PAUL, LA PLAGE ET LES PEINTRES

The Villa Noailles presents the results of an artistic commission to French artist and photographer Paul Rousteau, who has been in residence at Hyères every summer for the past five years, along with eight painters from the contemporary French scene invited to spend a creative period on the theme of the beach:

“Jean-Pierre Blanc offered me a photographic residency in July 2018. July, the start of the vacations. Families are finally arriving on the beaches of Hyères, after a year of waiting for the summer vacations, dreaming of them. Jean-Pierre and I observe the joy of families as they take their first dip in the sea. “It would be lovely to illustrate this happiness on the beach,” he dreams aloud. I was enthusiastic. All the more so as the Hyères coastline, Jean-Pierre tells me, is 42 kilometers long. A marathon. A lovely playground for me, who loves summer, vacations, sun… and the villa. I immediately thought of the photo book I used to look at as a child: Robert Doisneau’s Les Grandes Vacances. It was the only book of photographs in my parents’ library. I loved it. It’s a vision of happiness in black and white, in France from the 1930s to the 1960s. Families enjoying their paid vacations, often in bathing suits.

I want to do my version, half a century later, in color, and in Hyères. But to make it happy, I don’t want to be alone on the beach. Otherwise, the book would be called “Solitude balnéaires”. As I love painting above all else, and don’t personally know this generation of young artists, I decided to share my residency with two new painters each summer. The rule of the game: spend a week together at the seaside and have them deliver a painting to be exhibited on the theme of the beach, so as to encourage a dialogue between the arts, and to mix our points of view.”
Paul Rousteau

Florent Groc, Diane Dal-Pra, Marion Bataillard, Thomas Levy Lasne, Jules Magistry, Jean Claracq, James Della Negra & Marcos Carrasque