Jean-Jacques Lequeu

This resulted in scores of designs for vast and impressive buildings which had little connection with the real world and remained "paper architecture".

Architects of this genre include Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Étienne-Louis Boullée, and Antoine Vaudoyer; most of these, like Lequeu, are more famous for their unbuilt works than for buildings actually constructed.

They include a cow barn in the shape of an Assyrian bovine; an erotic garden folly called the Hammock of Love, replete with a copulating couple; a priapic fountain in a Gothic tabernacle and two self-portraits in drag.

As early as 1987, the theorist and historian of architecture Joseph Rykwert, in a review of Duboÿ's book, underlined the weakness of his scientific justification which mixed fact, fiction, fancy, incongruous comparisons and the most unverifiable conjectures.

But if we refer to the writings of André Breton and his friends, and even to those of Marcel Duchamp, it is very difficult to find any trace of admiration for Lequeu, who is not mentioned either by the first historians of this artistic movement.