The paint
Among the Aude artists to discover is Marie Petiet (1854-1893), a pupil of Jean-Jacques Henner. Together with her father and uncle, she founded the Petiet Museum in Limoux, her native town. This departmental museum takes you on a journey of discovery of the painting of the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. It also has a rich collection of post-impressionist works and a fine collection of the luminous landscapes of Achille Laugé.
We can also mention Jacques Gamelin (1738-1803), who was born and died in Carcassonne, when he was professor of drawing at the Ecole Centrale de l'Aude. He is one of the 23 illustrious personalities born in the Aude, along with Marie Petiet, whose portrait is now in the Aude prefecture. For a long time, his paintings slept in the attic of the church of Saint-Vincent in Carcassonne, until the parish priest discovered them, had them restored, and exhibited them in the choir of the church.
The cinema
Some directors, whether from the department or not, have filmed the Aude particularly well: like Jean Eustache, a director known for his controversial film La Maman et la Putain, which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. After this success, he made a film called Mes petites amoureuses about his childhood in Narbonne, a town where he had already made the film Le père Noël a les yeux bleus a few years earlier. More recently, Carcassonne-born director Yves Jeuland directed Un village en campagne in 2008, a chronicle of the municipal elections in Fleury in the Aude region. Since 2015, he has been programming documentaries in the medieval city of Carcassonne and then in Lagrasse, at the beginning of the summer, as part of the Contrechamps festival. In 2019, he was elected president of Occitanie Films, a regional association for the promotion and hosting of cinema on the regional territory.
Famous actors have also fallen in love with the Aude. For example, Philippe Noiret liked to isolate himself at the Domaine de Turcy, his property located near Montreal, in the western part of the Aude region, between two film shoots or plays in Paris. For more than thirty years, one of the greatest actors of French cinema walked or rode along the paths of the Malepère during his rare moments of relaxation. "It is the fruit of a happy chance. These small hills of the Malepère, half wood, half field, it was the landscape I dreamed of. At the same time soft and rough", confided the actor in the columns of Pays Cathare Magazine in 1999. When he passed away in 2006, carried off by cancer, his property was sold and everything in it auctioned off. But no one has forgotten the actor famous for his roles inAlexandre le bienheureux or Le Vieux fusil. The memory of his simplicity and kindness remains engraved in the hearts of many people in Aude.
The actor Pierre Richard also made his home in the region. Better still, he even became one of its winegrowers! For more than thirty years, the former tall blond man with one black shoe has divided his life between filming, Paris and his wine estate, Domaine de l'Évêque, in Gruissan. First attracted by the authentic charm of the village of Gruissan, its typical narrow streets, its sea air and its sea spray, he was then bewitched by a wild piece of land called the Pointe de l'Évêque, an old farm with rustic architecture rooted in the edge of the ponds. The atypical landscape, the wind, the sun and the scents of the garrigue created a bewitching alchemy that appealed to him. He became a winegrower with a real know-how, assisted by his sister Véronique, whom he appointed as the head of the estate, and he developed and participated in the development of the culture of the good wines of the South of France, as well as in the fame of the great wines of the Corbières. Since 2019, it is his eldest son, Christophe, who manages the estate.
Locations. If Carcassonne and its City remain the favorites of the film shootings - one remembers the Corniaud, Robin Hood, Prince of the thieves and The Visitors, partly turned in Carcassonne! -The Aude coastline and its hinterland have also been used as settings for the seventh art. For example, the film 37°2 le matin was shot in 1986 on the Chalets de Gruissan beach, which has become mythical since director Jean-Jacques Beineix filmed the beginnings of an intense and tragic love story between Béatrice Dalle and Jean-Hugues Anglade. Another classic, Le Petit baigneur, was filmed in 1968 partly in the Aude, precisely at the Cabanes de Fleury, with Louis de Funès. More recently, Fontfroide Abbey hosted the filming of The Monk, starring Vincent Cassel and, in 2020, it was used as the setting for the American feature film The Last Duel, by Ridley Scott, with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Excuse the pun!
The sculpture
The sculptor René Iché, born in Sallèles-d'Aude in 1897, became famous for his work La Déchirée, a symbol of the Resistance, which was given to General de Gaulle during his exile in London and disappeared for more than 60 years. Educated in Narbonne and then at the Carcassonne high school where he rubbed shoulders with the future surrealist poet Joë Bousquet, Iché began to paint portraits and landscapes in oil or pastel at the age of 12. In 1914, he won the first prize in drawing at the Montpellier School of Fine Arts as an independent candidate. A figure of commitment in the 1920s and 1930s, he was a member of the Resistance in the summer of 1940. In 1942, he sent his sculpture, "La France Déchirée" (Torn France), which symbolizes the Resistance, to General de Gaulle in London. The "Marianne" of the Resistance became one of the General's favourite works. At the Liberation, Iché received the medal of the Resistance and sat on the committee of purification of artists, where he chaired the sculpture section. It was only in 2007 that police officers discovered by chance in a suspect's home, The Torn One, which had mysteriously disappeared at the Liberation. Since then, the sculptor's family and the State have been fighting over the ownership of this emblematic work of the Resistance. And the cast iron is once again stored in a cupboard, in the reserves of a museum in the Hauts-de-Seine.
