The city of Cannes is devoting a double exhibition to the filmmaker and visual artist fascinated by the world of the sea. Guided tour.
Just a few meters from the site of the first Palais des Festivals, the staircase of which she so often climbed, the round silhouette of Agnès Varda, recognizable among a thousand, is displayed on the facade of La Malmaison on the Croisette, now rendered by movie buffs to summer visitors. A garland of multicolored plastic flip-flops sets the quirky tone of the “Beaches, huts and shells” exhibition.
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At Varda, the creation is multiple, like this colorful summer walk bringing together films, photos, installations and models that illustrate his passion for the beaches and the seas. With Hanna Baudet, director of the Pôle d’art contemporain de Cannes, it is Rosalie Varda, daughter and producer of the artist, who imagined this umpteenth tribute to the high priestess of the new wave, celebrating her unique gaze, her love pop before its time, its genius for the image, stopped or in motion, and its iconoclastic poetry.
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“Ping-pong, flip flops and camping” displays its beach gear and flashy colors projected onto an inflatable mattress, the “Beach Hut Depot” is melancholy beautiful. And we see one of his short films, “Du Côté de la Côte”, commissioned film for the promotion of the French Riviera in 1958, all to music by Georges Delerue (who will later write the score of the “contempt” of his friend Godard) and the words of Agnès in person.
“Self-portrait in mosaic”, by Agnès Varda, 1949.
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“Agnès loved the sea so much, the sound of the surf, remembers Rosalie. She, the adopted daughter of Sète and Noirmoutier, where she had established her family refuge with Jacques Demy, only knew Cannes for its festival. And the plastic buckets, drainers and flip-flops that she loved to hunt for in bazaars around the world, even in China.
On the heights of Cannes, the exhibition continues in the sublime Villa Domergue, where Agnès’ cabins, built with film from her own films (super-8 for the models, 35 mm for the life-size cabins) almost insult by their ingenuity the cardboard rococo of the place. Up to the real tent of Sandrine Bonnaire in “Without roof nor law” which thrones in the garden of this outrageously luxurious place to celebrate the militant Varda. “The cabins sum up what Agnès was like,” explains her daughter. They are those of childhood but also of workers, gardeners or the homeless.
“On the side of the coast”, a film by Agnès Varda, 1958.
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Many of these installations have already been exhibited, notably at the Fondation Cartier or abroad, but there are also gems, such as this series of photos of buoys – “my mother loved it, she bought them all over the place” – that Rosalie found in boxes after Agnes’ death. “There are still treasures that we are discovering as we go along,” she continues. Three years after the death of the multi-award-winning artist (the only Frenchwoman to have received a Palme d’or and an honorary Oscar), her work continues to travel the world, from Porto to Los Angeles where Varda will the subject of a major exhibition at the Oscars museum, succeeding Spike Lee and Coppola. Waiting for a complete retrospective in the fall of 2023 at the Cinémathèque française in Paris. Varda’s genius, sparkling eye and quirky artistry have never been so alive!
“Beaches, huts and shells” in Cannes, villa Domergue (until September 18), and at the La Malmaison art center (until November 20).
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