In what is perhaps the earliest surviving example of symbolism, the cave painters of the Upper Palaeolithic period drew geometrical patterns, thought to represent man and woman, at the Lascaux and the Chauvet caves in present-day France. Some 25,000 years later, at a ruined country house at the edge of the Mayenne woods near Laval, a French artist named Robert Tatin constructed a courtyard of totems and temples, decorated with the ancient Chinese symbols of Yin and Yang, and covered with interlacing geometric representations of woman and man, the moon and the sun. Robert Tatin bought the house, the Frénouse, near the small town of Cossé-le-Vivien in 1962. Rich in history, part of its stonework dates from the sixth century, while stone axes from the Neolithic period had been discovered in the fields nearby. Over a period of twenty-one years, with the assistance of his fifth wife, Lise, Robert Tatin created a magical cement fortress, where goddesses, dragons, snakes and fairies dance among bas-reliefs of ancient Chinese and Breton symbols, celebrating man’s union with nature and the cyclical passage of time.
The approach to the house and museum is flanked by wide-eyed, totemic figures. Guarding the 80-metre-long Avenue of Giants are nineteen statues representing Tatin’s historic and artistic family, from Joan of Arc to Alfred Jarry. Next to the Avenue of Giants is The Gateway of the Giants, a homage to some of the father-figures of western art: Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Goya, and Van Gogh. The story told by this company of giants also traces the development of the artist’s own life, from his first history lessons, to his professional career, personified by a top-hatted carpenter, to the artists who influenced him, pointing finally to his own grave. Once inside the museum, however, the linear structure is abandoned. Over a surface of 1,200 square metres, the artist has created a miniature universe, incorporating the sun, moon, and sea. Consisting of three main temple-like structures, reflected in a cross-shaped pond, the courtyard and adjoining house are articulated on an east-west axis. Facing the entrance is the towering Notre-Dame-Tout-le-Monde, to the east is The Gateway of the Sun, and to the west The Gateway of the Moon. The journey through the museum follows the direction of the earth’s rotation, guided by statues around the central pool indicating the successive months of the year. Tatin’s paintings, sculptures, ceramics and tapestries are displayed in adjoining rooms.
‘I’ve got to face many tide-gates before becoming Tatin’, Robert Tatin once declared, and his varied professional life and extensive travels lived up to this prophecy. A sculptor, painter, architect, ceramicist, and poet, he also did stints as a tailor, baker, carpenter, decorator, coalman, and bartender, and travelled Europe, North and South America, and Africa. The Frénouse allowed Tatin to combine his artistic skills and cultural influences in one long enterprise, in which work was no longer separated from life. Born in 1902, Robert Tatin grew up near a circus. Trapeze artists, clowns, and ragamuffins were his companions in this enclosed universe of painted horses and pedlars with their orientalist wares. In 1910, the return of Halley’s comet sparked Tatin’s interest in a wider, scientific universe and he fashioned himself a telescope with which to gaze at stars from his attic window. At the age of eleven he began an apprenticeship as a house painter, moving to Paris five years later to work as a decorator, before setting off to Switzerland, Italy, North Africa, England, Ireland, Amsterdam, and New York. After the Second World War he settled again in Paris, where he set up a ceramics studio and exhibited regularly.
An article in France-Soir of 1948 brought Tatin’s work to the attention of Jean Dubuffet and he began to mix with such art world figures as Jean Cocteau, André Breton, Jacques Prévert, and Alberto Giacometti, becoming instrumental in the development of Dubuffet’s concept of Art Brut. Ever restless, Tatin left France again in 1950 to spend five years travelling in South America, winning a gold medal at the first Biennale of Saõ Paõlo, Brazil. Upon his return he devoted himself almost exclusively to painting, before meeting Lise and returning to his native Mayenne in 1962. Tatin conceived of the Frénouse as a ‘bridge between Orient and Occident’ and his sculptural architecture combines the influence of many, far-flung cultures, from ancient Chinese philosophy, to Celtic, Hindu, and Aztec symbols, to the emerging Surrealist movement. Although Tatin refused to sign André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, the influence of Surrealism and its use of word association is evident in his poetry.
Facing the entrance to the museum, the totem tower of Notre-Dame-Tout-le-Monde rises 6.5 metres high. A star is carved at its base, ‘the star of the three wise men – a gleam even in the deepest Hell’, and enclosed within a circle, the universe, which is contained within a square, representing man. Facing each other on either side of Notre-Dame are the Gateways of the Sun andthe Moon. With these two structures, Tatin aimed to show how night and day, female and male, imagination and reason are opposite forces that must come together to create a complete picture of the universe. A classical structure, The Gateway of the Sun is supported by two columns, which Tatin described as embodiments of the Taoist symbols of Yin and Yang, the complementary masculine and feminine energies that shape the universe. Yin is the female, the earth, while Yang is the male, the light and the sun, and heaven. On the plateau the wheel of destiny turns between the horns of reason and imagination and on the tympanum is the great face of the sun. As the sun shines, its rays fracture into hundreds of smaller spheres with human features. ‘This is the sun’, according to Robert Tatin, ‘coming out of itself, splitting up its rays, sharing its light, energy and life with all the world’. The division of the sun’s light is like the fracturing of God’s Word into different human languages, a comparison that Tatin makes in a poem, where the sound splits to create related words: ‘voir: le Verbe sortir à la Voix – Se Sortir de soi – quitter – Go – PIR KHROOU’ (see: the Word issuing from the Voice – Coming Out of itself – quitter – Go – PIR KHROOU). With its undulating roof, The Gateway of the Moon is a more feminine structure. A goddess (the muse of unity), crouches above the arches, her blond locks flowing, a boy and a girl at her breasts, and her right foot resting on a square (the cube of reason), her left on a circle (the imagination).
The circle is the defining motif of the Frénouse, a shape that haunted Tatin, from his early obsession with the enclosed ring of the circus, to his adolescent observation of planets. It embodies the universal, unifying purpose of the Frénouse, denoting the celestial sphere, the wheel of destiny, the female breast, the eyes that are a window to the soul, and the divided circle of Yin-Yang. The two gateways, according to Robert Tatin, with their Yin-Yang symbols, their interlacing circles and squares, and androgynous figures, eradicate all separation of the sexes: ‘Here there is no longer any duality between woman and man; it is as if we are with the gods of the legends and difference doesn’t exist any more.’ In the artist’s symbolism, however, woman retains her traditional association with the irrational, man with the forces of light and reason.
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