Lion de Belfort

The world population of carved lions must rival that of the living and breathing variety. An association with nature at its most powerful and ruthless is universally desired by princes and tyrants. Despite occupying the summit of the food chain, the lion is routinely identified with superhuman courage and stamina unlimited. When the French nation was absorbing the humiliation sustained during the comprehensive military defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1870-71, the heroic resistance of the French troops and local volunteers at the Siege of Belfort was a rare instance of successful defiance and quickly became an essential national story. In the interest of salvaging some vestige of national pride the event was celebrated by commissioning a massive carved lion to adorn the rock-face outside the town of Belfort. The work was carried out by Frédéric Bartholdi and completed in 1880. Bartholdi was the foremost monumental sculptor of his age and would become world famous for his carving of the Statue of Liberty. A more modest version of the Lion of Belfort was installed in a major street intersection to the south of Montparnasse that takes its present name (Place Denfert-Rochereau) from the name of the French commanding officer at Belfort. As the access point for the Parisian Catacombs, Place Denfert-Rochereau was formerly known as Place d’Enfer. Thus it could be renamed with minimal disruption. 

Palais de la Porte Dorée

Palais de la Porte Dorée was built for the Paris Colonial Exhibition of 1931 and subsequently became a museum of African and Asian art. It now serves as a museum of the history of immigration in France (Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration). The building is imposing and uninviting, rectilinear and austere in form – there are 26 steps to climb to the entrance, a line of square-section segmented columns runs the width of the building supporting a deep overhang that shelters the terrace but in compensation for the unrelenting formal severity the frontage and flanks are entirely encased in a spectacular display of exuberant Art Deco-inspired bas-relief carvings telling the story of France’s imperialist adventure with unembarrassed relish. 

Carved from the stone slabs by Alfred Auguste Janniot (1889–1969) in under 2 years, deep under-cuts and richly textured surfaces create dramatic shadows and graphic visual rhythms. An abundance of exotic plant and animal life hold the compositions together while indigenous labourers and subsistence farmers toil mightily in land and sea. It’s a fantastic conceit from a time when France’s colonial project was still a subject of great national pride – an unquestioning celebration of subjugation and exploitation is expressed as a sanitised pictorial fantasy from which all the injustice, inequality, trauma and suffering has been omitted. Considered on its own terms in the light of contemporary attitudes, it functions as an essay in wish fulfilment, a comforting fantasy of social harmony and partnership between oppressor and oppressed. We may feel uncomfortable with the exaggerated sexualisation of the African figures but in the context of the time and place it was unexceptional and part of the visual vocabulary of the Art Deco era. To add to the notable mammiform wonders, the great colonial port cities of France are represented by bare-breasted voluptuaries, godesses of prosperity and symbols of economic dynamism (City of Bordeaux above). In essence it’s a richly tactile but illustrated building. It quickly paid off for Janniot, who within a year was invited to New York by the Rockefeller family to decorate the Rockefeller Center with a bronze allegorical relief symbolising Franco-American friendship. 

Silent Witnesses

The facts are hard to come by but most estimates suggest that France has no more than a fifth of the surveillance cameras deployed on British streets. As if to compensate, French streets have a very high population of carved and modelled figures maintaining observation over their flesh and blood compatriots. The city of Marseille is well endowed in this respect and a small selection follows here. It begins at the railway station where a selection of savage beasts and wrestling figures patrol the concourse. In the city centre they can be seen flanking the entrances to department stores and at busy traffic intersections where their frenzied activities, frozen in stone, form a strange counterpart to the furious commotion that circulates around them. As you pass through a doorway, a blank stare is directed downwards from the tympanum. And at many street corners diminutive Madonnas occupy tiny recesses at second storey level as a reminder of the existence of higher powers. 

Cut from the rock

Last Monday night BBC Radio 3 broadcast a programme in which the Classical sculptor, Alexander Stoddart, considered how the Mount Rushmore monument in South Dakota works as a sculpture. Stoddart expressed a low opinion of Gutzon Borglum’s sculptural competence but found that the power and scale of the setting of the monument enabled him to transcend his limitations on this occasion. There is symmetry in the way that this monument to America’s greatest presidents was inaugurated by Calvin Coolidge, recognised by many as the worst of American presidents. I read once that, as Washington was commemorated by a 555ft. obelisk, then Coolidge deserved nothing less than a 555ft. hole in the ground. The present incumbent may have an even stronger claim to this melancholy distinction and only 3 months remain in which he can fix his place in posterity. What is certain is that this monument has become an indispensable element in the Great American Iconography and that’s a good reason to display this postcard folder from 1949, some 8 years after completion of the project.


Blasting, drilling, wedging and chiseling went on for 14 years and the finished monument has some unique features including 22 inch projections around the iris of the presidential eyes to reflect light and produce an illusion of sparkle. Teddy Roosevelt’s spectacles present another very satisfying illusion by means of carved marks that define the form by the impact on the flesh above and below the eyes. As for scale, Borglum calculated that if the figures had been portrayed in their entirety they would have each been 450ft. in height.