Paris and its environs seemed to be the center of everything in the 20th century, when artists and writers coalesced to feed boundless creativity. The sculptor Chana Orloff and the poet, artist, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau were denizens of important early artistic circles, while the sculptor Jean Tinguely, the artist Niki de Saint Phalle, and the art dealer Louis Carré made the most of next-generation collaborations. Musician Serge Gainsbourg galvanized the entire country. All established influential homes and projects that were central to their lives and work—and are now open to the public.
Atelier-Maison Chana Orloff
The name Chana Orloff may not summon an immediate image. A Ukrainian expat to Paris by way of Palestine in 1910, she was a successful sculptor who counted Ossip Zadkine, Chaim Soutine, and Amadeo Modigliani, other Jewish refugees, among her closest friends. All that is changing with the current exhibition of her work at the Musée Zadkine, where her wooden sculptures seem quite at home.
Her own atelier-maison, however, in the 14th Arrondissement, is equally compelling. Orloff had been seduced by the idea of living on the Villa Seurat street, where artists such as Soutine and Dalí, and writers Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, also resided. Her modernist house, designed by the famed architect Auguste Perret with some furnishings by Pierre Chareau, has a lovely gallery that shows off her many works and a bedroom in which you can imagine her collapsing after a long day with a chisel. Her family lived right next door.
Originally a couture student, she had abandoned the Paquin fashion house after her drawing talent—nurtured by her classes at a division of La Petite École (which later became the École des Arts Décoratifs)—was spotted. She instead embraced the artistic world of Montparnasse, drawn especially to subjects of maternity, women, children, and animals. But her reputation was sealed after she made drawings and sculptures of her talented circle and famous contemporary figures.
Forced to leave Paris during World War II, she found her house and sculptures vandalized on her return. A dedicated humanist as well as an artist, she resolved nonetheless to continue working, but her style became more robust and abstract. Frequent visits to family in the new state of Israel also sustained her.
Maison Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau made his country home into an expression of his many passions. Formerly part of a castle in Milly-la-Forêt, outside Paris, the house became a refuge with the help of storied decorator Madeleine Castaing. Leopard prints, canopied beds, Surreal drawings, photographs, and gifts from his many famous friends and colleagues (such as Coco Chanel and André Gide) are ensconced with otherworldly overtones.
Cocteau published his first book of poems in 1909 and became a notable figure in Paris in the worlds of theater, dance, and art, frequenting the starry salon of the Countess de Noailles and others. Friend to Picasso, Diaghilev, and Proust, he fancied one-of-a-kind objects and juxtaposed them in this house he acquired in 1947 with his lover, the actor Jean Marais, just as the fame of their film La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) was reaching a zenith. (Marais’s bedroom will be reimagined by May 2024.) It may also have provided a welcome retreat after whispers of Cocteau’s alleged wartime collaboration grew louder.
After his death, the house became the property of his adopted son, Édouard Dermit, then was acquired by the municipality, and eventually restored with added funds from Pierre Bergé. A gallery of temporary exhibitions, a film of Cocteau extracts, and a romantic garden and moat complete the idyllic domesticity. The nearby village church, where he is interred in the graveyard, also contains his fanciful murals.
Le Cyclop
Arising out of the forest of Milly-la-Forêt like a creature from the Black Lagoon stands Le Cyclop, a monumental one-eyed head made out of concrete, iron debris, twinkling bits of mirror, and an old trolley car. A gigantic improvisation by the Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely begun in 1969 with help from his wife, Niki de Saint Phalle, and their artist friends, the structure contains an interactive fun house of eccentric sound sculptures, a theater, Tinguely’s signature Rube Goldberg–ian creations, miniature versions of Saint Phalle’s colorful figures, and surprising waterworks.
Tinguely decided to allow his fellow artists a largely free hand, and they contributed individual pieces on serious subjects such as the Paris student riots of May ’68 and the deportations during the Holocaust, as well as more lighthearted creations in homage to Yves Klein and Marcel Duchamp, and a signature Compression sculpture by César. These coexist with Tinguely’s ingenious scrap metal pop-ups.
