Villa Benkemoun is a Living Monument to a 1970s Modernist Vision

Villa Benkemoun is one of those rare time capsules that has remained untouched, yet well-maintained, giving viewers the sensation of stepping back into a time and place in history.

Created in 1974 by renowned architect Emile Sala, the villa, located in Arles, is the epitome of modernist mid-century living. A seamless blend of architecture, art, and design, shown in its bold geometric forms and pops of colour and texture, Villa Benkemoun is both an inviting familial home and an immersive art experience. 

To celebrate its 50-year anniversary, curator Raphael Giannesini was tasked by Brigitte Benkemounm daughter of the villa’s founders, with honouring the architectural wonder of the 20th-century heritage site, and developing it into a gallery space. However, Giannesini was conscious of creating an exhibit which reflected both the idealistic views as well as the reality of the time in which the villa was built.

What key themes did you aim to highlight in this exhibition, and how do they reflect the legacy of Villa Benkemoun?

The whole idea of the exhibition was to embrace the energy of the villa and create bridges between architecture, sculpture and painting, creating a transhistorical exhibition that reflects the past, but also uses it as a tool to think about our future. Brigitte Benkemoun’s idea was to focus on the year the villa was built, which was 1974.

When Brigitte described the project, she spoke of the energy of her parents and the way they were connected to the modernity of their time while also being innovative. This villa, for them, was a way to craft a lifestyle, to live inside an object that was embodying this desire to be innovative. For me, this attitude towards the present was very inspiring to create something that was connected not only to the past, in ‘74, but to my generation and the generations of artists to come. 

Do you see similar themes reflected in the artworks from ‘74 to those of modern day? 

Yes of course, there are many. That was the interesting part of the project as well, to exhibit the work of artists in ‘74 who were a bit like visionaries, who not only questioned the time, but tried to see the future. So, with Alain Jacquet, Enzo Mari, Andy Warhol, Claude Parent, even the architect [of the villa] Emile Sala… I was very excited to exhibit the work of these artists because they were questioning modernity at that time, and the way they could inhabit the world in a new manner – which is exactly the same question in the work of today’s artists that I exhibited. Between the question of ecology and politics, aesthetics and poetics, these artists try to, again, question the way we can rebuild homes for a new future. The interconnection between those two generations is the way they tried to question these things. 

I imagine it might be a challenge to create a gallery space within a residential house. Was it an overwhelming concept for you to conceive?

It was totally challenging. The house itself is an iconic structure from the ’70s. Most of the architecture from this time was autonomous, which means it is a work of art in its own right, so it doesn’t want to be challenged by other works of art and wants to be regarded as the main piece. So I tried to embrace this architectural masterpiece and, at the same time, challenge it as well. It was important for me to rediscover the villa as a totally different object, because to me the villa is a promise of a future. That’s exactly how it has been built, a new lifestyle that Le Corbusier called “machine à vivre,” which was essentially a new way to live and a new way to connect to the environment. I really wanted to embrace this futuristic aspect of the villa and over-develop it. Getting to the villa was as if I were arriving at a spaceship and traveling back in time.

I mean, you are travelling back to a time where people had such a hope for the future and an idealistic view for living spaces… 

Absolutely, but I also wanted to make sure to not only look at ’74 from a nostalgic position, but also an active position with different takes on that year. I’ve tried to construct the narration of the exhibition through two sides: on the ground floor, we look at the myths of ’74. For example: hope, happiness and this pacified time after the war where people needed to have some hope and idealistic views. The world at the time was constructed on this hope, which you can see in the creation of objects of the time. I wanted to take on this idea on the ground floor and then challenge it with the realities of the year on the first floor.

Are there two art works that really solidify those two ideas?

For the reality floor I would definitely choose Andy Warhol’s ‘Big Electric Chair’ because this chair is the darkest side of pop art, coming from the Death and Disaster series by Warhol. It challenged the idea of progress of the time. By showing a mechanism of technology, which was supposed to be ‘progressive’ and became a place for torture in the Warhol picture. In ’74 in France we still had the death penalty, and so of course while we can see this time as a beautiful time, it is a time of cruelty too. 

Looking at it through this idea of transhistorical conversations, ‘Big Electric Chair’ by Warhol is questioned or reactivated by a work of Paul Créange that captures the heat of our body. By surrounding Warhol’s work with this installation by Créange, suddenly the electric chair, which shows the absence of the body, is challenged by Créange in that it connects the body to the image. 

If I were to choose a piece on the ground floor I would choose ‘The World’ by Alain Jacquet who was really interested in the Space Odyssey. What he took from this is not the vision of the moon but vision of the Earth. For him, vision of the world came from the mission of Apollo in ’69. It’s a very historical vision that reflects on the way we rediscover our planet and how we exile ourselves from our own home. He really looks at the way we as humans have perhaps gone too far as an ecological statement. 

1974 – Passé, présent, futur is open to view at Villa Benkemoun until September 29.