Jean Bertholle, Girouettes / Weather-vanes

picture by La Fabuloserie

The picture above shows an island on the grounds of the outsider art museum La Fabuloserie, in Dicy, France, with an arrangement of in particular a number of girouettes ("wind vanes" or also "whirligigs").

These creations were made by Jean Bertholle,  an outsider artist I quite some time wanted to add to this weblog, but about whom so little information was available, that I preferred to wait for more.

Now that also Bruno Montpied in his recently published very comprehensive survey of French art environments Le gazouillis des éléphants confirms that the information is limited indeed, it's time to publish anyway what is known about this self-taught artist.

Life and works

Jean Bertholle (1910-2002) had a job in Châtillon-sur-Seine (in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, France), where he worked in a factory that produced shoe heels. Retired in 1974, he began making girouettes and other creations, which he displayed in the garden of his house ¹.

Bertholle lived in Chamesson (a community some 10 km south of Châtillon-sur-Seine in the same region), where he was known as "Toto" and as a sabotier (someone who makes clogs). Some distant family members (cousins) still live in the community. In general, the inhabitants are not aware that Bertholle's art environment ever existed ².

At a given time, in the 1980s or 1990s, Bertholle's creations will have been transferred to la Fabuloserie. This private museum about outsider art in Dicy, located in the same region as Chamesson, was opened in 1983.

The open air part of the museum includes various creations from French art environments that for some reason ceased to exist and were saved by Alain de Bourbonnais, the founder of the museum (More about la Fabuloserie in the page in this weblog about Museums and Collections)

Documentation

* Bruno Montpied, Le Gazouillis des Éléphants, Paris (Eds du Sandre), 2017, p 133-134 

* Video, published by La Fabuloserie on Facebook, August 6, 2016

notes
¹ this info from the book by Bruno Montpied who notes that the info is based on the publication  "Des jardins imaginaires au jardin habité: des créateurs au fil des saisons. Hommage à Caroline Bourbonnais", La Fabuloserie, Dicy, 2015
² personal communication by Fabien Ansault (Galerie, museum of curiosities and café des Z'uns Possible in Chamesson)

Jean Bertholle

Girouettes

originally displayed in the garden of his house in 
Chamesson, Cote d'Or, region Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France

currently displayed in 
La Fabuloserie, Dicy (from 2016 part of Charny-Orée-de-Puisaye), same region, France

Bruno Dehondt, Les gigottos automates / Automated gigottos

screenshot from a video by Pierre André Leclerq,

not available anymore

Automates.....in France this term does not just refer to machines and instruments, but also to creations depicting people that are capable of making all kinds of movements. 

We encounter such creations also in the field of art environments. For example Marcel Landreau's site had a scene of people dancing at a wedding party, Pierre Avezard's Manège has a variety of animated characters and Fernand Chapet's Parc des attractions is an outdoor collection of moving creations.

This post introduces Bruno Dehondt's world of automates.

photo by Musée des gigottes automates

Life and works

The internet hasn't much biographical information about this artist.

Dehondt was born in 1962 or 1963, so currently (2017) he is in his mid-fifties. In interviews he has said that already at age fourteen he was trying to create impersonations of people. There is a single reference to an artistic education, but as a young man he did not succeed in settling as an artist and he had to work in some job.

However, as an artist in heart and soul Dehondt kept trying to realize his passion of making automates. Around 2000 he could fully devote himself to this activity. Initially he drove around in the region with a van loaded with automates to give performances on markets and other public places.

In 2006 he opened a museum/studio in Steenvoorde, where he stayed until the rental contract ended, after which he moved to Esquelbecq where, from December 2013, he has his current studio and museum.

the front side of the museum in Esquelbecq
picture from weblog Histoires du Nord 3

Both Steenvoorde and Esquelbecq are situated in the north of France in an area adjacent to Belgium that runs to the east and south of the city of Dunkirk and is known as French Flanders. 

In Esquelbecq (Eikelsbeek in Flemish) Dehondt found a place for his studio and museum in a building complex called La Minoterie, formerly a factory where grain was processed into flour.

Located in the center of the town near the market place it is an ideal location to attract visitors. And indeed, currently about four to six thousand visitors a year come to see the gigottes automates.

(above two pictures and the next three courtesy of Pierre André Leclerq)

These visitors will see a variety of life-size creations that depict all kind of characters one can meet in daily life. They can make movements and are programmed to interact with people around.

So one will see a group of musicians as in the upper pictures in this post, but also a shoe polisher, someone who is snoring, a cleaning lady, someone who drinks from a glass, an elderly lady knitting,  a group of majorettes and so on......

Dehondt is constantly supplementing the collection.

In creating his automates Dehondt uses a variety of discarded materials, such as household appliances, vacuum cleaners, computers or parts of washing machines. It happens that people bring him materials they no longer need.

He himself also arranges the electronic mechanisms which generate the movements of the characters. 

