“Commande publique, projets pour une oeuvre d’art dans le cadre du centenaire”
To celebrate its centenary, the villa Noailles has decided to get closer to the spirit of the original building. Its unique architecture and geographical position make it a landmark, locally but also nationally and internationally; the arts centre therefore wishes to ask artists to create a visible and permanent installation, a “signal”, a symbol of the perpetual evolution of this building.
This artwork will be in line with the initiatives taken by Charles and Marie Laure de Noailles and continued ever since the venue has been open to the public:
— The building designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens boasts a mast on which its original owners used to hoist their colours during their stays in Hyères;
— In 1925, the Noailles commissioned from Constantin Brancusi a mirror steel version of the Bird in Space measuring 3.5 metres high for the forecourt of the villa. Despite the technical collaboration of Jean Prouvé in 1927, the project could not be completed due to the techniques of the time;
— A plaster Nu à la draperie by Henri Laurens from 1928 placed on a terrace,
— Metal sculptures by Oscar Dominguez installed on the surrounding wall of the forecourt in 1954; — More recently, the artist Erick Samakh created the sound installation Les Joueurs de Flûte in the Saint-Bernard Park in 1999. It consisted of a multitude of flutes hanging in the trees that played various tunes at nightfall.
This public commission receives support from the French government.
Following the call for creation launched at the beginning of 2023, the artistic committee met for the first time in March to select three finalists, whose preliminary projects will be exhibited this summer at the villa Noailles. The winning project will be developed during the second half of the year.
Guillaume Aubry
“And I will close my eyes when you disappear” [Et je fermerai les yeux quand tu disparaîtras] is a light installation project on the scale of the entire villa Noailles. Twelve brass discs are placed on the façade to redesign the whole arc of the sun’s path. Robert Mallet-Stevens, the villa’s architect, orientated all the spaces in the house to face south, to meet his client’s request: “I want the morning sun in the bedrooms and the afternoon sun in the living room, because the sun is the reason why
I will go to this house.” Each disc is 27.8 centimetres in diameter, i.e. one-fifth of a billionth the size of the sun. Throughout the day, they reflect in turn the sun’s light furtively, giving the villa a cosmic dimension, discreet but sculptural, requiring no energy, which addresses both the landscape and those passing through it every day. The title comes from a subtitle in the film Les Mystères du Château de Dé (Man Ray and Jacques-André Boiffard, 1929), in which sunlight seems to play the leading role. The images that go with this text are based on frames from the film.
Jean-Baptiste Fastrez
The villa Noailles is an institution dear to my heart, a place filled with happy memories of discovery and experimentation. I would therefore be honoured to contribute to the cultural history of this place that has given me so much.
For this creation, I would of course like to evoke the major role played by the villa Noailles in the emergence of the 20th-century avant-gardes, but also the vitality of its philosophy, which still persists a hundred years after it was first built.
I would also like to create a piece that embodies the spirit of the Noailles by incorporating the mobility of bodies, even sports, into its conceptual and artistic reflection. I think it is essential that this “signal” stands as a point of attraction for the people of Hyères, visible from the lower part of the town, but also as a meeting and entertainment point at the heart of the villa’s gardens.
Over the years I have spent at the villa Noailles, I have come to realize that youth is at the heart of the arts centre’s cultural project, so I thought it appropriate to come up with a way of involving children in the visit to this historic site, with a view to both heritage and fun.
While looking through the archives of the villa Noailles, I came across a working idea that could bring these different ambitions together. All visitors to the villa remember the images of this swing installed by the Noailles family above the swimming pool, then still in use. The swing is very touching, a symbol of the joy and carefree spirit that probably reigned at the villa at the time, alongside great intellectual stimulation. I would find it exciting to revive this activity within the building by including it in an installation in the gardens. This swinging artwork would therefore be a mobile, whose playfulness would lead everyone to be part of the work while having fun. An activity that can be understood and practiced by everyone, requiring no motor to operate.
Maximilien Pellet
The earthenware mural is part of a century-long dialogue between the architectural garden imagined by Guévrékian and the artworks that have stood alongside it. The drawing engraved in the clay is inspired by a lexicon of forms associated with the numerous sculpture projects around the garden, its changes, additions, and disappearances.
The drawing suggests that, over time, sunlight has imprinted the ghosts of vanished statuary onto the villa’s wall, superimposing the m and creating what is known as a “legacy”. The ceramics will bear witness to this legacy for another hundred years.
The work will echo another, more popular art history: that of the traditional earthenware façades of Hyères. The irregular surfaces, glazed with a light palette, will give this façade a great ability to reflect sunlight, like the glittering sea.
Seen from the cubist garden, the ceramic fresco will blend into the privacy of the setting, offering visitors the chance to recognise a few familiar lines in the furrows of the material. Seen from the city centre, the glitter will act as a powerful light signal on the hill.
