Autour de Gaston Castel. Promotion d’une sculpture monumentale parlante à Marseille
Throughout his career, the architect Gaston Castel (1886-1971) kept his taste for decorated architecture, even ‘chatty’ architecture, inherited from his academic training at the École des beaux-arts of Paris. As soon as he got the chance, he placed representational decorations on the conservative ic...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | fra |
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Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication
2017-09-01
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| Series: | In Situ |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/insitu/15391 |
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| Summary: | Throughout his career, the architect Gaston Castel (1886-1971) kept his taste for decorated architecture, even ‘chatty’ architecture, inherited from his academic training at the École des beaux-arts of Paris. As soon as he got the chance, he placed representational decorations on the conservative iconography, such as allegories and mythological characters, on his constructions, in particular in Marseilles, where he designed public buildings (opera house, commercial court, high schools and a prison), houses or memorials. One of the main motivations of Castel was to give work to his sculptor friends such as Antoine Sartorio (1885-1988), Louis Botinelly (1883-1962) and Élie-Jean Vézien (1890-1982). As was the rule during the nineteenth century, and in order to preserve stylistic unity, he divided his sculpted decorations into lots which were then allocated. The Monument to Louis Barthou and to Alexandre 1st of Yugoslavia, known also as the Monument to Peace, is the only exception: there, his three favourite sculptors collaborated in a single work of art, and not without difficulty. The in-depth study of this particular case allows us to understand why Castel did not renew the experiment in spite its good critical fortune. |
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| ISSN: | 1630-7305 |