From Iron to Glass: Transparency and Pluralism

The author reads a number of recent architectural constructions in Paris (mainly the Louvre pyramid, but also the Musee d'Orsay and the Institut du monde arabe) and argues that they affirm the plurality of contemporary France while at once inscribing and subverting the conventions of its (once) dominant culture: the Arab world in the heart of Paris, the museum cum railway station as the focal point of conflicting tastes, the pyramid as both accomplice and critic of history. Their pluralism qualifies them as postmodern. These monuments also propose a new role for today's museum. The building itself becomes an art object, and the museum is not reduced to its function as a place for education and edification; it demands an inventive and exploratory initiative on the part of the visitor. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol20/iss2/4 From Iron to Glass: Transparency and Pluralism. Maryse Fauvel College of William and Mary Since 1985, Paris has been the scene of spectacular inaugurations: the opening of the Geode and the Grande Halle at La Villette in 1985, of the Cite des Sciences et de I 'Industrie on the same site in 1986; the opening of the Musee d'Orsay in 1986 and of the Institut du Monde arabe in 1987, of the Louvre pyramid in 1989, as well as of the Arche de la Defense and the Bastille Opera. An impressive program, and one that seems intended to mark a new fin de siecle, in the manner of the Eiffel Tower a century earlier. But what relation can be discerned between the architectural gesture of the Eiffel Tower on one hand and those of the pyramid, the Musee d'Orsay, and the Institut du Monde arabe on the other? Continuity or change? The culmination of one era or the inception of another? In other words, can one say that these architectural objects are tokens of modernity and postmodernity, respectively? According to Pierre Gaudibert, modern art "was born around the 1880s with the first industrial revolution, the rapid development of capitalism and the stock market, the expansion of imperialism, the transformation of the urban infrastructure, and mass consumption." It manifests itself as "an act of vehement rupture," of a "permanent revolution" (10I 1).' Modernist architecture "concentrate[s] on pure space and form . . . and jettison[s] ornament, historical allusion, color, metaphor, and representation . . . "(Jencks, Architecture 178). The modernist principles are "rationality and order" ( 103) "logic, technique, repetition, structure, construction" (44) and abstraction, often resulting in impersonality, monotony and transparence. Charles Jencks defines post-modernism in these terms: Post-Modernism is fundamentally the eclectic mixture of any tradition with that of the immediate past: it is both the continu1 Fauvel: From Iron to Glass: Transparency and Pluralism Published by New Prairie Press 338 STCL, Volume 20, No. 2 (Summer, 1996) ation of Modernism and its transcendence. Its best works are characteristically doubly-coded and ironic, making a feature of the wide choice, conflict and discontinuity of traditions, because this heterogeneity most clearly captures our pluralism.