Clovis and Claude Prévost, Exposition multimédiale / Multimedia exhibition

The poster above announces an exhibition that from april 10 until july 10, 2010 could be visited in the French city of Melun, south-east of Paris.

I gladly refer to this expo because it gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to Clovis and Claude L. Prévost's documentary work with regard to art environments by non-professionals

Clovis Prévost (Paris, 1940) after his study of architecture at the École des beaux arts in Paris turned to film and photography. Together with his wife, Claude L. Prévost (who often provided the texts) for many years he has been active in documenting through film, video, photography and text a large number of -mainly French- art environments and their creators.

By these media and by panels the exhibition in Melun presented the creations of monsieur G, Robert Garcet, Raymond Isidore, Marcel Landreau, Irial Vets, Camille Vidal, Fernand Châtelain, Abbé Fouré, Facteur Cheval, paying a special tribute to Chomo.

During the exhibition the following films could be seen:

1. Monsieur G., dans le sanctuaire des lasers (Monsieur G, in the sanctuary of lasers), 1976, 26.37';
2. Chomo, le fou en bout de la flèche (the madman at the end of the arrow), 1978, 28";
3. La legende du silex de Robert Garcet (the legend of the flints of Robert Garcet), 1993, 41.40';
(In 1979 they made another film about Garcet, Eben-Ezer, la tour de l'Apocalypse, 27.50',)
4. Le facteur Cheval, où le songe devient la réalité (the dream becomes reality), 2001, 26.37';
5. Chomo, le débarquement spirituel - images de lumière (the spiritual landing - images of light), 30" (this is a compilation of 15 hours of film, shot between 1987 and 1990, by Chomo with the assistance of Clovis Prévost).

This is a selection of Prévost's filmography, but it gives an idea of the couple's field of work ¹.

Entitled Bâtisseurs de l'imaginaire (Builders of the imaginary) the couple put together a multimedia exposition featuring creators of art environments, which from 1975 on for over twenty years traveled through France and other European countries. With the same title between 1976 en 1981 a series of seven films about art environments was broadcasted on television. 

Clovis and Claude Prévost also made a number of books with photographs of art environments by non-professionals. In 1978 they published Raymond Isidore, dit Picassiette, de Chartres, Ed du Chène, -75 p.

One of the best known publications is (once more) entitled Les bâtisseurs de l'imaginaire, Ed de l'Est, 1990, -275 p.

A new, enlarged edition with 420 pages and 595 photos was published in 2016 by Ed Klincksieck. The video has an interview with Clovis and Claude Prevost during the presentation of the new edition at the Halle Saint Pierre in Paris.

The exhibition in Melun not only highlighted the creative activity of a number of outsider artists, it also was a tribute to the creative effort of the Prévost's to document these creations.

Documentation
* Information sheet about the exposition

note
¹  A biography, bibliography and filmography of Clovis and Claude L. Prévost was published in 2016 by Halle Saint Pierre, Paris.

Les bâtisseurs de l'imaginaire
Espace de Saint-Jean
26 place Saint-Jean
77000 Melun France

Jo Pillet, Utopix

all pictures courtesy of Jo Pillet

The French language has some nice expressions to denote people who create art environments. One of these is bâtisseurs de l'imaginaire (builders of the imaginary). The expression was introduced by Clovis and Claude Prévost when in 1990 they published a book with that title.

Life and works

Jo Pillet (born 1947) without any doubt is such a bâtisseur. By profession he is a visual artist who makes surrealistic paintings, but as far as I know in terms of architecture and the construction of real estate he had no professional education.

Nevertheless...... he became a bâtisseur and a very special one.

It all began when in the 1970s he met Dominique Nurdin. They fell in love, became a couple and began dreaming about a life that would be different, like so many young people in their twenties do.

And then these two young people took a step to realize their dream. In 1975 they bought a plot of land of 11 ha on the Causse de Sauveterre, near Champerboux, in the Lozère department.

Causses

If you are not from France maybe you do not know about causses. These are sparsely populated plateaus of limestone in the Massif Central area of France.

Because of the limestone soil the water does not hold, so the landscape may be very stony and desert like, the terrain will be mainly fit for herding sheep and houses will typically be built using limestones.

However, it is a wonderful area to be around and live with the seasons.

