The Mound of Vendôme
John Hill
19. June 2014
Image: David Gissen with Victor Hadjikyraciou
On June 19 The Mound of Vendôme, an exhibition and research project by David Gissen, opens at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. The project revisits the brief Commune de Paris of 1871 and its demolition of Napoleon's column.
In 1809 Napoleon Bonaparte commissioned the Place Vendôme Column to celebrate his military victory at Austerlitz, modeling it on Trajan's Column in Rome. The spiraling column's bronze patina topped with a statue of the military leader himself is recognizable to anybody who's visited the Right Bank, but it is actually a reconstruction that dates to 1874. The Communards destroyed the original column during their brief rule in 1871.
For architectural historian Gissen the appealing construction is not the column itself but a large mound of sand, hay, and even manure that was created to shield the surrounding buildings from the impact of the column as it toppled to the ground. Having petitioned the City of Paris in 2012 to "radically reconstruct" the mound, Gissen's exhibition at the CCA is a small step toward potentially realizing an architectural-historical form of land art in one of the most famous plazas in Paris, if not all of Europe.
The Mound of Vendôme runs from June 19 to September 14, 2014, in the CCA's Octagonal gallery.
Image by David Gissen, 2014. Original photograph by Gian Marco Valente, courtesy of CCA.
The mound is visible in this 1874 etching of the fall of the Vendôme Column.
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