A few years ago I visited an exhibition with my wife Anke de Vries (see blog) of paintings by the Belgian artist Françoise Dony who is yet another talented foreigner who finds inspiration in the Drôme. It had been organised at the Château d’Autichamp by the owners Nol and Joyce van Fenema who were our friends. Joyce unfortunately passed away a few years ago. She used to organize significant cultural events at the castle and in the village, and her work is now carried on by a local association called Alticampus. It was a sunny afternoon and a large number of people were already gathered in front of the castle when we arrived. The exhibition space in the vaulted cellars was already packed full.  After a while going from one painting to another I felt that there was something strange that I couldn’t quite grasp. Most visitors like us were moving around but some weren’t. There was a lady looking out of the window and a man standing in a corner and a bit later when we passed again they were still there. She kept on peering outside and the man in the corner hadn’t moved. It took me some moments before I realised they were not real human beings flesh and blood but mannequins so true to nature that nothing distinguished them except that they were, to put it in art terms, “still lifes.” There was something stunning and a bit uncanny about them! That was the first time I heard that the mannequins had been made by an artist called Claude Merle. A few years later Anke and I went to see a play in the little theatre of Le Vivier just outside the village of Saint Gervais-sur-Roubion. As we came in we automatically walked up to a man seated behind a desk to buy our tickets. Again the illusion was flabbergasting. The individual did not move but just looked at us without responding. Here again we were standing in front of one of Claude Merle’s mannequins.  I decided there and then that I wanted to meet the artist who as it so happened lived quite near to our place. He would be, I thought, a perfect subject to conclude the 1^st cycle of twelve Blog posts dedicated to artists I have been fortunate enough to meet in the Drôme.

Claude Merle lives on a farm in the neighbourhood of Saint Gervais-sur-Roubion in the “Plaine de la Valdaine.” It is flat country but the old village is situated on a slight high at about 13 kilometres from Montélimar. There is a population of about 1000 souls, a 16^th century castle, quaint houses and narrow crooked streets, a competitive club of “boulistes”, the nearby “Théatre du Fénouillet” that generates various theatre-related activities, a popular “swap-plant” fair twice a year where people exchange plants and flowers; the village also has a number of cultural, professional and artistic associations. Last but certainly not least as far as I am concerned you have “La Compagnie des Voisins,” (the Company of the Neighbours) which is an association with 90 members that was initiated by Claude Merle who is its driving force. The stated aims are to promote the creation of mannequins as a means of artistic expression and publicizing the association’s activities by organizing presentations, workshops, etc.

I contacted Claude and we made an appointment to meet at his place. Anke went along with me. As we arrived a big barking dog rushed up to the gate followed by the owner in his shirt sleeves, an amiable looking man in his shirt sleeves with deep blue eyes. The dog proved to be overly affectionate and thrilled to see us and Claude Merle invited us to follow him into his home. After we had exchanged thoughts and ideas about the Blog Claude took us to a storage space in which 70 or 80 mannequins were waiting to participate in the next event. It was an impressive sight, a crowd of different types of individuals frozen in silence but ready to wake up before our eyes at the wave of a wand. Some looked quite normal like the people you come across in the street or in a café, others you would definitely not like to meet in broad daylight and definitely not at night. On the way home Anke who was as impressed as I was wondered whether she would feel comfortable and safe if we had them stored under our roof.

Creative souls are usually creative in a variety of fields. They are the ones who often make their dreams come true. The man we had just met had many dreams and he quite obviously had the ability and the perseverance to realize them. No wonder that Claude Merle’s life and artistic paths are far from commonplace. Besides making the life-size mannequins that are the subject of the present Blog post his activities include publishing 8 volumes in alexandrine verse – the outcome of a 20 year long correspondence with a friend – written under the pseudonyms of Bargougnan and Garnopal; Claude also plays the piano, the saxophone and the clarinet, acts on stage in farcical plays, and he is further involved in who knows what else!

After aborted scientific studies Claude who grew up in the neighbouring department of the Isère left for Paris when he was 20 years old with his wife and their son. This was during the turbulent 1960s when student uprisings changed the course of many things, including Claude Merle’s life choices. For three years in his own words he was a “dispassionate school teacher” after which he earned a living doing various odd jobs from which after a while his employers systematically sacked him. In the evenings he regularly accompanied a friend who recited texts in nightclubs and after a third companion had joined them the trio decided to produce and perform comical and mock-heroic shows on stage. From then onwards the stage would forever be part of Claude’s life.

