The water mirror of the former garden of the Ernest-Cormier studio, where the Montreal architect’s muses danced the charleston out of sight, was found intact about forty centimeters below the surface of the ground. The rectangular concrete structure, which was backfilled in the mid-1940s, could soon return to service, it has been learned Duty.
“The pool is in great condition,” explains the owner of the Ernest-Cormier studio, Luc Lachapelle. It’s so sad that it’s underground, it needs to be shown! » The construction contractor wishes to recreate the lush garden created in 1923 around the reflecting pool which adorned the facade of the red brick building on rue Saint-Urbain.
The archaeological excavations carried out a little over a year ago in the protection area of this listed building made it possible to uncover entire sections of the basin at the bottom of which was found the massive base which once served as the base of a fountain inserted under the sculpture of a crouching man. “We will use it to exhibit contemporary works or not,” says Luc Lachapelle.
The reflecting pool on which Cormier sailed his miniature sailboat will remain dry, warns the entrepreneur who acquired the three-story studio for a little less than a million dollars in 2016. “It will look a game of pétanque, he said. We are going to recover the concrete structure and the stones around it. »
A green wall must ensure the privacy of version 2.0 of this green setting inspired by the modern Parisian gardens frequented by Cormier during his stay in Europe between 1907 and 1918. “We will not rebuild the palisade, because it would be the festival of graffiti on Saint-Urbain Street,” explains the Art lover, who is waiting for a permit from the City of Montreal to move forward.
With the exception of the basin, the excavations carried out a little over a year ago at the corner of Saint-Urbain and Milton streets did not reveal any elements associated with the period of occupation of the premises by Cormier between 1923 and 1935. The same is true of the plants in the disappeared garden, whose soil was contaminated by weeds, as indicated by the archaeobotanical analyzes consulted by Duty.
Eros
The Cormier garden was once surrounded by an imposing three-meter-high fence, on which plaster bas-reliefs were hung, notably representing Eros, the god of love. This wall of privacy allowed the architect in his forties to live out in the open air his ambiguous relationship with his muses, Clorinthe and Cécile Perron.
“Cormier built his studio a bit like a bachelor pad,” explains Professor Aliki Economides, of the School of Architecture at Laurentian University. He could lead his intimate life and his creative life there. This is demonstrated by the hundreds of photos of the Perron sisters taken by Cormier between the wars. “He behaved like a director for these photos,” notes the specialist, who devoted her thesis to the architect.
-The relaxed atmosphere of the garden was immortalized in 1926 on a home film kept at the Cinémathèque. We can see Cormier’s muses practicing the charleston, a dance which was then considered immoral, even dangerous, since it could lead to heart problems and “weariness of mind”.
The fenced garden on rue Saint-Urbain illustrates the segmentation of spaces desired by the architect concerned with his image. “Clrinthe Perron came from the working class and she posed nude as a model for artists,” recalls Aliki Economides. For Cormier, it was not possible to have an open relationship with her. »
The bourgeois architect leading a bohemian life would push his logic of social segmentation to the extreme in his next house on Avenue des Pins, in which Clorinthe would long be relegated to peripheral private spaces. Cormier ended up marrying his accomplice in 1976, grumpily, just four years before his death.
Fame
Ernest Cormier is best known for his judicial buildings, such as the Quebec Court of Appeal (1926) in Montreal, which today bears his name, and the Supreme Court of Canada (1940), in Ottawa. We also owe him the main pavilion of the University of Montreal (1943), recognizable by its Art Deco tower.
The reputation of the bow-tied architect reached its zenith at the end of the Second World War. He was then chosen to represent Canada within the committee of architects responsible for designing the United Nations headquarters in New York, alongside the Frenchman Le Corbusier and the Brazilian Niemeyer. “He was both local and cosmopolitan because he had studied in Paris,” underlines Aliki Economides.
This New York episode is the swan song of the architect shunned by the National Union of Maurice Duplessis, returning to power in 1944. The major seminary of Laval University completed in 1969 will be the last major project of Cormier. “It’s not a great success,” observes Aliki Economides, thinking back to this labyrinthine building which today houses the BAnQ branch in Quebec. It looks like a mix between Art Deco and Gotham City Batman. Cormier had lost his magic touch. He was from the Old World,” concludes the specialist.
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