Houdon and the American Collective Memory

Recently my family and I embarked on a spring vacation road trip that included spending time in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello. The trip was, partly by intention and partly by accident, a kind of civic education tour. One persistent memory for me has become the artistry of Jean-Antoine Houdon, the French neoclassical sculptor.

Houdon (born at Versailles, March 20, 1741 – died in Paris, July 15, 1828) excelled at portraying with classical realism the great figures of his day. At the Philadelphia Museum of Art I encountered his bust of Benjamin Franklin, which stands at the center of small rotunda gallery. Franklin did not sit for Houdon, who apparently drew on memories of having seen the American statesman at various times when Franklin was representing the fledgling United States in France from 1776 to 1785. A 1778 marble version of the bust can be viewed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Houdon exhibited a terra cotta version at the French Royal Academy Salon in 1779. (A 1778 terra cotta bust of Franklin can also be seen at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.)

Houdon actually met Franklin in 1783. The Philadelphia marble bust dates from 1785 and is the most detailed. It has become the iconic portrait in the round of the American statesman. At eye level one can almost imagine standing before the great man himself.

Houdon’s plaster bust of George Washington stands in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Franklin invited Houdon to visit the United States, specifically so that Washington could sit for the artist. However, in the National Gallery the more remarkable images may well be two busts of the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, whose ideas helped shape the thinking of many of America’s founders. Voltaire was a favorite model for Houdon. The two marble busts in the National Gallery show Voltaire with and without a perruque (wig) but both with a wry smile, consistent with Voltaire’s fame for his wit.

At Monticello visitors can see Houdon’s bust of Thomas Jefferson, a terra cotta-patinated plaster on a marble plinth. Jefferson met Houdon while the former was minister to France from 1785 to 1789. Before leaving France at the outbreak of the French Revolution, Jefferson acquired ten or twelve terra cotta-patinated plaster busts of figures such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Voltaire for Monticello. Jefferson also sat for Houdon himself and brought back several plaster versions of his own bust to give to friends.

Houdon worked from life, portraying the noteworthy figures of his day with extraordinary skill and accuracy, thus giving future generations the images that form the American collective memory of its founding generation. What a marvelous gift these images are for today and for the future.

Architecture as Sculpture

Architecture often has a sculptural quality. Frank Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and Le Corbusier’s Notre Dame du Haut Chapel at Ronchamp in eastern France spring to mind as Modernist examples. But in the American Southwest stands an equally impressive, though spatially more modest structure, older than these but still archetypically Modernist in its form and line: the San Francisco de Asis Mission Church in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico.

Built between 1772 and 1816, this adobe church was constructed by Franciscan Fathers, whose patron was St. Francis of Assisi. It is located southwest of Taos, an artists’ colony in the high desert of northern New Mexico, near the Taos Pueblo, the 1,000-year-old settlement of the Taos, or Northern Tiwa, Native American Pueblo people. Nearby the Sangre de Cristo mountains provide a backdrop.

What distinguishes this church sculpturally is not its entrance, which is fairly conventional, but its rear structure. The asymmetry of the exterior of the apse (in conventional terms) and the use of stunted, lump-like buttresses give the building a decidedly Modern sculptural appearance, much as some ancient Chinese ceramics, say, from the Shang Dynasty (1600-1100 BCE), look as though they might have been thrown yesterday.

Declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970, the mission church was recognized much earlier as something special. It has been captured as art by the likes of Ansel Adams and Paul Strand (photography), Georgia O’Keeffe (painting), and Gustav Baumann (color woodcut). O’Keeffe, in fact, called the church “one of the most beautiful buildings left in the United States by the early Spaniards.”

One would be hard-pressed not to be captivated by this early example of adobe architecture. I know I was. So on a recent visit to New Mexico, I also found myself digitally capturing the image of this church, as shown above. The combination of adobe, blue desert sky, and the influences of sculpture, architecture, and religion made the opportunity to record an impression irresistible.