Paris reopens playful Stravinsky Fountain, back in motion after major facelift
The Stravinsky Fountain, a set of hydraulic sculptures next to the Pompidou Centre in central Paris, is flowing once more after extensive work to restore its original colours and movement.
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A collaboration between French artist Niki de Saint Phalle and her Swiss partner Jean Tinguely, the fantastical fountain has occupied the Place Igor Stravinsky since March 1983.
The 16 sculptures, each inspired by an element of the Russian composer's work, were designed to be in constant movement, spinning and spraying jets of water.
But as the mechanisms turning them weathered, they had been motionless for several years and their basin lay dry.
A restoration project was first proposed in 2018 and finally began in spring 2022, with the sculptures taken away for specialised conservation work, the basin refitted and its network of pipes and power cables overhauled.
After almost two years of renovations, and four decades after it was originally unveiled, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo on Tuesday switched the fountain back on.
⛲️ 🤩 40 ans après son installation, la fontaine Stravinsky retrouve toute sa splendeur, après une restauration complète du bassin, du système hydraulique et des œuvres de Jean Tinguely et Niki de Saint-Phalle ! pic.twitter.com/J11Bzl8CBk
— Mairie de Paris Centre (@MParisCentre) November 7, 2023
'A circus'
"I wanted sculptures like street performers, a little bit like a circus," Tinguely told an interviewer the year the Stravinsky Fountain first opened.
He and Saint Phalle had been commissioned two years earlier by Jacques Chirac, then the mayor of Paris, to create a fountain next to the recently completed Pompidou Centre. The new artwork was supposed to complement the museum's bright pipes and industrial lines – what Tinguely called "that superb monstrosity".
"The only way to do it was to go to the opposite," he said. "To think in terms of psychology, of speed, of movement, of charm, of games, of jokes."
The two artists came up with a whimsical set of sculptures: seven designed by Tinguely, all in black metal, ranging from a chunky treble clef to abstract contraptions that look like they've come from a giant's scrapyard.
Another six bear Saint Phalle's trademark bold colours, generous curves and sense of humour – like The Mermaid, who reclines on her side while shooting two jets from her brightly patterned breasts.
The final three feature parts made by both artists, including the distinctive Death, a Mexican-style skull by Saint Phalle atop one of Tinguely's spidery mechanisms.
Tinguely, who claimed to have spent a year studying how the light and the wind moved through the square before deciding how to place the sculptures, believed the fountain shone differently depending on the time of day.
"At night, all the light is drawn to the coloured elements – it's Niki's fountain and my machines disappear, become ghosts," he told Beaux Arts magazine in 1983.
But by day, Tinguely said, "the black is more obvious, especially in bad weather, and that's when you can see the details of the mechanisms more clearly".
To mark the reopening, the French music research centre Ircam, which has its offices overlooking Place Stravinsky, commissioned two sound pieces for visitors to listen to as they admire the fountain: an electronic musical hommage to Tinguely and Saint Phalle, and a "sound walk" that tells the stories of seven of the sculptures.
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