Tour de Babel (Architecture II)

Roger Vieillard

Vieillard was inspired to do this print after walking beneath the Eiffel Tower and his alternative title is "Architecture II." He drew the tower from the inside as it soars to the sky, architectural elements supporting each other with fragility. The image brings to mind Piranesi's Carceri series and Escher's strange, interwoven structures.

Hacker notes about this image on page 12: "'Tour de Babel' is an invention of which Piranesi himself would have been envious, for nothing since the Carceri even approximates to this dazzling, vertinginous tour de force...the Tower of Babel depicted from the inside, looking upward. The structure consists of vast arches, huge columns and pilasters, winding stone staircases and bridges supported by giant caryatids, all ascending to the dizzy heights of a dome that floats almost weightlessly above...A nice detail is added by a minute 'penseur', seated on a pilaster at top left 'contemplating the absurdity of it all'.

Vieillard's work was represented in the important 1944 exhibition "Hayter and Studio 17" mounted at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition included sixty prints by thirty-two artists from twelve nations.

Hacker notes on page 96 of his Vieillard catalog: "...Vieillard rarely printed the whole of an edition simultaneously, but typically printed only as and when further impressions were needed. If a better name for a print occurred to him, he did not hesitate to change the title..."