Press - The Maeght saga in white and black

Book: Aimé Maeght's granddaughter tells the fabulous story of her grandfather

Meeting Guy Duplat

Maeght is a magical name in the art world. Who hasn't been amazed to visit the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de Vence, which remains a fabulous place? The Maeght gallery is (or was) an essential address and Maeght editions have provided magazines ("Derrière le verre") and editions (600,000 lithos and engravings) which have delighted fans. This July 28, we will celebrate the Foundation's fiftieth anniversary and on this occasion the exhibition "Face à l'oeuvre" has just opened, which explores this unique adventure through emblematic works.

Also released is an explosive book by Yoyo Maeght, the granddaughter of the founder of the dynasty, Aimé Maeght. In “La saga Maeght” which is released today by Robert Laffont, she pays a magnificent, moving and personal tribute to her grandfather, recounts the dream life she had as a child and takes us into the intimacy of the artists, but in the second part of the book, she describes the rifts of the clan and reveals her version of fratricidal fights around a financial and artistic heritage. Reading it, the world of art is not an irenic world.

Yoyo Maeght born in 1959, publisher, gallery owner and exhibition curator, magistrate, is the granddaughter of Aimé and Marguerite Maeght. With her sisters Isabelle and Florence, it was she (she was 5 years old) who gave André Malraux, then Minister of Culture, the keys to the new Maeght Foundation, on July 28, 1964. A memorable celebration where Montand came to sing in neighbor and where Fila Fitzgerald charmed the guests. We discovered the museum designed by the architect Josep Lluis Sert and the collections brought to the Foundation by Aimé Maeght: Bonnard, Braque, Calder, Chagall, Giacometti, Léger, Miro...

Braque and Miro

“In recent years ,” Yoyo Maeght explains to us, “I have undertaken to engrave in stone the memory of my grandfather Aimé Maeght. I have written two books about him, made a film and again, in 2010, an exhibition which had a lot of impact. 'Aimé Maeght et Giacometti' But in all this, I always acted like a scientist, an art historian. This time, I wanted to add my personal testimony and help, like an archaeologist. to rediscover what animated my grandfather."

In her book, she recounts her childhood as a real princess. She loved going to play at her grandfather's house on Avenue Foch. He let her stack Charlotte Perriand's chairs, wander around Paris, in the Rolls driven by the chauffeur Octave to visit Georges Braque, "Grandpa's close friend". As a child, she upset Braque by bringing him, one day, a large box of colored pencils and saying to him: "Here Braque, to make Miro." Miro who was Aimé Maeght's other close friend.

I was with Prévert and Picasso

Still very small, she was taken to Derain's widow or accompanied her grandfather to the artist couple Riopelle and Joan Mitchell. In her book, she wonders today if her teachers took her for a mythomaniac when she candidly told the truth to explain an absence: "I was in Antibes with Papy, Prévert and Picasso."

What was Aimé Maeght's secret: "Grandpa was born an orphan who came from Hazebrouck, in the North , Yoyo Maeght explains to us . From his misfortunes, he made happiness. Having been torn from his native country to go to the Cévennes, meant that he absorbed both countries and that he always had broad and passionate choices. He always exhibited many different artists, far from prejudice.

The book recounts the phenomenal successes of Aimé Maeght as a gallery owner, his stays in Saint-Paul-de Vence where he rubbed shoulders with the small gang of "La Colombe d'or". When the Maeght girls were in trouble, they called "La Colombe d'or" to reach the grandfather and if he was not there, they said: "Then ask Montand, Lino Ventura, Serge Reggiani, Anouk Aimée or Chagall." Serge Lifar was invited to see how little Florence (Flo) danced so well. She quotes her grandfather recalling "the tremor of emotion in his entire being that seized him when he visited Kandinsky's studio."

“Big money story”

Yoyo Maeght summarizes: "Picture dealer, publisher of art, books, magazines, initiator of festivals, creator of one of the first contemporary art foundations in Europe, joyful, insolent and visionary defender of a certain idea of art, the Marguerite and Aime Maeght foundation remains his masterpiece even if he repeated that it was a tool like any other at the service of artists." But Aimé Maeght, “Papy”, died in 1981 of cancer, a few years after his wife.

