Another tribute in the Jardin Darcy. Sculptor Eugène Piron (1875-1928) was born in Dijon and died in Salon-de-Provence and was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1903. He sculpted many monuments, although perhaps the most interesting here is that of his bust to his fascinating great-uncle, the poet Alexis Piron in the Jardin de l'Arquebuse in Dijon, whose reputation for his youthful erotic Ode à Priape was to dog him for the rest of his life.
Rachel Feinstein's Puritan's Delight (2013). In front of this sculpture in the Jardin Darcy in Dijon is a plaque stating that Feinstein deliberately moves away from modernism to question and explore the history of eighteenth and nineteenth century European art. No social criticism or comment on the state of the modern world, but a 'rich, baroque, sophisticated iconography'. Uncluttered, monochrome, such as this example, a battered carriage with its wheel axles pointing upwards.
The Jardin Darcy is Dijon's first public garden, and dedicated to hydraulic engineer Henry Darcy (1803-58). On this site Darcy constructed a reservoir in 1838 to supply the city with drinking water. The architect Félix Vionnois built a neo-Renaissance garden here in 1880. Another tribute is the monument at the top of the garden by Émile Sagot, with its bust of Darcy.
Famously, Christian-Jaque's 1966 film La Seconde Vérité, starring Michèle Mercier and Robert Hossein, contains a scene shot here.
The polar bear by François Pompon in Le Jardin Darcy, Dijon, is a plastic copy of the original sculpted in 1922, and has been there since 1937. It was in fact Pompon's friend Henry Martinet who sculpted this, and he mentions how Pompon met the animal sculptor Rouillard, how Pompon sought to work against realism.
François Pompon (1855-1933) was a noted sculptor born in Saulieu who died in Paris. He is noted for his animal figures, particularly for the simplification of their shapes and polished surfaces. There's a museum in Saulieu partly dedicated to his work, and two reproductions of his animals (a bull and the famous polar bear) are on open display in the town: this is a copy of the original bull in Paris, which a nearby notice says is a symbol of Saulieu to travellers and 'Sédélociens' themselves; the polar bear is a plastic recreation of the original plaster version from 1928. Around the town are sculptures of animals by Pascal Masi and Cévé. Unfortunately we didn't have time for the museum.
Antoinette Quarré (not Carré as some have written) was a seamstress in Dijon and also a poet whom Lamartine praised but Flora Tristan hated. This tomb in the Grand Cimetière de Dijon (Les Péjoces) is a remarkable praise to her, containing strong words of appreciation from Lamartine, angels holding up her book, a profile medallion of her, and a notable plaque from her friends. This stone is almost a work of art in itself.
Flora Tristan (1803-1844), as this Allée named after her says, was a writer, a feminist and a, er, revolutionary. She has her eccentricities, though, and her Le Tour de France : Journal 1843-44 has some weird things in it. She visited Dijon from 18 to 24 April 1844, was in no way interested in seeing the sights, and was more interested in meeting intelligent workers. She'd expected to find a kindred spirit in the worker and poet Antoinette Quarré after Lamartine's good words of her, a great and beautiful 'girl of the people', full of physical and mental energy. But she found Quarré ugly, deformed, grotesque, and with red hair! She continued her search for like-minded people in Dijon with mixed reactions.
In Dijon I was surprised to find a street named after a midwife, although this was in the hospital area near Saint-Apollinaire: Angélique du Coudray (1714 (Wikipédia claims 1712) to 1794)), who was born in Clermont-Ferrand and died in Bordeaux. She was the first person to teach midwifery, and advocated it in place of the amateur practices which had previously been used. In 1759 she published L’Abrégé de l’Art des accouchements, her teaching manual which she updated in 1769 in an illustrated edition. In Le Musée de l'homme in Paris a facsimile of her model 'Machine de Madame du Coudray' is on display.
I won't go very far into this as it involves the 'T' word (one of my most hated: Tourism), although this is worthy of mention and is perhaps akin to such legends as the Lincoln imp: La Chouette (or the owl) of L'Église Notre-Dame de Dijon. I won't go into the many stories, but it's enough to say that the rubbing of the owl (if owl it is) is said to bring good luck if it's done with the left hand, a little like (say) rubbing Victor Noir's erection in Père-Lachaise or Montaigne's foot near the Sorbonne (with either hand, no matter, I believe). The owl, of course, is on Rue de la Chouette, and the tourist industry milks the legend by showing hundreds of owl triangles for its tourist circuit, which I obviously didn't do: you've only to see the owl tat (such as tote bags) in the souvenir shops and despair. (Oh, and it brings misfortune to rub the chouette while watching the nearby salamander, so be careful.)
We missed a number of things on our first visit to Dijon, in our crazy rush to get photos of the glyptodon highlighted in Éric Chevillard's hilarious Démolir Nisard. Dominique Labauvie's Le Champ de feu (1992) was apparently 'Commissioned by the Ministry of Justice, France for the Courthouse of the City of Dijon'.
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