FRANÇOIS HALARD Polaroïds Italiens Published by OSCAR HUMPHRIES SOTHEBY’S IDEA
FRANÇOIS HALARD Polaroïds Italiens
Published to celebrate the exhibition Polaroïds Italiens at Sotheby’s, London December 2017
Published by OSCAR HUMPHRIES SOTHEBY’S IDEA
8-13 Introduction by Oscar Humphries 14-21 Cy Twombly 22-27 Giorgio Morandi 28-33 Theatres & Ruins 34- 41 Villa Malaparte 42- 45 Villa Cetinale 46-49 Convento di Santa Maria di Costantinopoli 50 -55 Casa Mollino 56-59 Villa Palagonia & il Parco dei Mostri di Bomarzo
I was 16 when I first went to Italy. I remember photographing in black and white an Italian Renaissance garden near Verona: ‘Giardino Giusti’. It was the beginning of a collection of houses, places, gardens, artists and ruins... my own idea of the Italian Grand Tour. From Cy Twombly to Morandi. Capri to Sicily. Malaparte to Bomarzo. I am showing my most precious Polaroids taken from 1984 to 2017 François Halard
The Impressionism of François Halard by Oscar Humphries
‘Everything is disappearing; you will need to act fast if you want to see anything.’ PAUL CÉZANNE
I have long admired the work of François Halard. It was a chance meeting through mutual friends that brought us together earlier this year, and it was soon after that we began exploring the idea of a book and an exhibition in London. Remarkably, ‘Polaroïds Italiens’ is the first presentation of his work in England. Halard’s work has as much in common with painting as it does with photography. His images are personal impressions of the places they record – never literal or clinical, they are always nuanced. The particular atmospheres of his photographs, whether recording the Villa Malaparte in Capri or Cy Twombly’s studio outside Rome, have made him the most accomplished chronicler of interiors, architecture and gardens of our time. The duality of his work is that it records beauty and makes beauty anew. For me, this makes his a unique and sentimental voice in the increasingly scientific realm of contemporary photography. Halard shoots on film, often using natural light, and the Polaroids presented here are studies – sketches if you will – of the finished photographs that have appeared in various books and magazines. Using Polaroid as a medium has an air of the antique, the digital having virtually eliminated it from the world of commercial photography. Shooting on Polaroid and film retains the artist’s hand in a way that an entirely mechanized process would make impossible. The works are all the richer for this approach.
Villa Malaparte
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Italy as seen by Halard is the subject of this book; his love affair with the country began when he was in his teens. The following Polaroids were made between the mid 1980s and today, and until a fortnight ago they formed part of the photographer’s personal archive in Arles. ‘When I was fifteen or sixteen I asked my parents if I could go to the fair in Milan to see Sottsass’s Memphis furniture’, says François, ‘it was a strange present to ask for; at the time I’d been reading my parents’ copies of Domus magazine.’ He grew up in Paris, the child of highly sophisticated antique dealers. Living from an early age with objects of beauty, they form part of his DNA, and it was perhaps inevitable that he would go on to work in the field of art. It was on this first trip to Italy that he took his first photos, with his father’s camera, of the Giardino Giusti near Verona. ‘I always wanted to be a photographer. My parents had a beautiful house and many people would come to photograph it.’ Whenever a photographer came to the house the young Halard would ask if he could assist them. ‘I would escape school and watch them working, it was fascinating. I remember Helmut Newton and Karen Rakay coming over, and every summer I would work as a photographer’s assistant, so from the beginning I had a technical background.’ In his work you can see these two gifts at play – one learnt and the other felt: a technical ability and something more of the heart than of the head. Like his parents before him, François is a collector, and sometimes the line between his art and the art that he collects becomes indivisible, with each informing and enriching the other. ‘As a kid, I took my father’s camera and took pictures of the things in my room, but then I had no money with which to collect.’ With his first pay cheque he bought a lithograph from Cy Twombly’s ‘Roman Notes’ series from 1970. He also bought an eighteenth-century day bed (reproduced here), which lived at his parents’ house until, over fifteen years later, he was able to afford a house in which to put it.
