Ben Vautier, Façade décorée / Decorated facade

picture (2012) from the website
La Lézardière (rentals of holiday locations)

On August 25, 2017, the French visual artist generally known as "Ben" published the following message on his newsletter

In english: I wouldn't say NO if my house tomorrow was put on the route list of singular art houses in France for a group interested in singularity.

A nice challenge indeed for this blog to realize this listing on August 26, 2017.

Although the decorated facade undoubtedly fits in this blog and Ben from origin is an autodidact artist, he does not belong to the category of non-mainstream artists on which this blog mainly focuses.  But sometimes it's a matter of making an exception, also because there is some relationship indeed between Ben and those artists who as "outsiders" created artworks which remain predominantly unnoticed by the art world.

Life and works

Benjamin Vautier (1935-2024) was born in Naples.  

After his parents divorced in 1939, young Benjamin during and after World War II stayed with his mother in various countries, such as Turkey and Egypt, to settle in 1949 in Nice in the south of France. He visited some schools, got a job at the bookshop Le Nain Bleu and then became the owner of a book and stationery shop his mother had bought him.

Already in the early 1950s the young man attempted to make his first artworks.

In the late 1950s Vautier sold his shop to buy another one in Nice, where he sold used gramophone records. He managed this shop from 1958 until 1973.

Located at 2 rue Tonduti de l’Escarène, not far from the (former) Art Academy, the Dépôt would soon become a meeting place for students of the academy, Nice's avant garde and other people interested in visual arts. The artist in Vautier woke up, he made his first creations, had his first exhibition (Rien et tout, 1960) and drew the attention of the inhabitants of Nice by adorning the facade of the shop with decorations.

life-size replica of "le Dépôt", constructed by Ben,
currently in the collection of the Centre Pompidou, Paris

(picture from Timetoast website)

From 1962 to 1979 Ben was active in the Fluxus movement, where art is not limited to what an artist does in a studio, but is associated with a much more diverse set of actions, such as, for example, Ben's marriage in 1964 could become an artistic gesture.

Related to this approach is the idea to appropriate all kind of items in the world as art by signing these if this comes to mind as an artistic act. So in 1965, he signed his own daughter Eva, three months old at that time.

Another aspect of Ben's oeuvre concerns what in French is named écritures (in English scriptures), paintings consisting of (short) texts, mainly in white characters on a black surface.

 screenprint of a page in Google search,

with links to a variety of  "écritures"

Through these écritures, which cover a variety of themes in postmodern art, philosophy and everyday life, Ben has become known to the French general public.

Decorating the facade of the house in Saint Pancrace

In 1975 Ben and his wife moved to Saint Pancrace. one of the 41 quartiers of Nice, where they obtained a dispatched house.

At some moment, undocumented on the internet, Ben began decorating the facade of the house using a variety of items, as is usual in the field of art environments.

picture (2009) from the geocaching website

Comparing above picture of the facade made in 2009, with the first picture made in 2012, it can be observed that decorating the house was an ongoing process, the later decorations being more varied and merged than the earlier ones.

Other than with respect to Ben's other artwork, the internet has little or no information about the manner in which this art environment came into being,

To my knowledge the usual French sources in the field of art environments do not mention it.

Ben and the Palais Idéal

In 2016, from May until August, Ben arranged an exposition on behalf of Le Palais Idéal, the famous French art environment created by Joseph Ferdinand Cheval (1836-1924). Located in the Hauterives Castle near the Palais and entitled Le Palais idéal des ego étranges (The ideal palace of strange ego), the exposition presented Ben’s artwork and works by forty other invited artists.

artwork by Ben

J’ai un Palais Idéal dans mon cerveau

(I have an Ideal Palace in my brain)

Marie-José Georges, the director of the Palais Idéal, thinks that Ben in fact has plenty of ties with Facteur Cheval, such as the notion of embezzlement and the relationship to scriptures.

A retrospective exposition at the Musée Maillol

From September 14, 2016 until January 15, 2017 the Musée Maillol in Paris had an exposition of Ben's artwork. Entitled Tout est art? (All is art?) the exposition both was a retrospective of Ben's artwork made between 1958 and 1978 and a presentation of new artwork added by Ben on the spot.

The trailer of the exposition has actual pictures of the decorated facade.