When you look at Claude’s mannequins it is impossible not to notice how well their facial expressions reveal their moods and emotions. The look in their eyes in particular is strikingly realistic and this also applies to their gestures and attitudes, even if they are sometimes slightly exaggerated to emphasize the individual’s character. I asked him about it and he told me that as a child he had been a fan of a well-known comic strip called “Les Pieds Nickelés” featuring Croquignol who had a long nose, Ribouldingue with a beard and one-eyed Filochard, three likeable but highly disreputable characters who were always up to mischief and opposed to the established order. He loved them! Later a cartoonist fascinated him and this led Claude to make caricatures of the members of his family and friends. For some time he even worked as a street artist drawing portraits of celebrities like Claude Brassens the singer, Bob Dylan and others on the pavement.

While he was still in Paris he had a good friend, a puppeteer, who made the most beautiful masks that Claude greatly admired and that inspired him. After having obtained a job as an animator in an open-air youth centre he decided to start modelling masks out of clay himself and applying the techniques he had learned from his friend. It became his main activity for the next 30 years. At around the same time he was also provided with a studio in a Community Centre in which he organised workshops for adults and children.

What decided Claude Merle to settle in the Drôme? “Moving to the Drôme in the 8Os happened by sheer chance after I had spent holidays here with my family. I soon found work as an animator in a number of Youth Centres and I started organizing modelling workshops in the Isère, down the Rhône Valley, in the Loire, etc. Round about the same time I began to receive orders for masks and accessories for theatre companies as well as for promotional films, television, etc.  I was frequently asked to reproduce the head of one of the actors or actresses. That is when I made my first mannequins for a theatre troupe from Grenoble, “le Théâtre des deux mondes”.

 In 1984 I thought that it might be worth my while to set up my own troupe, the actors and actresses of which would be my mannequins. Having decided it was a good idea I got down to work. In the beginning the characters were fairly vulnerable for they were made out of papier-maché so I reverted to polyester resin for consistency and solidity. Having made the first few I decided to call them “Les Voisins”, The Neighbours (not my neighbours mind you although some do in fact strangely remind me of people I knew when I was young!) The next step was to create the scenarios that I exhibited in different places, to begin with in 1987 at the Grenoble Railway Station. I also showed them in theatres, cultural centres, youth centres and as part of various events. Since then “Les Voisins” have travelled to America, England, Australia, New Zealand, to a host of towns and cities in Belgium and in Holland, to Germany, Italy, Portugal, Luxemburg, Greece, Canada, Austria, Ireland, Spain and Lithuania.

Other artists make mannequins and some of them are very well known. Ron Mueck who is an Australian makes monumental hyper-realistic sculptures in polyester resin that reveal the most minute details of the human body; Sam Jinks another Australian focuses on naturalistic depictions of body hairs, etc.;  George Segal is famous for his casts of life-size figures that have a ghostly melancholic appearance; Carole Feuerman an American sculpts mostly women in bathing suits who could have stepped out of a fashion magazine, etc.; Claude Merle’s “Voisins” are unmistakably French, everyday people you come across in the street, in parks and in cafés. Their appeal is their very ordinariness and the tension that this creates between fiction and reality. I asked him to comment on what it was that drew him to simple plain folk. “I began by creating “monsters” until I realised that the more naturalistic my mannequins were the more effect they had. I do, however, choose to make faces that are marked by life and their expression can sometimes be quite sinister especially if I put them in a sinister setting. In those cases there is a bit of black humour in my work.”

Presently, Claude Merle is busy creating a permanent home for his mannequins (la Compagnie des voisins) that will be open to the public. He has decided to do it in the spacious barns and lofts of his farm. An architect has made the blueprint and construction works are well under way. The exhibition will be laid out in the form of an itinerary. After having been greeted in a reception hall, visitors will be guided from one tableau vivant to another, in which the mannequins have been set up to represent recognisable scenes from daily life. There will be a butcher in his shop, a family sitting at the dining room table, a farmer walking his pig, grandmother’s bedroom, etc, etc. A catch-all space has also been planned in which manuscripts, paintings and mountains of paraphernalia relating to the history of “les Voisins” will be displayed! The project still requires a number of months to finish and the opening is planned to take place in spring next year. Regional and local authorities and sponsors are involved as well as the members of the association “La Compagnie de voisins.” The exhibition is expected to draw many visitors, like a very special kind of Madame Tussaud.

Trust Claude Merle’s creativity to bring the adventure to a surprising completion!

For more information about “la maison de voisins” please contact Claude Merle by email: compagniedesvoisins@gmail.com