The Fourth Apple, Steel sculpture on Place de Clichy, Paris, France
The Fourth Apple is a steel sculpture on Boulevard de Clichy, mounted on a stone pedestal and surrounded by four translucent glass panels. The polished surface of the apple reflects light, and the colored glass panels around it create changing visual effects as you move around the work.
In 1899 a bronze monument to Charles Fourier by sculptor Émile Derré was inaugurated here and won a prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition. The Vichy regime took the bronze down in 1942 for metal recycling, leaving only the stone pedestal. A 1969 plaster replica and a 2007 glass cabin by the Aéroporté collective were installed without permission and quickly removed. Franck Scurti's steel apple, chosen by competition, was inaugurated on 1 January 2011.
The title refers to Charles Fourier's "fourth apple": after Eve's, the apple of discord and Newton's, his own was the price of an apple in a Paris restaurant, a hundred times dearer than in Rouen, which set him thinking about trade and harmony. The engraved planisphere on the polished steel carries that idea of worldwide organisation.
The work stands on the central median at 120 Boulevard de Clichy, at the corner with Rue de Clichy, on the tip of the Place de Clichy median. Métro line 13 and line 2 stop at Place de Clichy. It is outdoors on a traffic island, so approach it from the pedestrian crossings.
The apple's engraved planisphere refers to Fourier's claim that his "fourth apple" followed the biblical apple, the apple of discord and Newton's apple. The pedestal is the original stone base of Émile Derré's 1899 bronze of Fourier, which won a prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition before being melted down in 1942.
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