Orly (Sud) by Pierre-Yves Desaive

As in his Brasilia series, Jacques Benoit chose to gather his latest works under a generic title that does not evoke a place so much as an epoch. Orly Airport (its South Wing, as it is) and the administrative capital of Brazil were born at the same time, and both demonstrate their respective creators’ unwavering faith in Modernity, seen as a radical break with the urban design of the previous era. The choice of personalities such as Oscar Niemeyer and Henri Vicariot, demonstrates Jacques Benoit’s appeal for architecture issued from the Modern Movement.

But the irruption in this series of a representation of Jean Bertin, designer of the Aérotrain (Airtrain) portrayed next to his invention at a dreamed Train Station in front of the Orly West Wing’s building, shows that the painter's interest is not only aesthetic, but also societal. We all know about the Aérotrain’s doomed fate, a monorail powered by air-cushion sustentation and guided on a concrete beam, which reached a record speed of 422 km per hour during a test in 1969 ; the project was first supported by the French Government, but under lobbyists’ pressure, was later considered a danger to the steel industry and the SNCF’s monopoly ; it was finally abandoned in 1977. A Caravelle jet and a Citroën DS car also appear in other paintings, recalling the enthusiasm for technological innovation that characterized France at the time.

Thus, the historic setting -the war boom known as the Trente Glorieuses (Glorious Thirty)- is planted. What about the architectural framework? Brasilia is not Orly, and Henri Vicariot may well be a worthy representative of Modernist Architecture in Europe, but he is not comparable to Niemeyer in terms of boldness and creativity. Jacques Benoit’s choice of both these architects, close to each other in terms of urban concepts, but quite different in the way they expressed them, is not without consequences for his painting.