A 25-year utopian effort constructed entirely without government authorization, Le Cyclop was donated to the state in 1987 and painstakingly refurbished in 2021. In this case, a guided tour is a must, as one false step up or down the intricately connected levels could leave you hurtling over one of the many precarious edges. In season (April to October), the site is also home to performances and presentations.
In Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden in Tuscany, Tinguely’s work is an effervescent grace note. Here, it is his overall grand conception that has pride of place.
Maison Louis Carré
It’s rare that the collaboration of client and architect truly takes wing. Beginning in 1955, Louis Carré, whose Paris galleries had exhibited Le Corbusier, Matisse, and Léger, was considering the architectural commission for his country house in Bazoches-sur-Guyonne, outside Paris. He had studied the work of Alvar Aalto, even though Aalto’s only project in France, the Finnish pavilion for the Paris International Exhibition of 1937, had been demolished.
Carré wrote to Aalto and suggested a meeting. The two immediately hit it off. They saw the world in the same universal way and respected each other’s ideas. Aalto’s second wife, Elissa, who spoke French, was charged with running the project, which included interiors, a swimming pool, a pool house, exterior lighting, awnings, and furniture. Carré and his third wife, Olga, moved in in 1959.
The house sits atop a gentle ridge on the edge of the Rambouillet forest. It contains almost all the original furnishings. There is no mistaking the hand of Aalto in the many wood finishes, elegant lighting, and vibrant textiles. One of the linchpins of the Iconic Houses group charged with promoting distinctive design houses worldwide, the house remains a gathering place. Private buses depart from central Paris for the hour-long ride to the home on weekends from March through November.
Maison Gainsbourg
The pent-up curiosity to see the newly opened Left Bank lair of one of France’s most renowned singers, Serge Gainsbourg, makes it among the toughest tickets in Paris right now.
You understand why when you register at reception and line up outside the graffiti-laden walls: only two small parties are allowed in the house at the same time. You make the pilgrimage along with Charlotte, his daughter by Jane Birkin, whose labor of love and tribute this is, as she whispers memories and instructions breathlessly in your acousta-guide.
Born Lucien Ginsberg to Jewish immigrants in 1928, Gainsbourg was a rake and a libertine, his talent somewhere between avant-garde, reggae, yé-yé, and pop. He wrote more than 550 songs, whose lyrics often pushed conventional boundaries. He was also a fixture on French television, thereby cementing a more populist public. His films—among them the directorial effort Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus, starring an often naked Birkin, whose title song had already become a cause célèbre when he recorded it first with a previous lover, Brigitte Bardot—is now the subject of a temporary exhibition in the namesake museum across the street.
The home has been restored to look as if Gainsbourg has just finished one of his five packs of Gauloises on his favorite sofa, or playing the piano, or settling in with one of his many famous friends or lovers. Its combination of low lighting and dark colors makes for a feeling of mystery and sensuousness rare in a private house open to the public.
A largely weekend visitor (Gainsbourg and Birkin separated in 1980), Charlotte idolized her father, as did the rest of the country. Here is the briefcase filled with the 500-franc notes he gave her so she could fetch his favorite magazines and newspapers. There is the study with his collection of books. Here is the closet where he kept his uniform of jeans, white shirts, and sneakers. Across the way is the playroom, where she arranged the many dolls.
Down the hall is his bedroom, where, after a late réveil—like the Sun King—they watched movies together on the low bed, where they were once pictured in a compromising position, and where he died of a heart attack, likely undone by his excess of cigarettes and alcohol, in 1991.
Along with the temporary exhibition in the museum, you can take in a permanent collection of memorabilia, a film biography, and finger sandwiches or a lobster roll in a meticulously rendered period bar, which combine to render Gainsbourg even more legendary.
Be sure to book far ahead.
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Patricia Zohn has contributed to numerous publications, including Wallpaper, Artnet, the Huffington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times
