Viollet-le-Duc & the Culture of Drawing

The seminar, focused on the architect, theorist, and restorer Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879), will explore the theory and practice of drawing central to his diverse activities in architecture, historical restoration, and art history and in interaction with other disciplines and graphic discourses of the 19th century. From the moment Viollet-le-Duc refused the canonical architectural training of the École des Beaux-Arts with its highly codified drawing practice sanctioned by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, he sought to advance his reputation and define his field of action by establishing distinctive modes of drawing, at first disseminated through the traditional Salon de Paris but soon through the channels of an inventive set of publications, whether polemical organs of the professional press, dictionaries, lecture courses, newspaper, or even children’s books. His dialogue with painters and with scientists – particularly in geology, botany and comparative anatomy – and more generally to the 19th-century visual culture with its new mode of diffusion will be central themes.

The seminar is conducted in parallel with one at McGill University led by Prof. Martin Bressani.  Barry Bergdoll and Martin Bressani are co-curators of an upcoming exhibition on Viollet-le-Duc’s drawing practices to be presented at the Bard Graduate Center in New York in Autumn 2025. Many of our sessions will be held hybrid – Columbia students together face-to-face in New York while the McGill seminar group in Montreal joins us via video-conference.   At the end of the semester the two seminars will present a joint symposium of the seminar research in New York.