Constructing a house

In 1978 a permit to construct was obtained and in 1979 Pillet started building. Most of the time he worked alone, although occasionally some friends would help him. He used stones that abundantly were around and structured them in the form of igloo's, which eventually, after many years of constructing, resulted in a creation as shown in the first picture.

The other pictures show how the stones were arranged to make walls, doorways, windows, and so on. The final structure is perfectly blended with the surrounding countryside.

Building the house has been a project of many, many years, accompanied by a lot of hardships.

Around 1992, after more than two decades of constructing, the building had taken shape and some local newspapers wrote about it. This resulted in a lot of curious visitors who walked around and peeped into the not yet properly gated and locked property.

The Pillet family decided to provisionally gate the house and turn the location into a visitor-friendly place, especially for families with kids. Pillet constructed some gadgets such as  an automobile, a dinosaur, a coaster, a mini golf link and he secluded a separate space to expose his artworks.

The site, which at first was named after the igloo-like constructions, now definitely was named Utopix.

It would take many more years to complete the house. For example, only in 1997 the walls on the inside were isolated to make living in wintertime comfortable and only in 2000 electricity was supplied (by solar panels).

Currently a completed project, Utopix has become part and parcel of the region's heritage. This habitation/sculpture (dwelling/sculpture) surely ranks as an art environment and it deserves it's place in the series of French bâtiments imaginaires.

Documentation
* The Utopix website, with a version in English and many pictures (such as the building process,  details of the various elements of the construction, paintings and sculptures)
* Utopix on Facebook

* The Hérault Insolite weblog with a serie of pictures (September 2013) 

* Article (May 2020) by Gloria Marchini on website Outsider Art Now, with a variety of pictures

* Article about the site by Sonia Terhzaz on her website Cartographie des Rocamberlus (environnements d'art singulier) with an account of the visit she made in August 2020

Video

* Video (2018, YouTube, 4'51") by Teledraille (Cevennes)

first published April 2010, last revised December 2022

Jo Pillet

Utopix
Causse de Sauveterre

La Sirvente
48210 Sainte-Enimie, dept Lozère, region Occitanie, France
off the road between Mende and St Enimie
open for public visits, April-October, 10-20 h
see website for info about route, entrance fees, etc

Luigi Lineri, El santuario dei sassi / The sanctuary of stones

all pictures (2010) courtesy of Figlio Tucano

Stones, stones, stones..... Luigi Lineri has been collecting stones since 1964.

Life and works

Born in 1937 in the small community of Albaro, Italy, Lineri currently lives in the nearby community of Zevio, in the neighbourhood of Verona. He had a job in a shoe store and until 1985 he worked as an assistant in the hospital in Verona. 

The commune of Zevio is located on the Adige river, that runs parallel with the Po river through northern Italy. On the banks of this Adige river Lineri liked to wander and look for stones.

Around 1970 he began arranging these stones according to common characteristics as present in the stones. But it's just a way of looking, for example one could discern a face in a stone and combine all facial stones.

Lineri's passion for the stones has to do with the association he has through these stones with cultures from long ago, how these people lived, what there ideas were and their ways of looking at life, how they used stones....

Arranging the stones is done in associative and intuitive way, it is a creative and artistic, not a scientific enterprise.

Some groups of stones have been arranged in ziggurat-like piles.

The  collection is displayed on the walls and floors of two rooms of the house and an adjacent barn. It has no specific name. Calling it a sanctuary probably is a good approach, but cathedral would be a striking name too.

In terms of collecting stones Lineri is a non-professional, the only people who do this kind of collecting by profession probably will be those archaeologists who are unearthing flints from the neolithic era.

Luigi Lineri is an artist, who is related to the art singulier group that is active in southern France. He has been writing poetry and has made paintings and ceramics. Most art singulier artists are self-taught.

