La Ruche

Chagall, Archipenko, Léger, Modigliani, Soutine all went through there. La Ruche –literally the Beehive-, the artistic phalanstary created by Alfred Boucher, one of the masters of Camille Claudel, entered the legend of modern art a long time ago. Janine Warnod or Jean-Marie Drot have already spoken about it in their works but it was still lacking an exhaustive catalogue. The latter, that accompanied an exhibition presented at the Palais Lumière in Evian, develops a rich iconography. We regret there is no index to find one’s bearings in the profusion of artists who lived there, and we are sometimes irritated by the difficulty to associate the legends to the corresponding images. But it does fill out its main objective: one can follow the great moments as well as the miserable ones of the Ruche, and in particular the very difficult hours of the 1960s, when i twas saved from the bulldozers by fighting spirit of Chagall, of Gisèle Halimi or of Rebeyrolle. And one makes many discoveries: over more than one century of existence (1902-2009) it was inevitable that many unknown or forgotten artists appear along the pages.

• La Ruche, éditions Alternatives, 2009, 208 p., 35 €, ISBN : 9782862275956