The dream of the bird
- department: Var
- naming: The dream of the bird
- authors: Niki de SAINT-PHALLE, Rainer VON HESSEN (artists)
- date: 1968-1971
- protection: Classification of historical monuments by order of 16 April 2008
- label patrimoine XXe: Commission régionale du patrimoine et des sites du 15 March 2007
The site is located in the Var forest. From 1968 to 1971, each summer, Niki de Saint Phalle and Rainer von Hessen, assisted by artist friends, including Jean Tinguely, built the Rêve de l'Oiseau. The slope was organized into platforms and modeled to receive habitable sculptures; the vegetation, the composition of the garden, the perspectives on the landscape participate in the gradual discovery and enhancement of the latter.
The "dwelling" consists of three separate rooms, each arranged on a platform. A path leads first to the kitchen-living room, also called The Dream of the Bird, which gave its name to the whole. A flight of steps then goes up to a second platform, occupied by the bedroom and the bathroom (House "Nana" or Big Clarice); we finally reach the third platform, occupied by the toilet (The Witch).
Covered entirely with metal-like paint, the Witch, draped in her hair, recalls the statues of Easter Island. The room is a feminine torso, originally multicolored, whose breasts shelter cottages for children. The volume of the kitchen, dominated by a large bird, is completely phagocytized by polychrome sculptures of various sizes and shapes, inspired by themes familiar to the artist: lizards, snakes, chicks, flowers, birds…
The garden layout consists of stairs, terraces, pathways and ramps, revealing nature in a relatively rough state.
In the work of Niki de Saint Phalle, the Rêve de l'Oiseau marks a real turning point, that of the transition from sculpture to architecture on the one hand, and the insertion of works in a natural environment on the other. It is indeed the first garden of "visitable" sculptures made by the artist, and the only existing one in France; it prefigures his major work, the Tarot garden, created from 1978 in Garavicchio in Tuscany.
- Editor: Sylvie Denante, drac paca crmh, 2007