Picturing architecture otherwise: The voguing of the Maison Mallet-Stevens

Art History

Volumn 23, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 559-598

  Becherer, Richard ^a  

^a AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT   (Lebanon)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61249494345     PISSN: 01416790     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8365.00227     Document Type: Review

References (93)

1. Howard Mandelbaum and Eric Myers, Screen Deco (New York: St. Martin's, 1985), p. 30.
2. The epigram begins its life as 'le décor doit "jouer"', Robert Mallet-Stevens, 'Décors pour le Cinéma', Comoedia (18 April 1922), p. 5.
3. In 1923 he mentions the '"jeu" du decor' in 'Les Décors du Cinéma', Gazette des Sept Arts (de Canudo) no. 2 (25 Jan 1923), p. 12
4. and Gazette, nos. 6-7 (10 May 1923), p. 18.
5. The phrase 'l'architecture "joue"' is finally coined in the address he delivered at the August-September 1924 Musée Galliéra conference, 'Le Cinéma et les Arts: Architecture', attached to the first annual Exposition de l'Art dans le Cinéma Français, as transcribed the following year in Les Cahiers du Mois, nos. 16/17 (1925), p. 95. The aphorism is to be repeated many times thereafter.
6. Rob. Mallet-Stevens was a Craig admirer of long standing, as indicated by his 'L'Architecture et les Décors de Théâtre', Tekné 29 (12 Oct 1911), p. 339. In the early 1920s Craig's theories gained renewed currency through two events: an exhibition of his (and Adolphe Appia's) scenic projects in Amsterdam in 1922, and the publication of a book of his stage décors, Scene), which issued directly from the show. Mallet-Stevens knew this exhibition at first hand. Edward Anthony Craig, Gordon Craig (New York: Knopf, 1968), pp. 315-6.
7. Edward Gordon Craig, 'The Actor and the Uber-Marionette', The Mask I:2 (April 1908), pp. 3-15. Written in 1907, this essay had a positive impact on those propounding a frankly non-representational and monumental style of acting. Its proponents included the Eleonora Duse in Italy, Jacques Copeau in France, Vsevelod Meyerhold (and his 'Biomechanical' acting method) in Russia, and Frederick Kiesler in Austria and the United States.
8. Two standard histories of art direction make note of the startling modernity of Gibbons's settings for The Kiss: Mandelbaum and Myers, p. 30 and Donald Albrecht, Designing Dreams (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), pp. 90-1. Neither book, however, acknowledges the fact that the film's settings are cribbed directly from the Maison Mallet-Stevens.
9. For additional background on this famous street, see Stanslaus von Moos, 'Wöhnhauser an der Rue Mallet-Stevens, Werk, vol. 52, no. 2 (February 1965), pp. 49-50
10. Richard Becherer, 'Monumentality and the Rue Mallet-Stevens', Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol. 40, no. 1 (March 1981), pp. 44-55
11. Bruno Reichlin, 'Mallet-Stevens vs. De Stijl' included in Yve-Alain Bois and Nancy Troy, De Stijl et l'Architecture en France (Liège: Mardaga, 1985), pp. 109-120
12. Marie-Annick Maupu, 'La Rue Mallet-Stevens' included in Jean-François Pinchon, Rob. Mallet-Stevens: Architecture, Mobilier, Décoration (Paris: Philippe Sers, 1986), pp. 43-8.
13. Jacques Feyder embarked with great fanfare for America, his contribution to the great postwar importation of talent by which Hollywood sought to raise the artistic standard (and allure) of its films during the 1920s. See R. L., 'Les Adieux de Jacques Feyder', Comoedia (29 Nov 1928), 6.
14. Cedric Gibbons's first-hand familiarity with Art Deco generally and Mallet-Stevens specifically came with his participation in the April 1925 Congrès Internationale du Cinématographe, held at the site of the Exposition des Art Décoratifs. He accompanied Fred Niblo, director of Samuel Goldwyn's film spectacular Ben Hur, then in production in Rome. Gibbons was the film's art director. See 'Le Congrès International du Cinéma', Comoedia (10 April 25), 1
15. also 'Ben Hur', Comoedia (26 May 25), p. 4. The design work of Cedric Gibbons is perhaps best known from his design of the Hollywood trophy par excellence The Oscar. In point of fact, Cedric Gibbons began his art directing career at the Paramount studios under the tutelage of stage designer Wilfrid Buckland who, in turn, learned his craft in the naturalistic theatres of David Belasco and Jesse Lasky. On Gibbons
16. see Lindy Jean Narver, 'Cedric Gibbons: Pioneer in Art Direction for Cinema' (unpublished MA Thesis, University of Southern California, 1988), pp. 107-110.
