The Fondation Maeght has loaned five sculptures by Joan Miró to Polygone Riviera, a multi-purpose “centre of commerce” which opened last October in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Côte d'Azur, for a temporary, outdoor exhibition. The bronze sculptures have been installed in a fountain, which has 24-hour security, in front of a restaurant.
“One needs to help exceptional places like this so that it becomes, with time, a beautiful place because before the area was dreadful,” says Adrien Maeght, the 86-year-old president of Fondation Maeght, founded by his parents Marguerite and Aimé Maeght in 1964. Miró made around 100 works at the foundation, explains its director Olivier Kaeppelin, saying: “Miró always wanted his work to be shared in public spaces.”
This is the “second chapter” in the artistic ambition of Polygone Riviera, owned by the property developers Unibail-Rodamco and Socri. The idea to ask Fondation Maeght to loan Miró’s works was that of the French curator Jérôme Sans.
Sans was also hired by Polygone Riviera to commission nine international artists, among them Daniel Buren, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Antony Gormley and Pascale Marthine Tayou, to make permanent, outdoor works prior to the centre’s inauguration. The budget for this investment, including the acquisition of a sculpture by the late French artist César, was €3m.
“Art should be everywhere,” says Sans, who compares Polygone Riviera—the first, vast multi-purpose venue in the south of France to combine shopping, cinemas and restaurants with outdoor art—to the kinds of art-and-shopping enterprises in Asia.
• Format Paysage.2, the exhibition of Joan Miró's sculptures, is on view at Polygone Riviera until 1 October