In an article in Hyperallergic (November 4, 2016, in English) Joseph Nechvatel discusses the implications of the concept Tout est art (All is art).

Ben Vautier ended his life on June 5, 2024 after his wife had passed away due to a severe illness.

Documentation

* Vautier's personal website

* Article about Vautier on website ArtsHebdo/Médias

Video

* Video by Andrea Contin (July 2010, YouTube, 13'43")

Ben Vautier

Façade décorée

103, route de Saint-Pancrace

06000 Saint-Pancrace (Nice), dept Alpes-Maritimes, region Provence-Alpes-Côte d Azur, France

no visits, decorations can be seen from the road

Deva Manfredo, La selva di sogno / Dreamwoods

Mainly composed of single-handedly arranged stones, Dreamwoods, located in a forest in northern Italy, is one of the few sites in the field of European art environments made almost exclusively from a large variety of stones ¹.

Life and works

The self-taught artist who created this artwork was born in 1949 in Duderstadt, Germany as Manfred Flucke. After primary education, he went to Hamburg to study sociology and history, after which he for some years wandered around making paintings and drawings, until he in 1977 felt inspired by meditation.

He joined Osho's movement and renamed Deva Manfredo, around 1980 he moved to Italy where he went to live in Osho Miasto, the biggest Osho center in Italy, located in a beautiful area in Tuscany, not far from Sienna. He would reside there for some 25 years, working as a graphic designer, photographer and barkeeper.

Around 2006 Manfredo left the Miasto commune. He has kept "Manfredo" as his artist name and currently lives in a Tuscan village.

a decorated tree
(this picture and the next four {2017} courtesy of Boris van Es)

In an interview Manfredo said:  "Since I was a child I was fascinated by the beauty and form of stones, particularly the ones which have been polished to perfection by the to and fro of the ocean waves".  He especially likes the immobility, timelessness and eternity of this material.

When one day around 1980 he just by chance was busy with some stones and felt that by arranging them he had created something beautiful, he got inspired to make a number of such creations and install these in a natural  area.

So soon after Manfredo had settled in the Osho center, he began to consider setting up an outer space with a specific collection of stones. He was aware of a place in an extensive oak wood near the center where he lived and in 1981 he installed there his first stone works.

faces

The forest was not his property, maybe it belonged to the commune, but anyhow initially there was no question of appropriation, because the site remained without a fence and the stones Manfredo used for his compositions were laid loose on the ground or on top of each other.

Currently (2017), some 35 years later, the land is rented long-term from the owner of the grounds, the site has some 200 creations, some quite a size, there is a gift shop at the entrance and paths cross the forest, but there still is no fence and the animals of the forest have free access.

a large mandala of colored stones

Sorted into a large compartmentalized storage box, Manfredo has a large stock of stones in many colors, an item already intrusive as such and rather useful to make multi colored planar structures.

From his passion for meditation it is obvious that among the creations in Dreamwoods one finds a number of mandalas, circular geometric patterns of Hinduist origin that symbolically depict the cosmos. The figure picture above shows that such a mandala can have a rather large size.

a mosaic

But there are also less esoteric mosaics, often performed in squares or rectangles and located on the ground.

rising structures

The site also includes a large number of vertical structures made of stacked stones, some standing on their own, others standing in a smaller or larger combinations.

Piling the stones into stacks, Manfredo uses no glue or cement. The stones are just hold together by gravity.

picture from Facebook

Some of these combinations of stone piles are grouped in such a way that one gets the impression to look at an impressive citiscape with a variety of high and low elements, some rising up to five meters.

The picture above shows the City of Mandaland, as it was in 2021, when new items such as a piazza and a theater had been added. In such artworks Manfredo may also processes glass and marble.

anthropomorphic figure

(picture {2017) courtesy of Boris van Es)

At some moment Manfredo also began making anthropomorphic characters. An observer of these creations said: 

"... I have the impression that they do not seem to have been ‘put’ there, rather it is as if the stones had decided one early morning to arrange themselves into these forms".

this picture and the next one (both 2019) from Facebook

In 2019 Flucke began using recyclable material such as the plastic bottles and the stacked plastic cups, shown in the photo above

.......just as he also created ensembles from remnants of metal. 

It's a developing story.

picture from Facebook

Indeed, early 2020 there was further development. Manfredo started working with driftwood, which he gathered along riverbanks or on a beach. The photo above shows an ensemble consisting of pieces of driftwood with bright colors. 

