To the clanging of church bells with bicyclists riding by, tile artist Josh Blanc and Layl McDill (behind the camera) documented their recent Paris tile tour in videos posted on YouTube and Facebook. Guided by a book from Friends of Terra Cotta, Paris and the Legacy of French Architectural Ceramics, they followed its map to early 20th Century installations that still amaze today.
Blanc tells of first getting invited in to, and then getting kicked out of, one building full of murals, on their first trip 20 years ago.
Also on that early trip, they showed their waiter the guidebook closeup of 31 rue Champagne Premiere, the work of Alexandre Bigot in 1911. The waiter asked if it was a picture of chocolate. “Since then that is what we named it, the chocolate tile facade. Fun fact…the artist Man Ray had lived in this building back in the 1920s.” Inspired by this tile installation Blanc has been making historic reproductions of these tiles.
Another inspiration, tiles on Saint Jean de Montmartre Church in Paris, also by Bigot, in 1901, are part of the Moorish architecture of the building with Art Nouveau architectural elements.
According to the information plaque the tiles are lauded for their originality and the orientalist décor treated in “Modern-style.” This speaks to the transition from Victorian aesthetics of machine-made perfection of materials to the Arts & Crafts lust for the materials to speak for themselves showing all of the beauty marks and character of the clay and glazes.
In another video, Blanc asks tile setters back home to speculate on how the material was installed on the tile facade that wraps the building at 185 rue Belliard by architect Henri Deneux built in 1913. It features a dynamic tile design patterns that are reminiscent of Islamic tile designs you would see at the Alhambra in Spain but in super large scale. “The tiles patterns are amazingly equally spaced out and line up from horizontal to vertical throughout the facade. This seems like it would have taken an amazing feat of skill and patience,” Blanc said.
Where do you get your inspiration for new work? Artists among us, your stories should inspire others, too. Please post videos of your exotic trips and insights. We would love to host more such links on northeastminneapolisartsdistrict.org.
—Article by Margo Ashmore