Timeless Resonance: A Review of “Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau To Modernism” at the Driehaus Museum

Photo: Brian Griffin, Griffin Imaging Studios, 2023. Courtesy of The Richard H. Driehaus Museum

Chicagoans may best know the work of French artist and architect Hector Guimard through his Van Buren station entrance on the South Shore line. A gift to Chicago by Paris in recognition of its sister city status, the reproduction of Guimard’s Metro metalwork marvels is slated to be torn out to make way for a more ADA-accessible entrance. Current plans are to reinstall it “at a location selected by the city in consultation with the Park District and other stakeholders,” according to a report by Block Club. That’s an unfolding story of historic preservation worth following in its own right.

Meanwhile, those deciding its fate (and you, dear reader), should check out the exhibition “Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau To Modernism” at the Driehaus Museum. Originally co-organized by New York’s Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, where it resided until earlier this year, it was curated for the Driehaus by David Allen Hanks, former associate curator for the Art Institute, and Cooper/Smithsonian’s Sarah Coffin. The exhibition takes up several rooms of the enjoyably otherworldly Nickerson Mansion in five thematic sections: “Visionary Architect,” “Guimard as Entrepreneur,” “Design for Production,” “Design for the People” and “M & Mme Guimard,” the last of which looks at the objects Guimard designed for he and wife Adeline Oppenheim’s personal use.

Photo: Brian Griffin, Griffin Imaging Studios, 2023. Courtesy of The Richard H. Driehaus Museum

This may be one of the exhibit’s most alluring sections. Numerous objects throughout the exhibition are on loan from the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum, private collections and from the Driehaus itself, many only temporarily on view. It’s a baptism by fire into Guimard’s process to examine drawings of every sort, and then to see a drawing rendered as a lithograph and letterpress plate of his Lustre Lumière lamps next to the finished versions in gilt bronze and glass. Less present, though well-documented is Guimard’s use of the emerging printing technologies of his day to create folios and posters across which his unique typeface was emblazoned, and that entered his signature style into conversation with the era’s prevalent print culture, long before Steve Jobs reinvented typography and redefined the process wholesale for the desktop computer.

Photo: Brian Griffin, Griffin Imaging Studios, 2023. Courtesy of The Richard H. Driehaus Museum

Comprehensive and deeply educational, the exhibit peels back the history evenly and effectively throughout the second floor former bedroom spaces, and a final display off the third floor ballroom. Among the objects are compelling personal effects, such as Guimard’s own leather and walnut chair, Adeline’s hat pins and her engagement rings. But then, a prominent fence section from his Castel Henriette building teases viewers into a contemplation of the architectural scale of the artist’s work, while instructional wall texts spell out how Guimard’s company, Standard-Construction, aspired to address housing shortages of his day through a patented modular construction system.

Photo: Brian Griffin, Griffin Imaging Studios, 2023. Courtesy of The Richard H. Driehaus Museum

Guimard, an avowed Socialist, in response to the post-World War I housing crisis when over half a million homes were destroyed in battle, designed cement blocks to be mass-produced for worker and rural housing that could be manufactured elsewhere, transported and assembled where needed. Tracing an effective line, exhibition materials relate the ways in which Standard-Construction techniques show up in the work of contemporary practitioners. This includes 3D printed homes by ICON’s Jason Ballard in Texas, and Shigeru Ban’s “Paper Log Houses” in Kobe, Japan. It’s these common good projects and Guimard’s instinctual integration of nature into the prevailing Art Nouveau style that ensured a redefinition of the then-emerging new Modernity. It’s clear from “Art Nouveau To Modernism,” the influence of those choices remain resonant today.

“Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau To Modernism” is on view at the Driehaus Museum, 40 East Erie, on view through November 5.

Michael Workman

Michael Workman is an artist, writer, dance, performance art and sociocultural critic, theorist, dramaturge, choreographer, reporter, poet, novelist, curator, manager and promoter of numerous art, literary and theatrical productions. In addition to his work at The Guardian and Newcity, Workman has also served as a reporter for WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, and as Chicago correspondent for Italian art magazine Flash Art. He is currently producing exhibitions, films and recordings, dance and performance art events under his curatorial umbrella, Antidote Projects. Michael has lectured widely at universities including Northwestern University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The University of Illinois at Chicago, and served as advisor to curators of the Whitney Biennial. His reporting, criticism and other writing has appeared in New Art Examiner, the Chicago Reader, zingmagazine, and Contemporary magazine, among others, and his projects have been written about in Artforum, The New York Times, Artnet, The Financial Times, The Huffington Post, The Times of London, The Art Newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Art In America, Time Out NY, Chicago and London, The Gawker, ARTINFO, Flavorpill, The Chicago Tribune, NYFA Current, The Frankfurter Algemeine, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Village Voice, Monopol, and numerous other news media, art publications and countless blog, podcast and small press publishing outlets throughout the years.

Contact: michaelworkman1@gmail.com. Website: michael-workman.com