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An unsung master of wood, Alexandre Noll in his Paris atelier. (as seen in Alexandre Noll, Sculpteur- Galerie Messine 1966) |
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| He's not to be found in design books, but Alexandre Noll was one
of this century's most original furniture makers. And now, nearly
40 years after his death, with the resurgence of French design
from the 1940s and 1950s, his work is being sought after. by Penelope Rowlands It would be easy to take a piece of furniture by the French artist Alexandre Noll and deduce a life. Or at least it seems easy. A noted sculptor who also made furniture and utilitarian objects--from walnut pitchers to teak bowls--Noll worked almost exclusively in wood. The sensuous, exotic pieces he left behind after his death, at age 80, in 1970, seem to tell an obvious story: that of a bohemian Modernist who traveled restlessly, frequenting Africa and other distant places, and who translated what he saw into blocks of chiseled wood. But the real Noll wasn't like this at all. If he was well traveled, it was only in his mind. "He never voyaged at all, and he hardly took vacations," recalls his daughter, Odile Noll. Instead, he spent most of his time in his studio in the Villa des Roses, his home in the Paris suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses, trying to accomplish something that was both straightforward and infinitely complex. He wanted "to make with wood all that could be made with wood," as Pierre Joly wrote in a catalogue accompanying a 1966 exhibit of his ebony sculpture at Paris's Galerie Messine. This exploration took a lifetime. "It was the shape of the wood that inspired him," Odile tells me when I visit her at the Villa des Roses, where she now lives with her young granddaughter. In his design work, Noll explored every facet of the material he adored, translating wood into something rarely seen before, at least in his part of the world. Such dramatic pieces as the molar-shaped ebony cabinet Noll carved for himself around 1950 to hold a magnum of champagne, look as if they'd be much more at home in a Kenyan marketplace than at Fontenay-aux-Roses. Others, including a mahogany cabinet and chair, seem primitive and modern in equal measure. An audaciously rough-hewn mahogany armchair could have seated one of Goldilocks' bears. Although Noll's friends and acquaintances included most of the important designers of the era, such as furniture makers Jacques Adnet and Jean Prouvé, lighting designer Serge Mouille, and ceramicist George Jouve, his design work stands distinct from their harder-edged forms. His earthy wood sculptures, however, which he began exhibiting in Paris's various salons and galleries in the mid-1930s, seem reminiscent of the work of Constantin Brancusi, another Paris acquaintance. Known in his lifetime for his art, Noll's reputation is now changing shape. While his sculptures continue to be collected, his furniture and objects are in growing demand by a "high profile" clientele, according to Catherine de Beyrie, who, with her husband Stéphane, has mounted a retrospective of Noll's work at their Galerie de Beyrie in New York (through December 20th). Many of the 100 or so objects, works of art, and pieces of furniture on display have been lent by Odile and are being shown to the public for the first time. Notable Noll collectors include "lots of fashion people and decorators," Catherine de Beyrie says, including the German fashion designer Wolfgang Joop and Peter Marino, the New York designer. Shuttered and solid, the Villa des Roses is a classic French pavilion that resembles hundreds of houses in dozens of Parisian suburbs. What sets it apart is the vine-choked, overgrown garden around it, which might have been dreamed up by Henri "Le Douanier" Rousseau. Inside, Odile Noll sits at a large, almost primitively unrefined dining table and talks about her father. His work is everywhere around the room, as are pieces by Odile's late daughter, Catherine, who was a talented woodworker in her own right. (A discreet woman in her sixties, Odile Noll is said also to have a way with wood, although she's now put aside her own work. "I no longer have the time or the nerve to do it," she says. "Now, I'm taking care of Alexandre Noll.") For a man who would later take Soho by storm, Noll lived a surprisingly uneventful life. He had the regular habits of a banker (indeed, he had first earned a living as a bank clerk before deciding to devote himself entirely to his art), getting up at seven each morning and heading