Without institutional recognition, Armand Gatti’s house and his personal belongings could easily disappear; just as a few works at the town hall of Paris were enough to erase the traces of Nicolas Schöffer’s mythical workshop in Montmartre. We investigated the conservation of these artists’ houses.
Armand Gatti could be an illustrious unknown. But his house remains. In the heart of Montreuil, in Seine-Saint-Denis, the place keeps the memory of this resistant, playwright, journalist – Albert-Londres prize 1954 – and filmmaker. For several years, his relatives have hoped to open the place to the public and obtain the Maison des Illustres label.
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“In 2024, it will be the centenary of his birth, says Mathieu Aubert, former assistant to the director. We want to organize lots of events, readings… Because apart from in certain university circles, Armand Gatti is little known to the general public. Even in the theater, he was finally a little forgotten”, he regrets. Obtaining the label would encourage the public to come and visit his house and thus rediscover his poetic, cinematographic, theatrical and even journalistic work.
Playwright and director Armand Gatti in his office, January 26, 2004, in Montreuil. His relatives wish to open his house to the public in 2024 and obtain the Maisons des Illustres label. (RAPHAEL GAILLARDE / GAMMA-RAPHO / Getty Images)
On the second floor of a 19th century building, nothing has changed since his death in 2017. Quotes from Guy Debord and Saint-Just taped to the wall, a mountain of serigraphs, two huge polystyrene chimeras, archives, and of course , a desk, huge and covered with books. For who wants to meet the writer, there is no better place. The place is teeming with a whole heap of memories and anecdotes. “Armand Gatti never failed to remind us that this century-old plane tree that we see from his office had known Georges Meliessays Mathieu Aubert. He told us [en plaisantant] that he was communicating with him”.
A little piece of history
After hosting the famous glass roof by Méliès – a pioneer of French cinema -, the surrounding land has given way to a factory which has itself been transformed into a performance hall where Armand Gatti staged his plays. The successive buildings testify to the rich history of the place, while recalling its fragility. Without the mobilization of enthusiasts and institutional recognition, it would be easy to come to the house to take down the posters, put the books and trinkets in boxes and transform everything into charming apartments close to the Croix-de-Chavaux station. The Maisons des Illustres label thus appears as a means of recognizing and protecting this little piece of Ile-de-France history.
Armand Gatti’s office in Montreuil, August 4, 2023. (franceinfo Culture)
However, the Ministry of Culture specifies that “the request for labeling is a voluntary process that must come from private actors or public structures”. It is therefore necessary to succeed in convincing the owner which is, in this specific case, the department of Seine-Saint-Denis. In early July, the latter funded a study to calculate the extent of the work for a possible opening to the public. If the project is successful, it will be the first house of Les Illustres du 93.
In Paris, the Schöffer workshop disappears
Subject to the goodwill of the owners, some artists’ houses never meet their public. Like the studio of Nicolas Schöffer, father of cybernetic art, at number 5 of the Cité des arts in Montmartre. His widow, the poet Éléonore Schöffer will have spent her life trying to create a museum in this place where, since 1965, so many works have been created.
But after the death of the latter in January 2020, the city of Paris – owner of the premises since its acquisition of the Cité des arts in 2007 – invites the beneficiaries to move the sculptures, paintings and all the archives in order to transform the housing and workshop space. “We were obviously ready to pay rent to keep the place alive”, regrets Dimitri Salmon, grandson of Éléonore Schöffer. Since then, only the plaque bearing witness to the artist’s visit remains, installed by the same city of Paris. At a time when the Center Pompidou devotes an entire room to him in its permanent collections, the decision of the municipality raises questions.
The sculptor Nicolas Schöffer (date unknown) (Joël DUCANGE / GAMMA-RAPHO / Getty Images)
A mythical artist
Whoever had the chance to visit the workshop knows all the interest he had for Parisian heritage. In a vast room overlooked by a mezzanine, the artist sculpted space, time and light in order to create luminodynamic works. In 1968, Brigitte Bardot shot her music video there Contact to lyrics by Gainsbourg. The all-metal creations sparkle like so many odes to progress and the future.
“It is difficult to imagine today the place of Schöffer in the 50s and 60s, explains Michel Gauthier, curator at the Center Pompidou. But if you ask a historian to give you a list of the ten or even the five most important French artists of the time, Schöffer will be there. He is a giant… The last of the great modernists”.
After his death in 1992, his wife deploys a lot of energy to keep the workshop alive. Until she was 94, she organized visits and many events there. We meet Orlan, Carolyn Carlson, art students, collectors, a lot of curious people. “It was a very lively place, Magic, recalls Dimitri Salmon. He left no one indifferent. A real landmark for all artists, architects, historians who were interested in his work, his thought”. At each visit, with the curtains drawn, Éléonore Schöffer turned off the light; the works then began to turn on themselves, as if autonomous. Since then, the sculptures have been sleeping in a warehouse.
A unique place now “lost”
“I gradually discovered the nature of the work, says Dimitri Salmon. In the workshop, designed and fitted out by Schöffer, the white marble on the floor will be replaced by a brown resin evoking a 19th century parquet floor. The small room at the back, which was called “the shed”, in which the artist worked, will be purely and simply destroyed. A kind of “cabanon” of ten meters on each side will be located in the middle, breaking the purity of the lines, to house the kitchenette and bathroom…” What to forget the passage of the artist.
Nicolas Schöffer’s studio at the Cité des arts in Montmartre, emptied of his works, January 14, 2021. (Nicolas Schöffer Archives, Paris / Courtesy Nicolas Schöffer Endowment Fund)
“It was foreseeable that one day or another, the town hall would want to recover the workshop“, comments Michel Gauthier. No law prevents the real estate management of the city from reclaiming the premises after the death of the widow of the artist. “This decision nevertheless poses a problem since it was necessary to move a lot of monumental works, continues the curator. At the Center Pompidou, we are very attentive to the destiny of these artists’ studios, the future of works, archives, but also interiors often designed by the artists themselves.”
But not having workshops, the museum can only be “in reaction” in the face of such deterioration. In the coming months, the establishment plans to show new works by Schöffer, in particular the sculpture Cysp 1 who danced with Maurice Béjart’s corps de ballet on the roof of the Cité Radieuse in Marseille. A way to perpetuate the work of the artist despite the disappearance of his studio.
“Like the other members of the family, I had high hopes for this place, concludes Dimitri Salmon. But the works distort it too deeply. […] The studio is lost to us. And as beautiful as the new space could be [qui reste encore à trouver pour y exposer les œuvres]it will not have the symbolic, unique character of the place…” The artist’s family does not refrain from presenting the works in a city other than Paris. A significant loss for the heritage of the capital.
To date, the municipality has not provided any answer on the reasons for such a transformation of the Schöffer workshop.
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