17. See John Hambling and Patrick Downing, The Art of Hollywood: Fifty Years of Set Direction (London: Thames Television, 1979), pp. 66-7
18. also Robert S. Sennett, Setting the Scene: the Great Hollywood Art Directors (New York: Abrams, 1994), pp. 186-7.
19. Catherine Bauer, 'Machine-Age Mansions for Ultra-Moderns: French Builders Apply Ideas of the Steel and Modern Era in Domestic Architecture', New York Times Magazine, vol. 10, no. 1 (15 April 1928), pp. 10, 22.
20. Francis Jourdain, Intérieurs (Paris: Moreau, 1929), pls. 19-23. Feyder likely called the attention of his designers to this rare, finely produced, photogravured edition which figured prominently in the art library Gibbons assembled at MGM. It was later deposited (along with the rest of the MGM Library) into the Warner Brothers Film Research Library in Burbank, CA, following the merger of MGM and Warner Brothers film studios in the early 1990s, and remains there today.
21. See also Rob. Mallet-Stevens, Intérieurs op. cit. (note 6), p. 141.
22. Max and Jacob Douy, Décors de Cinema: Les Studios Français de Meliès à Nos Jours (Paris: Eds. du Collectionneur, 1993), p. 47. The street remains photogenic enough to interest contemporary filmmakers; for instance, Gaumont Television continues to use various of the street's interiors and exteriors as settings for episodes of its popular, syndicated television series Highlander.
23. Albrecht, Décors de Cinema: Les Studios Français de Meliès à Nos Jours op. cit. (note 5), pp. 58-9.
24. Michel Louis, 'Mallet-Stevens et le Cinéma, 1919-1929', included in D. Deshoulières and H. Jeanneau, Rob. Mallet-Stevens: Architecte (Brussels: Archives d'Architecture Moderne, 1980), pp. 130, 135
25. also François Penz and Maureen Thomas, Cinema and Architecture: Meliès, Mallet-Stevens, Multimedia (London: BFI, 1997), pp. 42-4. This film can also be consulted at the Vidéothèque de Paris or in the Film Department of the Museum of Modern Art.
26. Henri Fescourt, Le Cinéma (Paris: Aux Editions du Cygne, 1929), p. 258
27. see also Richard Abel, French Cinema: The First Wave, 1915-29 (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984), p. 154.
28. Robert Mallet-Stevens, 'Les Décors du Cinema', Gazette des Sept Arts (de Canudo), no. 2 (25 Jan 23), p. 12
29. Léon Barsacq, whose book Caligari's Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions: a History of Film Design, ed. and rev. Elliott Stein (Boston: NY Graphic Society, 1976), the first book of its kind, credits Robert Mallet-Stevens with attaching his own 'empirical approach' of set design to the longstanding system of the professional set decorators, especially Jean Perrier's, pp. 45-6.
30. Mallet-Stevens first uses the term in his article 'Le Cinéma et les Arts: Architecture', Les Cahiers du Mois, nos. 16/17 (1925), p. 95.
31. He later employs the term in prefatory comments to the 'Photography Section' of the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, Encyclopédie des Art Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes au XXème Siècle (12 vols.; rpt. New York: Garland, 1977), vol. 10, p. 78.
32. To place the term into broader intellectual context and usage, I refer the the reader to two sources: Richard Abel, French Film Theory and Criticism 1907-39 (2 Vols.; Princeton: Princeton UP, 1988), vol. I, pp. 107-111
33. and Nina Lara Rosenblatt, 'Photogenic Neurasthenia: On Mass and Medium in the 1920s', October 86 (1998), pp. 47-62.