In the course of 2020 a new item made from stacked stones was added, a contemporary interpretation of Noah's Ark, as depicted in the photo above (from Facebook).\

Visiting Dreamwoods

Visitors of the site can follow a specified trail along the artworks in the forest. It is advised to allow about two hours for a visit and make the walk in silence.

Dreamwoods is closed from November until end March and during these months Manfredo may make trips abroad, visiting family members and old friends in his hometown Duderstadt or collecting stones or driftwood from beaches or rivers all over Europe.

Documentation

* Manfredo's website Stoneart/Steinkunst/Arte in pietra
* Manfred Flucke's Facebook page
* Article (in German) on website Costa Blanca Forum, August 2013

* Article Poems in a landscape in Osho News, May 8, 2016
* Article (in English) on touristic website Toscana900 with route map
* Article (in Italian) with a large series of pictures on Valdelsa.net, March 5, 2017

Video

* Video by Start Production (8'40", YouTube, uploaded February 2014)

first published August 2017, last revised September 2023

note

¹ Italians who, each with a specific approach, collected and displayed stones:

- Luigi Lineri, El santuario dei sassi

- Pasquale Paolucci, Museo di pietras

In Spain Manfred Gnädinger's Museo has sculptures made from stacked stones found at the beach

Deva Manfredo (Manfred Flucke)

Selva di sogno (Dreamwoods)

Località San Giorgio

Chiusdino, region Toscane, Italy
open from end march until early november
for opening hours look here

Jean Poteau, Le havre du pêcheur / The fisherman's refuge

pictures courtesy of

Hubert Bouvet© Hauts-de-France 2014

When in December 2015 this weblog reported the publication of d' Étonnants jardins en Nord-Pas de Calais, a book about art environments in France's northern regions Nord and Pas de Calais, a short mention was made of Jean Poteau's art environment, referred to in the book as Le Havre du pêcheur (The fisherman's refuge). 

The following post has more about this modest art environment.

Life and works

Jean Poteau (1947-2010) was the son of a mine-worker living in Rouvroy, a community some 40 km south of Lille in northern France. 

When it came to choosing a future profession Poteau Sr advised his son not to become a miner, with which Jean Poteau agreed and so he became a construction worker, specialized in form work and woodworking. He continued to live in Rouvroy and conducted his work especially in the Lille area. 

In 1989, at age 42, Poteau added a pond with fish to the garden at the rear of the house in Rouvroy where he lived with his wife. 

Some 8 years later, in 1997, he began transforming the already well-flowered garden into an art environment by adding a variety of single-handedly created decorative elements.

On the edge of the pond a fisherman got a place, as well as a heron, another person and a mill.

The windmill, with a build-up from red bricks and a roof covered with tiles, evokes the regional architecture of northern France. In winter it can give shelter to birds. A weather vane indicates the direction of the wind.

The bodies, arms and legs of he persons are made from all-purpose residual material, the faces were molded from self-made molds and the clothes and other attributes of the persons are dismissed items.

a lion

In addition to the heron which is part of the scene around the pond, Poteau has created a variety of other animals which got a place in the garden or around the house, such as dogs, ducks, frogs, and lions.

All these figurines were molded from cement in molds made by Poteau himself.

a crocodile

The fireplace/barbecue in the picture below has some animals made from gypsum (a cat, a dog and a rather small horse).

Poteau covered the walls with cobblestones, ballast from a nearby small railroad along which trash was transported.

Poteau passed away in 2010. 

His wife (✝ 2012), who wanted to move to a smaller home, had to arrange that the rented house, the garden included, was returned to its original state and so Poteau's modest art environment was demolished, although some smaller, transportable items may have been included in private collections.  

Documentation

* "Le Havre du pêcheur de Jean Poteau (1947-2010)" in: Le Service du Patrimoine Culturel de la région Nord-Pas de Calais, D'Étonnants Jardins en Nord-Pas de Calais. Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel (Images du Patrimoine, 293). Lyon (Ed. Lieux-Dits), 2015, pp 106-109

* "Jardin de Jean Poteau" in: Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel (background information and photo's)

Jean Poteau

Le havre du pêcheur

(formerly) 63 Boulevard des Italiens

Rouvroy, dept Pas de Calais, region Hauts-de-France, France 

site doesn't exist anymore