers develop the solution and make up the project. Phase 3, which is optional, includes the industrial synthesis before the production launch.
- 77.
Registrations from foreign companies or designers who trade on French soil and wish to protect their designs.
- 78.
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Coll (1981), p. 11.
- 79.
Roubier (1954), p. 64.
- 80.
The Mobilier National, and through it various government institutions, called on Pierre Paulin regularly for more than fifteen years, including projects for the Maison de la Culture in Rennes (1968–1969), the Élysée Palace (1969–1973), the French Pavilion in Osaka for the International Exhibition (1970), the renovation of the Louvre (1968–1972), prestige furniture (1979–1981), right up to the functional flat of the President of the Georges Pompidou Centre (1978–1979) and the office of François Mitterrand (1984–1985).
- 81.
Perec (1967).
- 82.
Barthes (1990 [1967]).
- 83.
Baudrillard (2005 [1968]).
- 84.
Baudrillard (2019 [1972]).
- 85.
Examples include Flos, Magis, Artifort, Norman Coppenhagen, Hay, Artek, Vitra and others.
- 86.
Catherine Geel (2021b), pp. 18–29.
- 87.
Goncourt and Goncourt (1873).
- 88.
Goncourt and Goncourt (1873), p. 130.
- 89.
Goncourt and Goncourt (1873), p. 130.
- 90.
‘La dernière mode’ in Mallarmé (1998 [1874–1875]), p. 354.
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Geel, C. (2022). History and Current Status of Design in France. In: Aso, T., Rademacher, C., Dobinson, J. (eds) History of Design and Design Law. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8782-2_13
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