The Grand Palais newsletter

January 13 – February 21 2010 
The guest artist at the 3rd edition of Monumenta will be Christian Boltanski. The original installation as been specifically designed by the leading French artist as a powerful psychological and physical statement. Combining visual impact with sound, it will pursue his consideration of the limits of humanity and the essential dimension that is memory, while at the same time approaching a new theme: the question of destiny and the ineluctability of death. Monumenta 2010 asks questions about the meaning of human destiny and asserts the rightful place of each individual in collective memory.
After Anselm Kiefer (2007) and Richard Serra (2008), Christian Boltanski's 5-week exhibition, entitled Personnes, brings to an end this first cycle of Monumenta exhibitions offering the public a sensorial experience of rare density.
 
At Monumenta 2010 moderators will be on hand to offer the public insights into the exhibition, while the programme also features workshops for schoolchildren, and Friday and Saturday events including talks, projections, and opportunities to meet specialists and personalities.

Braving the cold, the snowfall and transport strikes, no fewer than 220,000 Grand Palais fans came to the Nave during the two-week Jours de fêtes event, with attendance peaking at 25,000 in one day! The 2nd edition saw a 20.1% increase in daily attendance compared with the 1st edition in 2005, visited by an average of 13,664 per day.
The event devoted to fairground arts and gypsy jazz, celebrating the centenary of the guitarist Django Reinhardt, was a huge success. Visitors of all ages were thrilled by the big wheel, the merry-go-rounds, and the ghost train, and helped themselves to churros, candy floss and marshmallow. We can't wait for next time.

In 2008 the Grand Palais launched an ambitious restoration and enhancement programme. In this new series we shall each month spotlight one of the crafts involved in the restoration of the Grand Palais. This month: the staff or fibrous plaster used in the Alexandre-III Rotunda, providing access to the projection room, the restaurant (currently closed for refurbishment) and the Nave. The restoration work, due for completion in the coming weeks, has enabled the original plans drawn up by the architects of the Grand Palais in 1897 to be executed at last.
 
1 / Working with staff.
We know that plaster has been used since Egyptian times. We use it to repair broken limbs and decorate buildings, and a whole range of specialised skills like plastering ─ sometimes with stucco or staff ─ and pattern (mould) making revolve around this age-old material. So what exactly is staff? Basically fibrous plaster: in other words plaster that has been reinforced with hemp, jute or coarse cloth. It is used in architectural embellishments like capitals for column tops, acanthus leaves, cornices and rosettes. Moulding these ornamental pieces and then fitting them on to walls and ceilings is challenging work.
 
3 questions for Mr. Peyssou, specialised fibrous plasterer with the company Soe Stuc et Staff
What did your work in restoring the rotunda at the Grand Palais involve?
When you work with staff there are different options, and we chose moulding. Based on the original drawings, we made our own full-scale drawings of the ornamentation, and after these had been approved by Alain-Charles Perrot, the chief engineer responsible for historic monuments, we made scale models in clay. We used these to make the elastomer (synthetic rubber) moulds in which we cast the plaster. When the pieces come out of the workshop, they have to be fitted into place. To facilitate adhesion to the ceiling we fasten wadding (fabrics dipped in plaster) to them.
 
How did you get into the trade?
I learned my trade from the Compagnons du devoir, a craftsmen's organisation that goes back to the Middle Ages. I learned the basic plasterer's skills and went on to master staff and stucco after I joined Soe, Stuc et Staff.
 
What does it mean to you to be working for the Grand Palais?
It's a grandiose project with a lot of prestige. It was like entering the skin of the workers at the end of the 19th century. A once-in-a-lifetime experience!

To coincide with Monumenta 2010, the Grand Palais and the publishers Presses universitaires de France invite you to a new cycle of lecture/debates on art and history. Tuesdays at the Grand Palais are moderated by Arnaud Laporte, producer and presenter of the Tout arrive ! radio show broadcast on France Culture.
Tuesday January 12: How far must Art be informed by History? with Claude Lanzmann (author and film director), Patricia Falguières (historian, professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales), Nadèje Laneyrie-Dagen (professor of art history at the École normale supérieure).
Tuesday January 19: Do artists have a duty to remember? with Annette Becker (historian), François Niney (philosopher, professor at the École normale supérieure), and Christian Boltanski (artist).
Tuesday January 26: Is art a form of resistance? with Jean-Jacques Lebel (artist), Daniel Cohn (philosopher).
 
The February cycle will be devoted to the cinema.