34. see Ulrich Keller, 'The Myth of Art Photography: a Sociological Analysis', and 'The Myth of Art Photography: an Iconographic Analysis', in History of Photography, vol. 8 (October-December 1984), pp. 249-52 and vol. 9 (January-March 1985), pp. 3-4.
35. Also Ulrich Keller, 'Photojournalism around 1900: the Institutionalization of a Mass Medium', included in Shadow and Substance: Essays on the History of Photography in Honor of Heinz K. Henisch, ed. Kathleen Collins (Bloomfield Hills, MI: The Amorphous Press, 1990), p. 288.
36. See Becherer, 'Monumentality and the Rue Mallet-Stevens', op. cit. (note 6), 44pp. Mallet-Stevens did maintain an interest in the emergent discipline of art history, fostered by either his acquaintance with Bergsonian art historian Elie Faure at the Club des Amis du Septième Art or his biographer Léon Moussinac (Mallet-Stevens, Paris: Crès, 1930) who was a student of Faure. Mallet-Stevens also became increasingly interested in seeing his own architectural practice against an historical horizon as typified by the lecture he delivered on 30 January 1926, 'Les Raisons de l'Architecture Moderne dans Tous les Pays', to members of the so-called Université des Annales, Conferencia vol. 20, no. 4, 24 (1 Dec 1926), pp. 583-97.
37. Melnotte-Simonin was a couturier who made his early reputation as a costume desiger for theatre and music hall immediately after the war. His distinctive stylings were first publicized at the Salon d'Automne of 1920, the year that the Salon first opened its doors to fashion. His debut in print comes with 'La Mode à Paris', Comoedia (26 Nov 1920), p. 2.
38. See also 'Créations Melnotte-Simonin' for a larger description of his business activities and his new salon designed by Mallet-Stevens, Comoedia (17 Mar 1924), p. 4.
39. By sheer coincidence, Comoedia's photographic coverage of Melnotte-Simonin's salon is accompanied by an illustrated article on buttons and buttonholes. The similarities between juxtaposed architectural details outlined in a kind of dotted, basting and hand-stitched clothing details are remarkable. See Comoedia (22 Oct 1924), p. 4.
40. G.- L. Manuel frères were nephews of Henri Manuel. Their name gained special currency in 1923, with the annual Salon de la Couture, which was mounted this year in their studio. In 1925 the studio had an outlet at the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in the Pont Alexandre's street of shops where it advertised itself as specializing in fashion photography.
41. See Frederick Kiesler, Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and Its Display (New York: Brentano's, [1930]), p. 71.
42. Helen Appleton Reade reports that Bonney's clients were commonly shocked to discover that the cryptically named T. Bonney was a woman, not a man, 'Therese Bonney, One of the Internationals: She Unites France and America through Her "Pictures with Ideas"', 1924, n.p., press clippings MSS 83/111 Z V.1, Bonney Archives, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
43. Biographies of Bonney are sadly few. The most recent of these is Claire Bonney, 'Thérèse Bonney, Photographe', Faces: Journal d'Architectures vol. 17 (Autumn 1990), pp. 60-2
44. Bonney's personal archives, including manuscript materials and some photographs, were given to the University of California, Berkeley, and are kept there in the Bancroft Library. In the 1930s the lion's share of her remaining photography was deposited at two sites in New York City: The New York Public Library (where they can be consulted in the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs), and the Library of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of the Decorative Arts.
45. Bonney's testimonial headed the list that included the likes of Victor Bourgeois, Willem Dudok, Alberto Sartoris and Konstantin Melnikov, among others. See 'Introduction', Rob. Mallet-Stevens: Dix Années des Réalisations (Paris: Massin), 1930.
46. See BANC PIC 1982.111 - PIC, carton: 4, file: 136: '[Account book] M. T. Bonney, 12 Rue Montalivet ELY 19.76', neg. nos 404-5, 417-24, Bonney Archives, Bancroft Library. Other designers followed his lead, including Francis Jourdain, Andre Lurçat, Michel Roux-Spitz, Gabriel Guevrékian, Pierre Chareau, and Le Corbusier (who commisioned a portrait from her), among many others.