After Cy Twombly, Gaeta
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The impression Twombly made on him was a lasting one, and when he eventually met his hero – at MoMA in the 1990s – he was able to realize a long-held dream. His photographs of Twombly’s studio are among his most celebrated. ‘I remember driving to the studio for the first time and being terribly excited; it was such an intense experience, I almost got killed getting there I drove so fast.’ Many of the values evident in Twombly’s work can also be found in Halard’s: a perfect amalgam of the modern and the classical, a powerful union of the then and the now. Halard bought his house in Arles because something about it reminded him of the way in which Twombly lived. The house is easily the most beautiful I’ve ever seen and overflows with objects that seem to hover in an indeterminate time zone, somewhere between ancient Rome, the eighteenth century and today. Of course, it is not unexpected to find our greatest living photographer of interiors residing in such a place of beauty, and perhaps it is a case of one thing feeding the other. The more we train our eyes, the more they give back. ‘When you surround yourself with beauty, it helps you go on. Beauty is medicine for the soul.’
Lit, Arles
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Portrait of the master in the garden... Gaeta, summer, 1995. My hero. The first artist I collected. His ‘Roman Notes’ are following me. F.H.
CY TWOMBLY Gaeta House Gaeta
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GIORGIO MORANDI Grizzana House nr. Bologna
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From the ruined Roman temple of Selinunte in Sicily to the court theatre ‘Teatro all’Antica’ of Sabbioneta – built by architect Vincenzo Scamozzi. From a Palladio design to the ‘Teatro Farnese’ by Giovan Battista Aleotti, three fantastic memories of my early travels in the mid 1980s. F.H.
THEATRES & RUINS Teatro all’Antica, Sabbioneta Teatro Farnese, Parma Selinunte Temple, Sicily
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A visit to Capri in 1998. Two days spent in the house of the author Curzio Malaparte. La casa come me ‘A house like me’. Remembering Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt around Adalberto Libera’s masterpiece. The view of the Faraglioni is now disappearing from the Polaroids of the window. F.H.
VILLA MALAPARTE Capri
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VILLA CETINALE nr. Siena
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CONVENTO DI SANTA MARIA DI COSTANTINOPOLI Marittima, Puglia
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CARLO MOLLINO I was always and for a long time fascinated by Carlo Mollino: the architect, the photographer who published the Message from the Darkroom, by his erotic and enigmatic Polaroids, by his ‘theatre of poses’ made in his house in Turin. F.H.
CASA MOLLINO Torino
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Italy has always been an inspiration for artists, architects and writers. Goethe describes in his travels in Italy ‘The Villa of the Monsters’ – ‘La Villa Palagonia’ in Bagheria near Palermo. Jean Cocteau and Niki de Saint Phalle were inspired by the garden of Bomarzo called also ‘Park of the Monsters’ created by Francesco Orsini in the sixteenth century. Always modern. F.H.
VILLA PALAGONIA Bagheria IL PARCO DEI MOSTRI DI BOMARZO Lazio
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O SCAR HU MPHRIES
The publishers wish to thank the following people without whom this book, and the exhibition it celebrates, would not have been possible. Oliver Barker, Joe and Marie Donnelly, Angela Hill, Marlous Jens, Elbe Koe, Alexandra Lindsay, David Owen, Lord & Du Plooy, Matt Price, Lydia Soundy.
Catalogue coordinated by Oscar Humphries Catalogue design by Fernando Gutiérrez. Design assistant Álvaro López © 2017 François Halard. Texts © Oscar Humphries and François Halard. All images © François Halard Every effort has been made to ensure that there are no errors, inaccuracies or omissions in this publication and the Publisher accepts no liability for any that may have inadvertently occurred. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the Publisher and Copyright holder. Printed in the UK by Pure Print