Arceuil, with the hills and towers of Paris in the distance. Photo : Damien94
If we trace the name back to the Gallo-Romain, Arceuil, a commune south of Paris, means Town of the Arcs. Its Roman aqueducts fed water to the famous baths in the market at what is now Cluny in Paris, at the foot of the Sorbonne. They were rebuilt during the regency of Maria de Medicis. The poet Ronsard got a kick strolling about its purlieus and Feininger painted its carnival in 1911. Its one brush with scandal dates from 1768, when the Marquis de Sade seduced a down and out woman on the steps of Saint Roche and led her back to the house he’d rented in Arceuil, where he tied her up and tortured her for days, until finally she escaped out the window. It was the beginning of troubles for both of them.
Today it is a bedroom for Paris, with its arches bisecting a town forty percent social housing, the French phrase for projects, although nothing like the inhuman prisons built in the States. The town boasts one of Madame Curie’s workshops and Anis Gras, a 19th industrial producer of anisette whose brick buildings have been converted to an arts center. Across the street is the Lorenzi Atelier de Moulage.
The original Lorenzi casting workshop opened in Paris in 1871 and, business burgeoning, soon expanded to Arceuil, providing working space for Rodin and later Dali. Michel Lorenzi modernized the family firm, adapting to new techniques and synthetique materials; the Atelier’s reproductions of modern masterpieces by Dubuffet, Niki de Saint Phalle, Botero and others can be seen in museums around the world.
The doors were open in September when I stumbled on the place and a brief, genial tour commenced. The photos here are a record of a working French atelier that is one of the last keeping a Renaissance tradition alive.
All photos above : JG.
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n.b. Commune, as referenced above in the first line, designates one of the smallest politico-geographic entities in France, one with a territorial identity and what the French call personnalité morale, a management of affairs separate from the state and hence a bulwark against it. Euro Desk’s upcoming interview with Bruno Latour explores this further.
I have a question regarding the French use of the term commune.
I first read of the French use of the word commune with respect to the Paris commune of 1870. That commune as I understood it was based on specific revolutionary beliefs and arose when Prussia defeated France in battle. But so many other things are called communes in Paris. The region you toured outside of Paris is, apparently, a commune.
You write that a commune is one of the smallest political- geographic entities in France. As I read that, any small entity can therefore be a commune. I am sort of confused. I hope I am not a pain by posing so many questions.
This is fun and interesting isn’t it? You should continue to get out more. Why do I need to get a clickable link emailed to me every time I want to comment on here?