Looking for an architect for their house on the Côte d'Azur, the Viscounts of Noailles lived up to their ambition, which was excessive. Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier resigned. The third option was Robert Mallet-Stevens, a very modern film designer and decorator who in 1923 barely had anything built. Villa Noailles, his creation, is usually defined as a cubist château, but it is a total work of art, like a Wagnerian opera or fantasy of the Tenerife carnival.
There is something of a trompe l'oeil in Villa Noailles, although it is in an aesthetic register opposite to the carnivalesque. It is assumed that it is built of concrete, when it is mostly made of stone and bricks covered in cement. This is how it stands on a hill in front of the Provençal town of Hyères. The novelist Edith Wharton contemplated those cubes with suspicion from her neighboring neo-Romanesque residence. But raising suspicions in the universe embodied by Wharton was part of the pleasure that Marie-Laure and Charles de Noailles derived from it all.
Marie-Laure de Noailles, née Bischoffsheim (Paris, 1902-1970), was the product of a fabulous mixture of lineages: on the side of a noble mother, she had ancestors such as the Marquis de Sade, and her grandmother, Laure de Chevigné, had Proust served as inspiration for the Duchess of Guermantes in In Search of Lost Time, which apparently did not prevent her from being the first woman to publicly pronounce the word “shit.” On her paternal side extended a line of German-Belgian Jewish bankers: her father and her grandfather died, she was still a child, she became the sole heir to a fortune. As a teenager she was in love with the homosexual and petit-bourgeois writer and artist Jean Cocteau, to the horror of the family, who breathed a sigh of relief when in 1923 she celebrated her wedding with Viscount Charles de Noailles (Paris, 1891-1981), scion of an old noble lineage. Her peers called them “the Charles”: cultured and dynamic, they were not satisfied with what that dusty world could offer them, and they set out to reign over the avant-garde.
They renovated their Parisian residence, the flowery Bischoffsheim hôtel, with the help of the interior designer Jean-Michel Frank, who changed moldings and paneling for parchment and straw coverings, on which they placed their marvelous art collection: Goya, Van Dyck and Watteau coexisted like this with Picasso, Balthus and Dalí. The Catalan painter was advanced the money that allowed him to buy his house in Portlligat. Musicians like Poulenc, Milhaud and Auric were also on his payroll. They were also pioneers in avant-garde film production. Two of his films, Biceps and jewelryby Jacques Manuel, and Les mystères du château du Dé, by Man Ray, were filmed in Villa Noailles. And Luis Buñuel stayed there to write the script for The Golden Ageanother commission from the Charleses, which blew up in their faces: the scandal that caused that violent anti-bourgeois ode was such that it was banned until 1981. But that only served to reinforce their positions.
The house was intended as a residence for winter holidays, when it was civilized to spend the cold months in the Mediterranean and the warm months on the northern coasts. Despite its apparent austerity, it had unusual comfort elements: central heating, built-in wardrobes, telephone, bathroom in each room, and a clock in each room, designed by the artist Jourdain. And even more modern was an indoor pool over which a trapeze hung in which to exercise before taking a dip. Next door, a gym and a squash court. An attractive gym instructor was the definitive complement that had the entire Côte d'Azur green with envy. There were always swimsuits and sports clothes in the rooms. Just as Marie Antoinette played shepherdess at Versailles, the Charleses offered their guests a representation of fashionable athletic life.
The furniture was signed by Djo-Bourgeois, Chareau, Prouvé, Gray or Perriand. The stained glass windows were the creation of Louis Barillet. In a cubist garden, the work of Gabriel Guevrekian, there was a rotating sculpture by Lipchitz. One of the bedrooms, designed by architect Van Ravesteyn, featured a painting by Mondrian. The so-called “flower room” was a small room whose only function was to prepare the bouquets that brightened the house, but its walls had been painted by Theo van Doesburg. Braque, Giacometti and Brancusi were other artists represented.
During World War II, the building was taken by Italian troops and converted into a hospital. After the war, the couple lived separately, although they always maintained written and telephone contact. The viscount entrenched himself in nearby Grasse, dedicated to botany. And Marie-Laure divided her time between Hyères and Paris, emerging as a patron and creator in her own right. She swapped Chanel models for Provençal dresses and her advanced political ideas earned her the nickname Red Viscountess. She began to paint and write. She supported artists, writers and lifers. One of her protégés, the Canarian painter Óscar Domínguez, created a mural next to the pool that survives.
After Marie-Laure's death in 1970, Charles recovered the furniture and works of art and sold the house to the municipal government of Hyères. In the 1990s it was restored and began hosting the annual fashion and photo festival that has been held there since 1985, welcoming artists again. Man Ray's portrait of Marie-Laure waves high above: Villa Noailles is still full of life.
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