Les Rêveries d’Agnès exhibition catalog

Published July 29, 2025

Description of the book by the publishing house delpire & co:

This book, which accompanies the exhibition at the Musée Soulages in Rodez, is an invitation to (re)discover the enchanted world of Agnès Varda. From the beaches of her childhood in Sète, the decisive meeting with the Schlegel family and Linou (Valentine Schlegel) nicknamed Linou-bliable… to Noirmoutier, the island of choice where Agnès, Jacques Demy and their children spend their holidays. Not forgetting the cabins, the circus, the dreamers…

The book is divided into four chapters. The first chapter takes us to Sète where, through archive photographs and photographs of Agnès, we are reminded of her youth, her essential friendships (Valentine and the Schlegel sisters, Jean Vilar, Alexander Calder, Miquel Barceló), her love of the beach and boats, and the shooting of her first film, La Pointe Courte in 1954, known for inspiring the Nouvelle Vague.

The second chapter focuses on children’s dream huts, made from odds and ends and salvaged materials. Here we find Agnès from Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse. The artist is so fond of these refuges, conducive to daydreams of all kinds, that she inventoried the huts in Noirmoutier, then ended up building some with the film copies of her films that had become obsolete! These would become her ‘cabanes de cinéma’, of which she used to say ‘quand j’y suis, j’ai l’impression que j’habite le cinéma’.

From there, we move on to the third chapter, devoted to happiness, with the most emblematic of the cabins: the Cabane du Bonheur, made from a 35 mm print of the film of the same name (at a height of 2,500 metres). Happiness is also reflected in the bouquets of flowers that Agnès composes and photographs, usually in vases created by her partner Valentine Schlegel.

The final chapter takes us back to the seaside, with several installations imagined by the woman who described herself as ‘an old filmmaker and a young visual artist’, such as the trapeze artists she designed for her film Les plages d’Agnès.

Agnès, the hyperactive, flea-jumping enthusiast, claims the right to daydream and contemplate. Her unparalleled wealth of invention draws us in. Her installations, combining music, still and moving images, collages and everyday objects, have the power to make us happy, if not philosophical.

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