The book “The Maeght saga” then addresses the sequel, much less idyllic, marked by delicate questions of inheritance and love affairs. For a long time, the Maeght family produced a united mage, but differences broke out in 2011 when Yoyo Maeght, then CEO of Maeght Editeur, resigned from the board of directors of the Foundation created by his grandparents. Her sister Isabelle then spoke, in "Nice-Matin", of "personal reasons relating to a strictly private problem" and Adrien Maeght, Yoyo's father and Aimé's son, was more fierce, evoking a "big story under and with pride" . Since then, Yoyo Maeght feels free and can tell in this book his version, very acidic, of the Maeght family's accumulated suffering.

Justice finally got involved

Yoyo Maeght also reveals his version of the painful heartbreaks in the clan.

First there is the near-hatred that would have existed between Aimé and his son Adrien. Yoyo talks about his father who took very little care of them, who was especially obsessed with cars (he opened a car museum for a time) and who, like his father, did not like going to biennials and car fairs. 'art and browse all the catalogs. “ Adrien has no other guide than his immediate pleasure. Everything that comes between him and his pleasure must be put aside,” writes his daughter. Confidant to her grandfather, she quickly realizes this "disenchantment" and her Grandpa explains to her, speaking of his son Adrien: "I'm not angry, I'm disappointed."

Yoyo Maeght tries to explain to us: "Papy was a personality of great intellectual power, he was also very seductive, like a Picasso could be. Mamy did not suffer from it, but I think my father wanted to protect his mother against this flamboyant Grandpa It's ultimately a very Oedipal conflict. She adds: “When Mamy died, when Grandpa was still there, it was already very conflictual between him and my father to settle the inheritance. We then had to call on a judicial administrator.”

“Maeght blood”

Yoyo Maeght also evokes the “disenchantment” between her and her father “Adrien ,” she writes, “reveals himself to be implacable and cruel, apparently not hesitating to monetize his children.” “I don’t know why my father was like that, and I don’t have to judge him,” she told us. “But it’s true that Mamy told him: ‘make us grandchildren,’ and that he probably also did it to have in exchange a comfort of life, a deal with his parents." Today, Yoyo Maeght lives with her partner's children and she remains bitter having, she says, heard her father say that his children did not have "Maeght blood in their veins".

Yoyo Maeght regrets that we did not develop the Maeght name to make it the “first luxury brand in art”. She herself has traveled a lot, she rubs shoulders with artists from diverse backgrounds like the choreographer Preljocaj, she says, "I give lessons and I meet wonderful young people, I have also worked a lot with artists in China. Grandpa who loved your contemporary artists so much, would have loved the Chinese and he would have invented something in this context of globalization that he had already understood by having opened galleries in many countries." Today, she says, the "Gallery is no longer what it was and the Foundation is giving in to the 'people' . Already in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, the 'people' can no longer come incognito like, in the past.” She didn't appreciate the last major exhibition at the Foundation with Bernard-Henry Lévy as curator: "What would my grandfather have thought of having BHL after Reverdy, Char and Malraux!"

She adds: "The only one who spoke well of my Grandpa after his death, of his passion for transmitting, without simply drawing up a list of what he had done, was Alechinsky who said to me then: 'The Your grandfather's strength was his relationship with poets."

The most painful pages of the book are those where Yoyo Maeght talks about her older sister Isabelle: "She never stopped calling us, her sisters, her darlings, but it was to manipulate us and take all the power."

Computer theft

The book multiplies anecdotes , sometimes of incredible virulence: "Mom's jewelry is all at Isa's, our childhood memories have disappeared, the collections of Moustiers and antiques are at Isa's", dismissal of Yoyo Maeght as CEO by Maeght Edition, use of the gallery to promote Isabelle's companion, concealment of inventories and sales, accusation of the theft of a computer where this information was located and mysterious saliva sampling ("Perhaps to see if the legend that I was a foundling was true"), etc. "I have read a lot of books about manipulators. We cannot understand them, I tried for a long time to understand my father and my sister Isabelle, but we do not speak the same language. Today, I am a woman free, I want to keep memories with my grandfather and I give up trying to understand the rest."

But Justice takes its course. Yoyo Maeght explains that she already won a round when Justice ruled in her favor on a share that was due to her in the sale of certain works. And the investigation is not closed, “the accounts must be in order”. “I'm going to be a grandmother soon and I would like to have a place where I can tell myself this time that it's really mine.” And she has projects like talking about architecture in new forms.

G.Dt

The Maeght saga, Yoyo Maeght, Robert Laffont, 324p.,: 21.50 euros , autographed by Yoyo Maeght.

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