Château La Coste
Robert Ivy, Alistair Hicks; photographs by Alan Karchmer
Merrell Publishers, September 2020
Hardcover | Page Size inches | 256 pages | 180 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-1858946818 | $70.00
PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:
Château La Coste, near Aix-en-Provence, is a unique property that features sculptural artworks by leading contemporary artists alongside works by some of the world’s best-known architects, all within the grounds of a working organic vineyard. Since 2002 the estate, which occupies an ancient site, has been transformed into a remarkable plein-air museum, and the number of installations – most created in situ, especially for this location – grows every year. In this stunning new book, Robert Ivy and Alistair Hicks explore each artwork and structure in depth. Their insightful commentaries are accompanied by specially commissioned images by the acclaimed architectural photographer Alan Karchmer. Ivy's introduction outlines the creation of the property by its owner, Patrick McKillen, and thereafter the book takes the form of a walk through the domaine, so that the reader is able to experience Château La Coste as a visitor would, from Tadao Ando’s minimalist concrete gate – an emphatic statement of modernity in the landscape – to Jean-Michel Wilmotte’s repurposed exhibition space, the Old Winestore Gallery. Throughout the pages, the reader is transported to idyllic Provence, to this enthralling, varied collection of art and architecture.
Robert Ivy, FAIA, is an author, editor, architect and association executive. For more than fourteen years, he was Editor-in-Chief of one of the world's most widely disseminated and admired architectural publications, Architectural Record. Alistair Hicks is the author of The Global Art (2014), a survey of twenty-first-century art. For eighteen years, he was the Senior Curator at Deutsche Bank.
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dDAB COMMENTARY:
In the first paragraph of his opening essay, Robert Ivy describes Château La Coste, the collection of art and architecture outside of Aix-en-Provence, as "primarily experiential, a collection of real-life encounters in a virtual age." While that sentiment can be applied to pretty much all artworks, especially large-scale art en plein-air, as well as buildings and landscapes, explicitly stating it in regards to Château La Coste makes me wonder where the value of this book lies. If it's necessary to experience the buildings and sculptures situated next to the vineyards to appreciate them fully, then this book is ideally a souvenir for people who have visited and taken the Art & Architecture Walk. For those who haven't been, like myself, the coffee table book is therefore an invitation to go. (Like many cultural attractions, in Europe and elsewhere, Château La Coste is currently closed.)
Before flipping through Château La Coste: Art and Architecture in Provence, I knew a small amount about a couple of its architectural pieces: the Music Pavilion (2008) designed by Frank Gehry (first spread below) and the Art Centre (2011) designed by Tadao Ando. But with 43 works in the book — 23 of them art artworks described by Alistair Hicks and 20 of them are architectural works with Robert Ivy's descriptions — I was surprised many times throughout. Ando, for one, has contributed other pieces, including an entrance Gate, a Chapel, a Pavilion ("Four Cubes to Contemplate Our Environment"), and some benches, most of them also completed in 2011. There are also buildings by Jean Nouvel (Wineries, 2008) and Renzo Piano (Exhibition Pavilion, 2017), a few Jean Prouvé demountable structures, and some artworks that are highly architectural in nature, such as Andy Goldsworthy's Gold Room (2009), Per Kirkeby's Brick Labyrinth (2018), Liam Gillick's Multiplied Resistance Screened (2010), and Daniel Buren's Une pause colorée (2014). Patrick McKillen, who created Château La Coste and invites the artists and architects to contribute to it, clearly has a good eye, as well as a beautiful piece of land.
With the book ordered according to the geography of the many-acre landscape and the route of the Art & Architecture Walk, I pined for a map or aerial keyed to the 43 works documented in words and images. Alas there is none, though there are a few aerial views inserted sporadically throughout the book. But without labels they are not as helpful as this aerial drawing on the Château La Coste website. So sans a solid illustration for orienting oneself in the landscape from a distance, it's Alan Karchmer's photographs that come to the fore as the primary means of conveying the experiential qualities of the place. They pair well with the words of Ivy and Hicks, especially when they transport us to the place, like when Hicks describes the "earthy smell" of Goldsworthy's Oak Room. The photos are beautiful, I'll admit, and they do their part in making me want to visit Provence at some point in my life, to walk among McKillen's plein air collection of art and architecture. In the meantime, this book has a spot on my coffee table.
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