Wooden structures sheltering under the shade on ground level repeat G. Eiffel’s biblical injunctions against rust and so every seven years cleaners and painters come out in force to give the Tower a new coat of paint. The first coat back in 1889 was « rouge foncé », dark red or cordovan, the color of a solid Bordeaux or the blood of an old horse, endlessly preferable to the current bureaucratic brown but they have their reasons.
By official count, 1,000 scrapers are employed to get a rust-free surface, sixty tons of paint to cover 2,500,000 square meters of surface, 1,500 brushes, 50 kms of safety lines, 36 months of work on one Tour Eiffel. The human factor consists of some 25 painters - the men laughed at that number when I quoted it - all of them working slowly and patiently in the melting heat over the course of the long June days. They acted as if the canicule, the terrific heat wave Paris is going through right now, were minor stuff, barely worth mentioning. Their job is what any of us would consider the thrill - or terror - of a lifetime. They had their gear on, complete with ski caps, and were about to start climbing. If you look closely at the image at the top, that little figure, the dancing ant near the sommet is a man dangling off the Tower, brush in hand.
Christophe M, 27, born Clermont-Ferrand, specializes in altitude and « complex » paint environments. Paris, June 2022
Taking the stairway down to avoid being packed into the air-conditioned elevators, I spied another solitary, someone who’d found a quiet place to read what looks like a training manual in one of the many metal stairways of the labyrinth.
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Apologies again for being away from the desk pumping out the samizdat. Unavoidable, one must eat and occasionally buy new pants. (The holes one never notices are always in back.) I have three articles 80 % written, a followup on the protest against the massacre of Parisian trees and a report on Sunday’s elections, plus a film project I’ve been trying to get to for months. Then there’s finding a home for that damn novel… Recording regularly at Radio Olympiades, today’s show half an hour of percussion works by Iannis Xenakis, the Greek resistance fighter/ architect/ composer who worked with both Corbusier and Edgar Varèse. His work is avant-garde, uncompromising and highly listenable. Like Varèse or Zappa (with whom he shares a few things), it hasn’t dated into a pose, the aggressive gestures of late 20th century aesthetic argument. Most of the programs play Sunday afternoon, le Fil Rouge de Jazz with Tommie MacKenzie at 10 pm Paris time but in any case, radioolympiades.fr is a reliable home for your ears. We’ll be celebrating Macca’s 80th some time next week.
James, why no mention of Marc Riboud’s iconic Eiffel Tower painter?
The seven-year repainting schedule reminds me of an early Tom Stoppard radio play titled Albert’s Bridge, the philosophical musings of a man who spends his whole life painting and repainting a bridge. When he completes it, it’s time to start all over again.
Right you are ! Don't think I've forgot...I've got that photo in my sights as I try to get in with the painters for a contempo version of Riboud. Sharp of you to mention. Right now I'm preparing three posts for today but plan to expand the Eiffel piece when I have a chance for further reading. Many thanks for the response.