The Garden of Ulysses: Ferdinand Bac, modernism and the afterlife of myth

Ferdinand Bac's three Mediterranean gardens constructed between 1913 and 1925 are more than a chapter in the history of horticultural design.1 They are the product of an existential conflict that reflects one of the central cultural dilemmas of the age for designers of all sorts as well as for writers: the problem of epigonism. How was one to create in a France where prestige of the styles of the past seemed to render innovation derisory and imitation a sterile exercise? ‘During the nineteenth century,’ wrote Bac, ‘one imitated the Past because one loved it ... but, after having imitated it quite badly one got to the point of imitating it too well ....’2 What this tendency led to at the beginning of the twentieth century on Bac's beloved Cote d'Azur, well before the mass tourism of today disfigured it even more, was a singular case of cultural incoherence. Bac's friend, Robert de la Sizeranne, complained of the insolence of speculators and rich winter residents who erected palaces and villas seem...