In 2009, I was invited to participate in 'Art in the Gardens', a small event in my home town. Each artist was to develop a work in situ for a domestic garden. I choose to work with Annick Philiponet, who is a french teacher in one of the local lycees. Annick had planted a very literary garden with many roses that were names after great writers like Shakespeare, Colette and even Pierre de Ronsard.
I did not want to make a sculpture that was to be looked at, but rather searched to find a way to intervene in her garden in the same literary manner, so I decided to make a cabin for Jean Genet.
Many people had told me that Jean Genet had been a prisoner in Fontevraud. One phone call was all that it took to prove that I knew more about the myth of Genet than the reality. So my initial idea, which was to reconstruct Genet's prison cell as a garden shed, was quickly shelved. The curator at Fontevraud, which is now a museum, told me that Genet had never been there, despite the fact that he had written a book that suggested otherwise. He also told me that even at Fontevraud, there were very few 'chicken cage' cells, and that most prisoners from this period slept in hammocks, in collective dormitories.
However he was able to direct me to a village on the outskirts of Tours, more precisely to Mettray, where I was able discover the remarkable penal institution where Genet had spent his adolescent years.
Mettray | Lithographie | A. Thierry | 1844
The Mettray penal colony was created by philanthropist Frédéric-Auguste Demetz and architect Abel Blouet. Because of the way in which the project addressed numerous problems in the existing penal system, it rapidly became an international model for the re-education and re-insertion of wayward youths. The whole british borstal system is based on Mettray.
The most obvious rupture made was to break the lines of communication between hardened criminals and young mischief-makers. Previously a young man might naively enter into a penal institution for a minor misdemeanour, but leave with all the know-how and network necessary for a life of crime.
Mettray only took in boys up to the age of 21. There were no walls to speak of other that the great wall of vegetation that surrounded the colony (although the illustration above owes more to Caspar David Friedrich, than it does to the reality of the tourraine landscape). The boys could learn a large number of trades either on the farm, in construction, or for the ever expanding maritime world. They would hopefully leave Mettray as 'changed by the land'.
Mettray | Lithographie | A. Thierry | 1844
Demetz considered the boys to be 'innocent culprits' who had been let down or in many cases abandoned by failed families. Together with Blouet, he elaborated an urban plan. At the head of a square-garden was a steepled church which undoubtably double-functioned as a watchtower, for a very literal take on the all-seeing eye of god. On either side of the square were 5 large houses. These were known as families, the boys as brothers. The guardian of each house was known as 'le chef du famille'
Mettray | Lithographie | A. Thierry | 1844
In a rather regimented and maritime fashion, the boys installed their hammocks for the night. In the morning, the hammocks would be put away and tables folded down for breakfast. All this was well and good while philathropist Demetz was at the helm, but by the time Jean Genet arrived at Mettray, the institution had earned itself a reputation for hard discipline.
Mettray | Lithographie | A. Thierry | 1844
Jean Genet spent a significant part of his formative years at Mettray. The high octane mix of surveillance and sexuality, became the literary fuel upon which much of his writing is based. Although I wanted my cabin to look like any old garden shed, I somehow also wanted to throw a line over to Mettray. I found the echo that I desired by keeping the marine-architecture elements (the hammock and the folding table) for the interior, and holding tight to the proportions in the roof carpentry.
Mettray | Photographie | Anonymous | Date?
As for the question of surveillance (or observation, or monitoring, or even spying if you like), I created two windows that ressemble a pair of dark glasses. From a distance, this gives the impression that the cabin is a skull, staring out at us from behind the bushes.
Ray Ban publicity | printed matter | Cutwater | 2008
Inside the cabin, you really get the feeling that you are inside a giant's head, looking out through his eyes, like the paintings of Caspar Wolf in the 18th century, or a certain photograph by Brassai.
Saint Beat's cave | Oil on canvas | Caspar Wolf | 1776
Caves at Véteuil | BW Photograph | Brassai | 1935
As a way of introducing a random uncontrolable element into the work, to avoid the quagmire of nostalgia and the minefield illustration, I invited the poet Pierre Giquel to write something to Jean Genet. The poem was placed on the table for all to read.
Pierre Giquel | Photographed at Oxford | 2007