Body parts such as faces and hands are made from resin and pulp, plaster or clay. The characters are dressed with hand-made appropriate garments, designed by the artist.

the knitting lady and the shoe polisher

Although Dehondt may have enjoyed artistic training, his way of creating and portraying his characters has the connotation of a non-mainstream artist creating popular art, which is reinforced by the great passion he shows.  As a visitor of his museum wrote: "Bruno Dehondt is the boy who always stared through the window, dreaming in the classroom and after a few decades finally woke up in a world he created himself".

Dehondt participates in exhibitions and also in various street performances. including the parades of Géants (giants) customary in the north of France, spectacles in which meters high dolls are led through the streets. He has created géants for parades in various communities in the region.

He also organizes workshops for young people where they are guided to create automates.

Documentation
* The various websites of tourist offices in northern France refer to the Museum Les gigottos automates, for example the tourist office of Hauts-de-France
* Bruno Dehondt's own website and his page on Facebook
* Article (2013) in regional newspaper Voix du Nord about the removal from Steenvoorde to Esquelbecq

Videos
YouTube has a variety of videos.
Here is a selection:
* A video by MrStudio 231 (8'52", YouTube, February 2017)

* A video by Taïna Cluzeau about the new location in Esquelbecq (2'29", YouTube, January 2014)

Bruno Dehondt

Les gigottos automates

Rue de Bergues 3 bis

59470 Esquelbecq, dept Nord, region Hauts-de-France, France

streetview

visitors welcome, small entrance fee,
open: Tuesday 14-18, Wednesday/Sunday 10-18
reservation, info bdehondt@club-internet.fr

Pierre Sourisseau, Jardin, musée et chemin creuse / Garden, museum and hollow road

view from the street

The picture above shows a modest sculpture garden in la Croix-Bara, a hamlet belonging to the French community of Saint-Mars-la-Réorthe in the department Vendée, France. The garden is part of of a three-part art environment, which also includes a museum and a sculpture trail.

Life and works

The artist who created this art environment, Pierre Sourisseau, was born in 1939 in Saint-Paul-en-Pareds, a community in the vicinity of la Croix-Bara. Except for the period he was in the military, Sourisseau lived in the Vendée area, working until his retreat in 1999 as a mason.

At age twenty, in 1959, he was conscripted in the military for 28 months. He was sent to Algeria where the Franco-Algerian War (1954-1962) raged. In later years he would often say that he was glad that in those years he never had to kill anyone. Nevertheless this period has impressed him very much, what is expressed in his artistic work.

Already as a young man Sourisseau had the desire to make visual art and in 1975 as a self-taught artist he actually began making paintings and sculptures, an activity he would continue for the rest of his life, resulting in a large number of creations.

this picture and the next one (2012) by 

Bruno Montpied, from his weblog

The garden

In the garden in front of his house, Sourisseau has displayed a small number of his sculptures, which he as far as I understand makes from clay.

The one in front depicts Charles Deslandes and the rider on horseback is the Cavalier du Landreau, both famous people from Vendée's history.

The garden also includes a bust of former French president Sarkozy and his wife.

The museum

Sourisseau's museum is housed in two small buildings annex the residential house.  It contains a variety of his paintings and sculptures, but also textual expressions, such as a genealogy of his ancestors.

Much attention is paid to the Algerian war and the War in the Vendée, an uprising of the region in 1793 during the French revolution, that was tackled with draconian measures, took many lives and contributed a lot to the identity of the region.

The sculpture trail

(pictures available on this website)

Sourisseau has put a lot of energy into the creation of the Chemin Creux, a sculpture trail he started to create in 2000. 

The trail is a rural hollow road, once a Roman road, starting at 500 meters from his house, about 1,2 km long, flanked by around 50 different creations. 

Among the creations along the trail one will find sculptures that depict people who have played an important role in the history of the Vendée,  in particular those with a leading position during the 1793 uprising.

Various creations are dedicated to politicians, such as Georges Clemenceau, who was France's prime minister during the first World War. but also contemporary ones, such as Nicolas Sarkozy, who was president of France from 2007-2012.

The sculpture trail also includes portraits of three mayors of Saint-Mars-la-Réorthe, former ones such as Joseph Halleux and Jean-Claude Ageneau and a recent one Gerard Préau, who became mayor in March 2014. A regional newspaper reported in April 2015 about the unveiling of the artwork dedicated to this mayor.

Along the trail one can also find miniature scenes in memory of special events in the region, such as the landing of a plane right next to the Croix-Bara, but then there are also creations with an amusing approach, such as an elephant hidden in the grass with a trunk that serves as a pipe to water a brook, or a fallen tree with large roots and wheels, named Tractosaur.

The sculpture trail can be visited freely by the public. In the month of August the regional tourist office of the Pays des Herbiers arranges guided tours along the sculpture trail.