47. Such montage practices met with two kinds of responses. Firstly, there were those who hoped to purify the formal organization of the page, as did the editors of French photojournals Vu or Voilà and the German Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung. Marianne Fulton, Eyes of Time: Photojournalism in America (New York: Little, Brown, 1988), pp. 88-94.
48. Such assemblage might lead to new, montagically composed images whose meanings would far exceed the sum of their parts, a practice that would reach fruition with artists like Max Ernst, and photomontagistes John Heartfield, Paul Citroën, and Hannah Höch. Matthew Teitelbaum (ed.), Montage and Modern Life 1919-1942 (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1992), p. 8.
49. See Rob. Mallet-Stevens, 'L'Architecture Moderne', Gazette des Sept Arts (de Canudo), no. 1 (15 Dec 1922), p. 8.
50. See 'Pictorial Record of Gay Nineties and Rare Photos of Royalty Part of M. Thérèse Bonney's Collections of 20,000 Negatives'. Bonney's twin roles as assistant fashion editor for the Times and manager of its Paris bureau is outlined in 'Fashion Editor for the Sunday Picture Section and Wide World Photos in Paris', The Little Times (1 Jan 1925), vol. 5, no. 4, Box: 83-111, Carton: 12, 'Fashion Editors and Writers', Bonney Archives, Bancroft Library. Another unpublished manuscript dating from 1925, privately reprinted in 1975 by Mssrs.
51. 'Spring Models in Gowns and Wraps Designed in Distinctive Styles by Parisian Artists', New York Times, Rotogravure section 5 (30 Mar 24), pp. 1-2.
52. In point of fact, there is only one article I know of to discuss the frankly profit-interested, commercial photography as site of visual exchanges between style and money, and this is Thomas Gunther's fine article, 'La Diffusion de la Photographie: La Commande, la Publicité, et l'Edition' included in Nouvelle Histoire de la Photographie, ed. Michel Frizot (Paris: Bordas, 1995), esp. pp. 255-62.
53. Madeleine Ginsburg, Paris Fashions: the Art Deco Style of the 1920s (London: Bracken Books, 1989), p. 23.
54. Albums like Paul Iribe, Les Robes de Paul Poiret (Paris: 1908).
55. See Caroline Reynolds Milbank, Couture: the Great Designers (New York: Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, 1985), p. 78
56. see also Nancy Troy, Modernism and the Decorative Arts in France (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1991) p. 117, pl. 15
57. Part of this uncharacteristic form of representation may also have had to do with the fact that the venue for these shots was not a fashion, but the decorative arts magazine Art et Décoration, which commonly used half-tone photographic illustration, as had such magazines in France and abroad since the beginning of the century. A major motivation for publishing these images in this venue was to advertise Poiret's new line of furniture, marketed under the name Martine. See Nancy Troy,Modernism and the Decorative Arts in France, op. cit. (note 49), pp. 118-20. Poiret would not use another high-profile photographer until 1922, and when he did, he chose the young Man Ray, another one-time American Pictorialist.
58. Palmer White, Poiret (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1973), p. 154.
59. M.P. Verneuil, 'L'Ameublement au Salon d'Automne', Art et Décoration (Jan 1914), pp. 24, 25. These uncharacteristic images for Mallet-Stevens suggest that it was fashion motivating the stylistic change.
60. Lucile was the pseudonym of British aristocrat Lady Duff-Gordon. 'Louise and Claire Bonney, Shopping Guide to Paris', excerpted in the Pottsville, PA Journal (28 Jan 1929).
61. See 'Mme Madeleine Vionnet Demande à l'Art Moderne un Cadre pour Ses Belles Créations', Comoedia (7 July 1923), p. 4.
62. Bonney worked with Edward Steichen, producing advertising images for American-made Stehli fabrics destined for European distribution. See Bonney Collection, File - 'Textile Design-Steichen', nos. 3194, 2284, and two other unnumbered images, Library of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. Bonney became acquainted with both Steichen and Stieglitz from the Stein salon on the Rue de Fleurus which she frequented. See Box 83/111, carton 8, file: 'Steins', Bonney Archives, Bancroft Library.
63. All these women but Abbott produced photographs for Mallet-Stevens. For a more complete account of women photographers during this period see Chapter 5, 'Photography between the Wars: Europe, 1920-40' in Naomi Rosenblum, A History of Women Photographers (New York: Abbeville, 1994). Rosenblum's treament of Bonney is limited.
64. Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, trans. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard (New York: U. of California Press, 1990), esp. pp. 214-21, 236-9. Incidentally, Barthes, by the way, largely sidesteps the problem of fashion photography in this book.
65. Françoise Ducros provides a challenging reading of fashion photographics describing their intrinsic codes of desire. Ducros, 'L'Imaginaire de la Beauté' included in Michel Frizot (ed.), Nouvelle Histoire de la Photographie (Paris: Biro/Bordas, 1994), pp. 535-53.
66. New York Times (20 Mar 1927), picture section V: 3, pp. 1-2. Incidentally, this same photo shoot lent its images to L'Illustration, no. 4385 (19 Mar 1927), pp. 269-71.
67. Pierre Petit, one of the acknowledged masters of French architectural and topographical photography, lived from 1832 to 1909. His photographic studio survived him, profiting from the longstanding reputation of the agency and the continuing demand for his images from the illustrated press. On Pierre Petit, see Les Chefs-d'Oeuvre de la Photographie dans les Collections de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, 1991), pp. 174-5.
68. This is no idle comparison, for Mallet-Stevens was known at the time to have outlined the first 'rules' for set design. See Barsacq, Caligari's Cabinet, pp. 45-6. These included emphasizing a set's foreground elements in order to provide a basis for measuring the receding distance of background features, gridding the floor, and elevating the camera's point of view to provide the viewer with a sense of the decor's plan, hence depth. Mallet-Stevens first lays out these working points in an interview conducted by Emile Sedeyn, 'La Décoration Moderne au Cinema', L'Art et les Artistes 23 (Jan 1922), pp. 157-9
69. and later expands on them in another article 'Les Décors' included in L'Art Cinématographique (Paris: Alcan, 1929), pp. 1-23.
70. See, for instance, Ansel Adams, Artificial Light (Hastings, NY: Morgan and Morgan, 1968), p. 53.
71. Krull recounts that she made her early livelihood working freelance in Paris, assisting the likes of fashion photographer Luigi (Diaz, as, for instance, in his photographs in L'Art Vivant, 4 (1928, pp. 281, 373, 532. She disliked fashion photography.
72. This coverage accompanies Jean Gallotti, 'Une Nouvelle Rue à Paris', L'Art Vivant, vol. 3, no. 64 (15 Aug 1927), pp. 667-9.
73. Here, I make reference to Walter Benjamin's famous essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', where he argues that the work of art loses is authenticity and aura in the process of mass-production.
74. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. and intro. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969), esp. 218-23.
75. My use of the term 'Apparatus' has been shaped by the use made of it by Teresa Lauretis and Stephen Heath in The Cinematic Apparatus (New York: St. Martin's, 1980), esp. pp. 1-9.
76. The 'Apparatus' operates at two levels. Firstly, there are the technical limitations of the mechanical equipment with which early filmmakers were compelled to work. Secondly, the term also suggests a mode of visual thinking that stresses realism over any other mode of representation, and the means required to produce this desired scenic effect, especially the technical processes ingrained into even the most realistic of images. The term, as the authors directly indicate and indirectly suggest, derives from two primary sources: Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan. Althusser regards the institutional fabric of a society along the Marxian lines of 'ideological state apparatus' in 'Ideology and the State' included in Ben Brewster (trans.), Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (London: New Left, 1977), pp. 136-8.
77. He then sublates his ideological understanding of the apparatus with a psychological one as he argues that the psychic construction of the individual cannot be separated from the material bases of society, Ecrits sur la Psychanalyse: Freud et Lacan, ed. Olivier Corpet and Francois Matheron (Paris: STOCK/IMEC, 1993), p. 54.
78. See Metz, The Imaginary Signifier, trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben Brewster, Alfred Guzzetti (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1982), esp. pp. 69-78.
