The Hammock Papers: Heritage.

09 October 2019

Heritage.

As we walk around the sacristy towards the cathedral square, where a lapidarium houses all the fragments of stone and iron that have fallen to the ground since the fire, Villeneuve points up at the giant metallic lace of blackened metal that used to cover the spire.

When the fire broke out, Notre-Dame was undergoing restoration work and was covered with scaffolding. Miraculously, this did not collapse in the 800C heat, though many of the 50,000 poles melted, making dismantling the structure extremely difficult and perilous for the vaults underneath. Imagine disentangling a gigantic pile of welded pick-up sticks 95 metres above a world treasure of medieval architecture. And until each weakened rib, vault, flying buttress, gable and pinion is supported by a wooden structure or exoskeleton, Villeneuve is holding his breath.

architect found his calling right there, under those vaults, visiting Notre-Dame as a child with his family in the late 1960s and 1970s. Sitting quietly on the wooden benches while listening to one of the 20th century’s greatest organists, Pierre Cochereau, Villeneuve remembers gazing at the cathedral’s nooks and crannies, the music enhancing every detail and emotion.

Villeneuve is one of 30 chief architects of historic monuments, a position created in 1893. The idea was, and still is, to recruit the most gifted art historians and architects of their generation to oversee France’s architectural heritage; each is given a portfolio of landmark buildings to look after.

They will of course have their say, albeit a consultative one, on the reconstruction of the cathedral — and in particular its spire, for which a flurry of fantastical propositions emerged on social media after French prime minister Edouard Philippe announced an international architectural competition. Some of the designs attracted more attention than others, such as a Swedish agency’s plan for a cross-shaped rooftop swimming pool, or an eco-friendly forest to replace the “forest” of medieval oak beams that had been ravaged by the flames. The British architect Norman Foster declared his interest, envisaging a light and airy see-through roof topped with a crystal and steel spire.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL