Gautier, Boileau and Chenavard : utopian architecture of the temple in mid-nineteenth-century France

Kerr, Greg (2011) Gautier, Boileau and Chenavard : utopian architecture of the temple in mid-nineteenth-century France. In: Imagining and making the world : reconsidering architecture and utopia. Ralahine utopian studies . Peter Lang, Oxford, pp. 57-80. ISBN 9783034301206 3034301200

Abstract

This chapter examines the creative appropriation by the poet and journalist Théophile Gautier of two utopian artistic and architectural representations at the mid-nineteenth century, by Paul Chenavard and Louis-Auguste Boileau. As the centrepiece of utopian visions of the future city and society, the temple was invested with a regenerative purpose, for it would serve both as a device for cohesion and as a monument celebrating diverse manifestations of human culture and ingenuity throughout history. The chapter first examines Gautier’s discussion of Chenavard’s planned decoration for the walls of the secular temple of the Panthéon in Paris, and then proceeds to an analysis of Gautier’s own visionary prose text ‘Paris futur’, which appropriates facets of Chenavard’s design, as well as stylistic paradigms present in a design for a visionary cathedral by Boileau. The chapter argues that Gautier’s writings reflect at length on the cultural meanings communicated by such utopian architectural projects and give complex articulation to contemporary aspirations to define a new architectural style appropriate to the conditions of the nineteenth century.