Uncovering Viollet-le-Duc's "Unexpected" Career

Half of a rhombohedron. Remains of a crystal system separating the glacier of Envers Blaitière Vallée Blanche (Viollet-le-Duc). Image © Médiathèque de l’architecture & du patrimoine

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the French architect most famous for the 'restoration' of Notre-Dame de Paris, is a person we unequivocally associate with 19th century Gothic Revival. Although there is no doubt that his interpretive restorations of medieval French monuments were some of his greatest achievements, a new exhibition at Paris' Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine seeks to uncover a "well-connected character who pursued an uninterrupted career drawing, building, teaching, restoring, and many other things."

In a review for Domus, Léa-Catherine Szacka examines this first major retrospective dedicated to the designer, theorist and artist since 1980 in celebration of the bicentennial of his birth. According to Szacka curator Jean-Michel Leniaud has, in this exhibition, shifted focus to Viollet-le-Duc's artistic output, thereby presenting "the less known and the more unexpected aspect" of his career.

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, photographed by Félix Nadar. Image © Médiathèque de l’architecture & du patrimoine

Read the review in full here. Viollet-le-Duc, Visionary Archaeologist is on until the 9th March 2015 in central Paris.

 

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Cite: James Taylor-Foster. "Uncovering Viollet-le-Duc's "Unexpected" Career" 02 Dec 2014. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/573855/uncovering-viollet-le-duc-s-unexpected-career> ISSN 0719-8884

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