out, first thing, to the boulangerie to buy his bread. He spent five days a week in his studio; one day a week he gardened at his old country house to the southwest of Paris, and, each Wednesday, he headed to the capital, where he visited galleries and lunched with friends. He went to bed each night promptly at nine, keeping a sketch pad near at hand so that he could draw if his dreams brought inspiration. Even so, his daughter says that he was often frustrated the next day, trying to remember what it was that had obsessed him during the night. Noll delighted in exotic woods, which he bought from various suppliers, most of them located near Paris's Gare de Lyon--Odile tells me that today only one of them remains. He especially loved ebony, the hardest wood available, and one that he used unforgettably. In the Villa's living room alone, there are dense, almost rock-solid ebony bowls and a two-door cabinet that seems as ancient as time. The piece looks impenetrable, and it almost is, thanks to a hidden ivory lock--a playful, secretive detail that seems typical-ly Noll. In fact, when he was approached by someone from the École Boule, Paris's famous school of furniture making, to teach his own brand of the craft, he refused. "He had little secrets he wanted to keep," says Odile. Her words echo those of the French writer R. Moutard-Uldry, who described Noll in a 1954 book on his work as "a mystical, sensual, and secret man." Noll began making furniture in 1940, according to his daughter, although she doesn't recall exactly why. ("Perhaps someone ordered some from him.") His first pieces of furniture were shown at the Compagnie des Arts Français in 1943. Even then, they appealed to a cultural elite. Odile recalls the couturier Paul Poiret ordering some pieces, and Catherine de Beyrie has turned up records for orders placed by Henri Bendel and other posh New York stores in the 1940s and 1950s. Only a few dozen pieces of his furniture are still in existence, many of them custom made. Odile's abiding memory of her father is of him in his atelier bent over a block of wood. She leads the way through the garden to the studio, unchanged since her father's death, except for scattered bushels of dust. A photo of Noll in this workspace is reproduced in the Galerie Messine catalogue. He's a gentle-looking man with bushy eyebrows and wispy hair, dressed in the classic French worker's smock. He looks away from the camera with a palpable shyness. When Odile and I walk into this enormous, cluttered room, unused for almost 30 years, I feel as if I'm stepping into that black-and-white portrait. The studio is a shrine to creations that have long been completed, to a man who is long dead. All is gray here, and all is work. There are endless bits of wood and tools, even a wall covered with hanging chisels in varying size and shapes. Back at the house, there's another ghostly room, this one a dusty, rarely used basement storage area; wood rises up from the center of it as if a bonfire were being prepared. Mingled among the ebony and the seemingly infinite varieties of mahogany (there are 600 kinds in all, Odile instructs me; perhaps a dozen are represented here) are some half-completed sculptures. Each one seems unreal, almost hallucinatory: a column of wood untouched at one end, a partially carved shape at the other. Except for the omnipresent dust, it's as though Noll has just stepped out of the room. In a way, he has. "I still meet people at openings who talk about him as a joyful, spiritual person," Odile says. At the Villa des Roses, even someone who never laid eyes upon the man can feel his presence in the diverse objects he made: framed woodcuts that he created in Salonika during World War I; an ivory vase from the 1940s; engraved metal lamp bases; a box made from an old railway tie; a perfect mahogany bench. "Wood seemed to contain some lost secret [for him]," Pierre Joly wrote in his catalogue essay on the artist. "You could say that research into this secret took Noll a whole life of uncompleted investigation. You could also say that each step he took in the knowledge of a tree... was a step into the discovery of himself." For those of us who have come along later, there's no way to guess where these inner explorations led. But what's left on the surface tells us all we really need to know: that Noll's vision was a wholly original one, and that his furniture designs are as unique as any that have surfaced in a long, long time. PENELOPE ROWLANDS, who writes frequently for Metropolis, is now a contributing editor. |
Keywords:
French design, furniture, collecting