As the summer unfolds and we continue to emerge from the pandemic, shall we take a moment to celebrate the beauty of the garden? Now showing at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City are the early 20th century designs of French brothers André and Paul Vera who -- in their time --sought to develop a new style of gardens. The Vera brothers developed striking Art Deco drawings for gardens that paired a modern geometric order with elements of prized 17th-century landscape traditions. The exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt unites over 20 of the brothers’ drawings for gardens with their 1912 published treatise Le nouveau jardin (The New Garden).
In their transformative treatise, the brothers argued that garden design was an artistic and architectural exercise. They believed the same straight lines, right angles, and fashionable color palette that had recently come to define modernity in architecture and design should extend to domestic outdoor spaces. The Veras thought that gardens should “embrace cultural evolution and progress,” rejecting the naturalistic turn that had characterized 19th-century French landscape design. Instead, they returned to the formalism of style régulier (regular style), the French garden tradition which had achieved popularity in the 17th and 18th centuries. Although the Veras’ theories redefined the modern French garden, only a handful of their landscape designs were ever realized. To this day, these radical concepts are best understood through the drawings of fantasy gardens the Veras conceived to illustrate their philosophies. If the opportunity presents to explore their work, the illustrations are on exhibit through January 2, 2022.
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