In the dozen or so studios in the old forge buildings, I saw spray-painters, photographers, a collage artist, a modeller, and even a conventional painter, a man called Pierre Chandelier whose studio walls were covered in highly Parisian canvases—slightly naïve apartment interiors featuring the kind of wacky furniture that an artist might own, plus cats, potted plants and views of rooftops out of the open window.
‘The kids in the main studio call me the sous-Matisse’, he lamented—the ‘sub-Matisse’. He was clearly a disciple of the great Henri M, and his vivid Pariscapes were exciting a couple of visiting Americans, who seemed especially pleased that the artist had been canny enough to create several small canvases that would fit in hand luggage, and not cost much more than the suitcase that was holding them.
Sadly, however, the bickering about who was the coolest artist on the block went deeper than disagreements about whether to apply paint with a spray or a brush. At the time of writing, a group of artists who had recently received permission to manage the site on behalf of the city were in conflict with the people who had originally squatted the place and set up studios. Locks had apparently been changed, and some of the older artists were forced to move out of their original studios into smaller spaces. The only consolation is that there seems to be room for everyone, so with any luck the situation will not get any worse.
And meanwhile, the buildings themselves are clearly enjoying being put to active use, as well as benefiting from some sunlight after all those years hidden behind an apartment building—the passageway between the two wings of the forge is now a leafy alley of grapevine, and when I was there, it looked to be preparing a bumper harvest of fruit.
Overall, then, the studio open day was a fascinating way to spend an afternoon, and an excellent chance to get a glimpse of what Parisian artists do before they are sidetracked by media attention and/or huge subsidies.
Artists, a protected species
Not all Parisian artists are forced to squat, however. If you walk around certain parts of Paris, you can see physical evidence of art’s prestigious place in the city’s architecture. In many buildings along the Left Bank of the Seine, the top floors have immense windows—these were purpose-built artists’ studios. The same goes for apartment buildings along the boulevards around Pigalle, where gigantic walls of glass were included in the architects’ plans, giving artists not only soft northern light but an inspiring view of Montmartre. These chic ateliers were designed for artists with a bit of personal capital or a generous sponsor, but in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the city also built less luxurious studios.
An old friend of mine, a sculptor called Lélio, used to live in the Villa Mallebay in the 14th arrondissement, a tiny paved alley lined with garages on one side and artists’ studios on the other. Lélio’s studio, one of several in a row of low, glass-fronted buildings, was made of panels salvaged by the city authorities from the pavilions at the great Paris Expo of 1889. The little house was basically three walls and a roof propped up against the building behind it, and it should probably have been condemned as unfit to live in. Lélio had built the toilet himself and plumbed it into a pipe that led he knew not where (in the 1980s, when developers bought some of the surrounding land, they discovered to their horror that there was an ancient, uncharted septic tank at the end of the lane).
The living quarters, where Lélio had, for a few years in the 1960s, housed a wife and two children, consisted of two perilous mezzanine levels, one of them too low to stand up on. The kitchen was barely big enough for a sink and a cooker, the bathroom was a shower cubicle and the floor was a layer of concrete on top of Parisian soil. The whole thing was heated by a stove with a clanky metal chimney twisting up through the roof.
When I knew him, Lélio was living and working alone in the studio, gradually filling the building with towering totems of wood and clay until there was barely room for a bed and a table.
Needless to say, art magazines regularly used to come and photograph the place—he was the embodiment of a Parisian artist. And, even more regularly, property developers used to try and buy the row of studios, whispering in municipal ears that these artists paying a few francs a month would be just as happy (and have far better plumbing) in a new building in some distant suburb. To the city’s credit, it never listened, and Lélio worked in his studio literally until the day he died there.
The Villa Mallebay has now had modern houses imposed upon it, but elsewhere in Paris there are some unadulterated little villages of similar studios.
One of the best of these is the Cité Fleurie, on the boulevard Arago, a hamlet of thirty or so studios made out of building materials from the Food Hall at the Expo of 1878. Gauguin and Modigliani once lived here, but it was only protected from the developers thanks to a campaign by its artist residents in the 1970s. The Cité is now an historical monument, which explains the perfect upkeep—all the buildings are painted two shades of brown (mahogany for the door and window frames against a beige background), and with their rustic beams and tiny, tree-shaded courtyards, the cottages are enough to make even the least-talented dauber take painting lessons just to qualify for such perfect accommodation. Because even today, tenants of the Cité have to be artists, although one suspects,
