| Mr. Pierre Sellimersiheim, architect of the Salon des Artistes-décorateurs, therefore had an excellent idea by asking Mr. Pierre Girieud to decorate one of the exhibition rooms with frescoes.
As it is forbidden to touch the walls of the Grand Palais, Girieud works on fiber cement covered with a mortar coating.
He designed his compositions as the decoration of a waiting room preceding in a town hall the Wedding Hall.
The set should include the following subjects: Daphnis and Chloé, Philemon and Baucis, The Return of Ulysses, Orpheus bringing Eurydice to light and Festivals in honor of Alceste.
We'll see at the Salon des Décorateurs. the first two panels and the models of the other three.
The artist has written there with the brush a human hymn, a beautiful call to life.
The only regret that I carry is that he spent his emotion and his technical virtuosity in renewed episodes of the ancient instead of transposing them into our civilization which, after all, does not lack grandeur and lyricism.
Once again the past dominates us where it would sit to exalt the present.
The result is the creation of a daytime atmosphere imbued with paganism in a room haunted by crowds, mostly Christian.
May Girieud forgive me this slight chicane on which we could institute such a fruitful discussion.
If the presence of these decorations at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs could suggest to some architects or to some amateurs to deliver walls to our fresco artists, we should welcome this for contemporary painting and art |