Documentation

* Bruno Montpied, article (August 2012) about Sourisseau on his weblog and also in his book Le Gazouillis des éléphants Paris (Ed. du Sandre), 2017. -p.707-713. (To my knowledge Montpied is the only French publicist about outsider art and art environments who wrote on the internet about Sourisseau's artwork)

* Article (August 2017) in regional newspaper Ouest-France
* The website puystory has a number of photos of the creations along the trail

* Arttcle (July 2024) on website La Vendée en photos

first published December 2017, last revised July 2025

Pierre Sourisseau

Jardin sculpté, musée, chemin creux

Croix-Bara, dept Vendée, region Pays de la Loire
streetview

-the garden can be seen from the road

-the museum can be visited on appointment

-the sculpture trail can be visited freely 

(in August the tourist office of the Pays des Herbiers may organize guided visits)

Benjamin Somov, дом с пушками и мемориальный комплекс / House with guns and a memorial complex

unless stated otherwise stated,

pictures courtesy of Alexander Lavrov 

In front of a house along Soveskaya Street in the community of  Dal'neye Konstantinovo, some 70 km south of Nizni Novgorod, Russia, a number of guns are lined up. These are replicas of guns as used in the war of Russia against Napoleon (1812), single-handedly made by self-taught artist Benjamin Somov.

Life and works

Born in 1928 in Malikova, a neighbourhood of Dal'neye Konstantinovo, Somov at a young age already showed his solidarity with the military by in 1944, sixteen years old, joining as a volunteer the Russian army and going to the front in the war with Germany.

After the war he continued for some time his military service. Then he returned to his homeland to live as an ordinary citizen. 

Well, that is to say, he worked as a blacksmith and a driver, he was practicing natural healing, but what he experienced on the war front had struck him so deeply that he had to seek ways to express his feelings.

Somov found a way out in artistic activities. Although he had no training at all in making artworks (he actually had just some four years of primary education), he began making sculptures, mainly busts of military people, but also of other personalities.

Currently, some of these busts, decorated with military attributes such as medals, insignia or ammunition holders, still are on display in the living room of the family home.

And then, watching the various guns in front of the house a bust of Lenin is on display in the garden, while on the roof a bust of a soldier keeps the watch over the site.

The memorial complex

In retrospect one might say that the period of making small sculptures was a preparation for what would become Somov's life's work.

In the 1990s, on a field in Dal'neye Konstantinovo's neighbourhood Simbiley,  Somov began creating sculptures which were larger than life-size. It became a memorial complex, mainly in honor of soldiers who perished in wars in which Russia was involved (the following five pictures by 4enix on touristic website turizmvnn.ru) 

The picture left above shows one of the first creations, a pillar of reinforced concrete with a simple orthodox crucifix at the top, a monument to the victims of the Russian-Japanese war.

Top right is a picture of the monument to the victims of the Afghan war, which has kind of a grave fence and a fluttering flag. The bars of the fence are pierced, which produces a complaining sound as the wind blows through the holes.

The two pictures above depict the monument to the victims of Stalin's repression.  The picture at the left shows a touching detail: two chain-cuffed hands on man-sized poles sticking out of the earth. 

At the right the entire monument with in top tow flat bells which nevertheless can produce sound. 

To conclude this series of pictures of the memorial complex, above picture of a rather special monument.

Somov made this monument, a huge cross with crossbars decorated with rivets, in honor of the victims of future wars and of armed struggle among civilians..... A sculpture made on the basis of such a philosophy is probably unique, not only in Russia but also elsewhere in the world.

Among the other honored people are Russian participants in the Spanish Civil War, soldiers who died during the Russian camp in Finland and crew members of a wrecked Russian submarine.

Somov made the altogether eleven high-rising sculptures at the memorial complex from surplus and used materials and he paid himself for necessities such as cement.

at home Somov keeps photo books of his sculptures

Somov's creations seen as a mega art environment

Both the collection of guns in the front of the family home and the sculptures of the memorial complex can be seen as art environments in their own right. 

However, because both sites have the same basic theme and are based on the same philosophical view, it seems appropriate to view the totality of displayed artworks as a mega art environment, in the sense given to that designation by the Russian creator of an art environment, Alexander Emelyanov.

In short, in Emelyanov's view most creators of an art environment act on the basis of a relatively simple philosophy which just involves the satisfaction that arises from embellishing their daily environment. However, a few creators, who seek self-confirmation by expressing themselves in artwork, operate on a more fundamental philosophical level which implies that their artworks can be denoted as mega art environment.

a view of the interior of Somov's home

Somov's theme in its most fundamental version is warfare and his philosophy, which is most strongly expressed in his sculpture for the future victims of war, those that have not yet been born, seems to be that warfare is inherent in human society. True or not, it is a rather fundamental philosophical view and so in my opinion, Somov's artwork deserves to be classified as a mega art environment.

Documentation

* Article (May 2010) about Somov as a self-taught artist on website rg.ru

* Article (May 2011) about the guns in front of the house on website nn.aif.ru

* Article (2010) about the memorial complex, with illustrations

Benjamin Somov

Ul Soveskaya 151

Dal'neye Konstantinovo, Nizni Novgorod region, Russia

guns in front of the house can be seen from the street

the memorial complex near Simbiley can be visited freely