Award 2012

In May 2013 it was announced that Lineri won the first prize in a competition held in 2012 entitled European Award for Lifelong Passions, La Secunda Luna

Documentation
* Entry on website Costruttori di Babele
* A most complete website entitled "Luigi Lineri" (in Italian and in English), with a biography, a bibliography. an interview with Lineri, a number of reviews and descriptions of his collection of stones. This website also has examples of  Lineri's poetry and his sculpting.
* Series of photographs (2011) on Francesco Galli's website

* Article by Giada Carraro on her website Bric-a-Brac Italia

Videos
* YouTube has a number of videos of this site, for example
---Enrico Ranzanici, I mysteri dei sassi, Luigi Lineri e l'Ádige (2007, 10')
---Marco Giovanni Ferrari, Qui si può passare (2002, 22')
---Sara Pigozzo and Enrico Meneghelli, Outsiders (2014, 2'24"). a video that portrays some people who have a close relation with the Adige river, among whom Luigi Lineri
* A video in a new series of videos by Costruttori di Babele, started in July 2018, features Lineri: Luigi Lineri e la sua cattedrale di sassi (YouTube, July 2018, 12' 08)

* Video The Mysteries of Pebbles made by Paolo Mucciarelli and Enrico Ranzanici (4’27”,
YouTube, February 2019). This video was the winner in the short film competition organized by Raw Vision magazine early 2019.

Expositions

Pictures by Rodolfo Hernandez of Lineri's collection of stones in an exposition Costruttori di Babele in the Museo Carlo Bilotti in Rome (October 2012)

No public visiting

There are no arrangements for the general public to visit this site. 

Luigi Lineri
El santuario dei sassi
Zevio, Verona, Veneto region, Italy
no public visits

first published April 2010, last revised September 2024

Séraphin Enrico, Jardin de l'Eden / Garden of Eden

this picture and the next two courtesy of
herbaltablet (Flickr, August 2009)

Séraphin Enrico's Jardin de l'Eden, an art environment with a variety of colorful sculptures from concrete, doesn't exist anymore.

Just some sculptures have been saved, like a group of bathers around a small pond, currently exposed in the Musée-jardin de la Luna Rossa in Caen.

Olivier Thiébaut, who in the 1990s was behind the initiative to start this private museum, is also closely related to the unearthing of some of Enrico's dumped sculptures.

Unearthing? Dumped sculptures?

The story has been told by Thiébaut himself on Bruno Montpied's weblog (March 23, 2008, text in French).

What follows is a resume.

Cariatides et Ste Vierge (avec coquille)

Life and works

Séraphin Enrico (1898-1989) was born in Mongrando, Italy. After the first World War he left for France to find a job as a mason. From 1925 on he had a house in the community of St Calais, in the Sarthe area, east of the city of le Mans.

In 1959, when he was in his early sixties, he began making sculptures as a decoration of his house and garden, a creative activity he continued for over ten years.

The site became a popular place to visit and in the 1960s and 70s it attracted a lot of people.

part of Enrico's art environment in 1966
picture from magazine "Vie Mancelle et Sarthoise"  

However, when Enrico became older he had to leave St Calais for reasons not listed in the available documentation, but probably against his will. He joined other members of his family, who lived in Divonne-les-Bains.

That was in 1972. Enrico died in 1989 and it is presumed that he has never been in St Calais again..

Soon after he left, the site must have been demolished, although it is not quite clear to me how and by whom.

Digging for buried sculptures

Anyhow, in 1995 Thiébaut. who was very interested in art environments in western France and who was preparing a book about the subject, got the idea to ask permission to do some digging on a plot, an old pond, where as some inhabitants of St Calais said, items of the garden might have been dumped.

And bingo, Thiébaut and the friends who helped him, discovered a number of buried sculptures, most still with the lively colours Enrico had used to paint them. Moreover, Enrico had constructed his sculptures so robustly, that they emerged out of the dump in their entirety.

The rescued sculptures currently are out in the open again, facing the skies, displayed in the garden of the Musée de la Luna Rossa in Caen.

Documentation
* Entry on the website Habitants-Paysagistes (by Lille Art Museum), with photos by Francis David of details of the sculptures

* Olivier Thiébaut, "De l'art chéologie" pour l'art, in Gazogène, nr 20
* Articles by Bruno Montpied in his weblog (March 2003) and in his inventory of folk art environments in France Le gazouillis des éléphants, 2017 p. 666-668

Séraphin Enrico
Jardin de l'Eden
(in the 1960s and 70s in) St Calais, dept Sarthe, region Pays de la Loire, France
site demolished
(some recovered sculptures currently in) Musée-jardin de la Luna Rossa,
Caen, dept Calvados, region Normandy, France
the museum can be visited on Sunday afternoons, April-October

first published April 2010, revised  January 2018