When it comes to historical monuments, we spontaneously think of Notre-Dame de Paris, Mont-Saint-Michel or the constructions of Le Corbusier. In this case, it is a small house in the village of Roquevaire, located 8 kilometers from Aubagne, in the Bouches-du-Rhône. The curious who cross Pont-de-l’Etoile, a district on the edge of the Huveaune, often stop, taken aback, in front of its facade decorated with hundreds of colorful ceramics.
The name of the building: the house of “Celle-qui-peint”. A procedure instructed by the regional directorate of cultural affairs (DRAC) to register the residence in the directory of historical monuments has been underway since November. A first opinion must be delivered during a plenary committee in the spring of 2022.
Entering this two-storey dwelling is an amazing experience. The visitor struggles to weave through a maze of accumulated canvases, placed here, leaning there, one masking the other. To climb a staircase on the (painted) steps of which he brushes against other paintings. To dare to sit on one of the decorated chairs facing a barely identifiable sink or to avoid a brush that has fallen on the floor. “It’s nothing, it’s nothing”, whispers Danielle Jacqui, 88, who then points to the panel of unfired ceramics that she has made to adorn, again and again, her windows.
Prolific Artist
Self-taught, Danielle Jacqui did not attend the Beaux-Arts. Married young in 1952, mother of four children, she saw small masonry work, divorce… Then launched into the flea market. Corn “It’s more fun to produce your images than to buy them to sell them”, she says today: her stalls are staged and she weaves, tinkers, writes, paints. And ends up being able to buy a small shack in 1982.
So here she is launched into an endless activity and without a lot of means. “I’m mentally retarded when it comes to money. » She painted hundreds of canvases, made as many sculptures or weavings, but above all undertook to decorate the facade of her house. It is an understatement to say that its registration in the directory of historical monuments would sound like a consecration for its owner-artist.
In its preliminary report, the DRAC emphasizes “the character of uniqueness (…) total work” of the place and specifies that the examination “will have to focus on all its aspects (house, fittings, furniture, collections)”. A possible refusal of the administration can be due to the embarrassment that such a classification can cause for the municipality concerned or to the insufficient originality or quality of the building in question. Regarding the house of Danielle Jacqui, these last two reasons are to be ruled out. The town hall of Roquevaire, in which there are statuettes of the artist in the reception office, supports the approach. “It would be great for Roquevaire” and its 8,700 inhabitants, estimates the city councilor Yves Mesnard, who intervened for this classification with the prefectural authorities.
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