In Situ (Sep 2023)
La salle de bains Art nouveau du château Laurens à Agde (Hérault)
Abstract
The Laurens Château at Agde in the Hérault department is an outstanding example of the decorative eclecticism that was in fashion around 1900, and its bathroom, designed by the Parisian artist Eugène-Martial Simas, can be seen as an ideal example of the paradoxes of Art Nouveau. It is a unique decorative ensemble, conceived in a rational manner based on the union of art and industry. Simas, who was primarily a theatrical designer, was attracted by the industrial arts. For this hygienic bathroom designed to honour the blessings of water, he made ample use of the products manufactured by the Sarreguemines glazed earthenware factory and by the Paris metalworking firm of Fontaine. But the presence of tiling and metalwork created by the leading lights of the ‘Art dans Tout’ movement (Félix Aubert, Alexandre Charpentier) seemed to cast the owner of the chateau, Emmanuel Laurens, in the role of some forgotten aesthete from the Midi. This is to ignore the important part played by local decorators and designers, perfectly aware of the latest fashions likely to appeal to the bourgeoisie keen on expressions of a certain modernity. And in its theatricality, this ceramic interior in fact expresses a subtle kind of symbolism in keeping with the spiritual theories of Laurens, the somewhat obscure ideas of a man who was an Occitan speaker and a great admirer of mythical Cathar asceticism, in which water had important purifying virtues. The 1898 bathroom can be seen then as the first act in the foundation of a place dedicated to Nietzschean excess, emerging from fin-de-siècle Christian esoterism.
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