On behalf of the purity of the monastic Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the Cistercian order, decreed a number of principles Construction for the abbeys of his order, austerity, austerity, simplicity functional.
He added the ban to color the windows to keep the nakedness of light, only allowed to enter these places for the daily rhythm of work and contemplation of the monks.
A girl of good company named Andree Putman spent all the holidays of his youth in one of these places inspired the Abbey of Fontenay, considered today thanks to intelligent restoration of his family as an expression the purest and most perfect of the Cistercian spirit of origins.
"It is inhabited by things, the emotions we experienced" she likes to say.
Andree Putman has approached everything in his path, always keeping an eye who can see this essential about to see, she wanted a life full of artistic meetings and material experiments.
Clearly, Andree Putman remembers the light and space of his youth. "When I create a place, I never think of the design. I think about space, light, lines ".
Throughout all his accomplishments, hotels, shops, museums, intimate spaces, furniture, she demonstrates a keen sense of the spirit of the place, which is to say, Francois-Olivier Rousseau * about of a chamber of Morgans, the famous American hotel.
"We feel the city looming in a logical contiguity with the atmosphere, materials and colors. This is a beautiful slide that denies the boundary between inside and outside. "
Games subtle light, harmony and sensuality discrete materials, clean lines amazingly expand the places to sign up Andree Putman fluidity almost immaterial to a furniture bill yet very classic.
"It's a job, she says, sometimes almost invisible, almost weightless. I say often he must be omnipresent but flirt with extinction. My sites are simple, but not anonymous, but not cold serene, attractive but not opulent, sweet but not nostalgic, scrubbed but not restrictive. Basically, I always tried to reconcile the rich and poor materials. It's an idea ghetto anti-conformist and on spatial planning, on the light and elegant in detail, sometimes humor creeps. " Andree Putman
Because mocks fashions and conventions, she knows every moment of his life "to choose" and let live in her quest for an inner light that continues to guide it.
The last image of the beautiful story directed by Benoit Jacquot on the villa she has managed to Morocco in 2007 following its fine and elegant silhouette proud that fades gradually on the way and broke clear as a black light White Tangier which was the city's childhood his mother.
November 10, 2010 to February 26, 2011, Putman
Exhibition City Hall of Paris
* Andree Putman François-Olivier Rousseau Edition du Regard 1989