79. Jean-Louis Comolli's essay, 'Machines of the Visible', skilfully explores the idea of the Apparatus in its Marxian dimensions, The Cinematic Apparatus, Chap. 10. Mallet-Stevens's own concern with the technical limits of film-making is evidenced in the designer's indexing of the film decor to the optical limitations of the camera. This is done both to compensate for the distortions visited upon reality by the movie camera's lenses and studio lighting, and to observe the strict economies that he was forced to maintain even as he designed ever larger (and more costly) productions. Robert Mallet-Stevens, 'Des Décors de Films Historiques', Comoedia (5 Aug 1923), p. 2, and (12 Aug 1923), p. 2.
80. Comolli contends that realism has long dominated Hollywood production values, p. 131 et passim. This position is reinforced by Stephen Neale, Cinema and Technology: Image, Sound, Color (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1985), who contends that certain of the the great histories of the cinema (by Germain Bazin and Sigfried Kracauer, specifically), were in fact histories of a wide-ranging realism in the cinema, p. 159.
81. Lauretis and Heath, Comolli contends that realism has long dominated Hollywood production values op. cit. (note 22), p. 3.
82. Marcel L'Herbier underscores this aspect of his film in protest to the press's unfavourable critical response to L'Inhumaine, which criticized it for its glaring 'unnaturalism'. Marcel L'Herbier, 'Le Cinéma Contre l'Art', Comoedia (23 Mar 1925), p. 3.
83. Abel, French Cinema, op. cit. (note 18), p. 179.
84. Edward Gordon Craig, Scene, op. cit. (note 3), pp. 5-6.
85. The concept of a 'primitive' theatre, like 'primitive' film, is an unfortunate misnomer. Current historians of early cinema argue that early film espoused a paradigm of aesthetic construction different from, but not necessarily less advanced or inferior to, later realistic film. See Thomas Elsaesser (ed.), Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Negative (London: BFI, 1990), pp. 11-27.
86. See Tom Gunning, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film (Champaign, IL: U of Illinois Press, 1991), esp. pp. 6-7.
87. See André Warnod, 'M. Auguste Perret Nous Dit Ce Que Sera le Théâtre de l'Exposition', Comoedia (21-22 Avril 1924), pp. 1-2
88. Yvanoé Rambosson, 'Le Théâtre de l'Exposition', Comoedia (26 Jan 1925), pp. 4-5.
89. Mallet-Stevens discusses le vrai moyen in Emile Sedeyn, 'La Décoration Moderne au Cinéma', L'Art et les Artistes, n.s. IV:23 (Jan 1922), pp. 157-9.
90. Emile Bertin, a well-known theatre decorator during the 1920s, sets up this opposition in three articles. The first two, 'L'Art du Decor', Comoedia (30 June 1920), p. 1 and (1 July 1920), p. 1, focus upon constructed decors, especially antique models. One month later, he concentrates on painted decor with an article 'L'Art du Décor: Classiques et Fantaisistes', where he pays particular attention to 'Le Décor Chez Les Cubistes', Comoedia (31 July 1920), p. 1. To my knowledge, he is the first in France to recognize Cubist decor as falling into a stylistic class of its own, and he opens a discourse on the nature of 'cubist' setting. Other writers to discuss cubism during this period negatively associate cubistic decor with emergent German expressionism; Mallet-Stevens, however, looks at cubism as something positively different from both expressionism and realism: 'Le Cubisme au Cinéma', Comoedia (8 Jan 1923), p. 4.
91. Cubism also marks the mediate position that he takes relative to constructive and painted, realistic and expressionistic set decor. It also continues the middle road he traces before the War as illustrated by the architect's early essay, 'L'Architecture et les Décors de Théâtre', Tekné 29 (12 Oct 1911), pp. 339-40. Here Mallet-Stevens sketches out a basic opposition between constructive and illusionistic decor. On the one hand, the production values he early advances were the kind of constructive, large-scale spectacle then advocated by the likes of Reinhardt and Gémier. On the other hand, he also stresses the need for intimacy, abstraction, for fantasy best experienced, he argues, in the painted scene.
92. see Jacques Lacan, 'The Mirror Stage' included in Ecrits, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977), p. 7.
93. Encyclopédie des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes au XXeme Siècle (12 vols, New York: Garland, 1977), vol. 10, pls. LX, LXV, LXVI and Robert Mallet-Stevens, Le Décor Moderne au Cinéma (Paris: Massin, 1929), pl. 31.