At the ideal palace, in Hauterives, in Drôme, bricks and colorful balls form like fountains for the famous monument of art brut.
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“The horse factor must turn around in his grave! His ideal palace is as important as Lascaux or the pyramids.” The collector Antoine de Galbert loves contemporary art, he has amply proven when he created the Foundation La Maison Rouge in Paris, but for him, the installation of Jean-Michel Othoniel in Hauterives (Drôme) is sacrilege.
At the invitation of Frédéric Legros, the director of the premises, the colorful glass sculptures of Othoniel dialogue with the ideal palace of Ferdinand Cheval, which he also equipped the windows of stained glass with his design. Without forgetting a hanging of his preparatory drawings and installations in the adjacent space devolved to temporary exhibitions. Antoine de Galbert is not the only one to be shocked: most of the art lovers firmly condemn this intrusion into the temple.
Jean-Michel Othoniel defends himself from any parasitism by saying that he wanted to continue a dream of the famous postman: when he had visitors (the entrance was already paying and, as a good factor, he sold them postcards!) , on Sundays, he forced her maid, Julie Achard – she complained – to Charrier du buckets at the top of the highest tower in order to irrigate the fountains he had designed but where running water lacked.
a form of naivety
Othoniel also has an ancient story with this place: his parents, who lived in Saint-Etienne, where he was born in 1964, came regularly on vacation not far from there, his mother, teacher, and he keep. Today, he names the place “my mother’s palace”. Little Jean-Michel, from the age of 6, rubbed with art in this place, in the literal sense as the galleries designed by the horse factor are narrow. We unfortunately discovered the place much later than him, but we can easily understand what such a place can cause in the imagination of a child.
He returned there in the 1980s with the photographer and filmmaker Clovis Prévost (author of a short film entitled the horse factor: where the dream becomes reality), one of his teachers at the school of Art of Cergy-Pontoise, with which he shot a film, Orange Sensation, in 1988, which is presented in the exhibition hall. They met and interviewed many singular artists, in short art supporters. It is a long time before this movement became fashionable and finds its keys to the temple. Artists of his generation, Othoniel is undoubtedly one of those who best know this environment. And if some perceive a form of naivety or freshness in his work, however sophisticated it may be, that is perhaps what is due.
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