I was glad when Rada Bukova and Alice Schÿler Mallet invited me to come to Dieppe and participate in a show on modernism.
Dieppe. Dieppe is neither Southhampton nor Cherbourg and the ferry that connects the two doesn't go to the harbour of Dieppe.
But there are these huge white cliffs and beautiful stones on the beaches. Astonishing ivory carvings were produced there before the wars of the 20th century.
There are a couple modern buildings in and around Dieppe and we were supposed to be doing something in one of them : the Villa Perrotte, built in 1928 by
Georges Féray for the grandfather and - mother of the husband of Annie Ouvrie who shows artworks produced in the region in the basement of the building today.

There was a dog, an elegant dog that occupied one of the garden rooms and had the same colour as the tissu of the sofa. The cupboard of the kitchen was still in a very good shape. Annie Ouvrie told us how it happened that this house had a fireplace in almost every room, something that an architect in those times wasn't very likely to want build.
When Georges Féray told the grandmother of the husband of Annie Ouvrie that modern buildings had central heating systems, she told him that he wouldn't bew building a modern building if she wouldn't be able to have a fire in it later on.

I arrived late. The other artists, mostly from Paris, some from New York had already installed their works. Beautiful works in a beautiful building.
We had time to sit on the stones of the beach, a group eating oysters and drinking wine in the sun.
The only downside seemed to be that Annie Ouvrie insisted that the artists she usually shows in her galery should be shown along with the
show we were preparing. The corridors and cabinets at the end of the right side of the building, filled with the galery's artist's works, were the
only spaces in this paradise that annoied everyone.
It was awkward, but only because the objects whose presentation was the villas actual purpose were pushed aside, out of immediate view.
Since I had no fixed plan as to what to show and talk about, I thought it would be fair to change the exhibition, to show the process of an
installation at the end of which our works were shown in the adjoining rooms and all of Annie Ouvrie's artists were back in the central room of
the Villa Perrotte - along with two armchairs facing the galerist's desk, who is sitting in front of a fireplace and looking out into the garden.

July 2011, Villa Perrotte / Le Modernisme
Fotos: Éric Stephany, Mathilde Villeneuve and others