Georges Pompidou and Pierre Paulin, the hedonistic normalien and the misanthropic designer

2023-08-22 06:01:00
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In the evening of his life, in the rough and wild folds of the Cévennes, Pierre Paulin (1927-2009) is reluctant to evoke the “Elysée” furniture he designed for Georges Pompidou in the 1970s. Too old-fashioned, too bourgeois, judges the designer, as rough as his colorful furniture is soft and reassuring. “I fulfilled my contract with skill and skill, but in a somewhat pretentious style, does he flagellate himself eight years before his death, in front of the authors of the book Paulin (Dis Voir, 2001), Elisabeth Vedrenne and Anne-Marie Fèvre. It is luxurious decay. »

Maïa Paulin, 81, his wife and partner for forty years, that The world met in their lair of La Calmette (Gard), is not of this opinion. She knows her husband’s grumblings, his irremediable dissatisfaction, his righteousness too. She has archived everything from a career that she wants to promote. “Paulin used to say that he had been despised by France and that this country did not have the manufacturers and furniture manufacturers to match his talent”, testifies the historian of design Anne Bony, who interviewed him at length in 2006. An incomprehensible bitterness in his eyes. “He is a very great designer, a classically trained genius whose Dos à dos and Face à face chairs are brilliant reinterpretations of antique furniture, the sulky and the conversationalist”, notes this author.

Benjamin Paulin, who inherited from his father a patrician face haloed with curls, and his wife, Alice, are also working with their publishing house Paulin Paulin Paulin, to prolong the paternal work. In their vast Parisian residence, which resembles a showroom, they are inexhaustible, pointing out the detail of an upholstered armchair, or the clever assembly of an aluminum chair. For years, this united family has been campaigning for the complete layout of the Elysée to be restored and reinstalled. A fitting tribute to the improbable duo formed by Paulin and Pompidou, the misanthropic designer and the hedonistic Normalien.

Read also: Benjamin Paulin and Alice Lemoine, from Pierre to son

The showcase of “French quality”

Paulin was not close to the former president, as was the painter Pierre Soulages. Between them, no sustained correspondence, equal to that maintained between the Head of State and the painter Georges Mathieu. The Pompidou did not invite him to their home on the Ile Saint-Louis or to their house in Cajarc, in the Lot. The designer himself readily admits that he did not have a very personal relationship with the president, “a masterful character, more than Mitterrand”, he confided. No artist, however, has served Pompidou’s artistic and political ambition better than him.

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