Claire and Victor VASARELY fell in love with Gordes in 1948

 

"Two months of meditation, prospecting, research and preparation – which we called holidays -  every summer since 1948 onwards. An ocean of time ... The" great discovery "of Gordes was in reality nothing but a resounding confirmation of those earlier finds. The famous axonometric perspective, so close to Kupka ‘s heart was our daily bread in the workshop of Master Bortnyik in Budapest. Prior to that, creating a transparent cube had only been conceivable using six diamonds, according to a well-known Italian law perspective. We set the four right angles at the four corners of the base square, but by inclining them to the right or left, equidistant from the first, second square could be made. The working drawing thus produced a cube but its componentswere in fact two perfect squares and only four diamonds. The same approach could also be applied to other figures of plane geometry. I made a large number of drawings using my axonometric perspective during my graphic studies in 1934 - 1935, including a transparent cube ( consisting of six heads),  which gave rise to the idea of my Cristal period. The ambiguity of these drawings came not from trompe l'oeil, a trick of perspective but rather from the emergence of a new and mysterious space. The revelation of Gordes, for me, was to witness this phenomenon on the scale of An entire town built on rock. Unfailingly spectacular both in broad daylight and in the moonlight: haunting but also incredibly fertile! Quite apart from the history and beauty of these old stones, it was this plasticity on a vertical plane which struck me and led to a series of key works". (Vasarely, 1964).


" The educational Museum Gordes works wonderfully well. All who go there, whether by chance or out of simple curiosity, interest or need, learn something about the essence of my ideas and my work. The public, mostly made of young people, whether knowing and challenging, mocking or simply captivated, never fails to be interested. That is all I could wish for.

The Aix- en-Provence Foundation (...) will undertake to combat visual nuisance, embellish the artificial environment , and create a happy and multi-coloured city.

Idealism ? Charity?  Neither !
It is just my way of fulfilling a political and social policy.
Should an artist become a rich and megalomaniac celebrity, or should he use his income to act in the public interest?
I have chosen the second option: my resources have enabled me to create an independent foundation off all merchants, the power that be, financiers and political parties.
Approximately a quarter of my activities consist of donations to museums and resource – poor communities , and are designed to serve public interest - against racism, famine, deprived children and in aid of certain political cause".
Vasarely Journal Opus No. 46 - September 1973.


"... Today’s artists do ​​little to promote art of the community. The market for pictures is well

organized and with the help of advertising, the artist quickly acquires celebrity and wealth.

but had he entirely fulfilled his vocation ? Had he really honoured his duty towards the community?”
In this question raised by Vasarely, not without a certain misgiving, he touches on one of his most basic concerns : the artist’s responsibility toward humanity.

It was precisely his keen awareness of this responsibility which led him to undertake, at the height of his career, a vast and dynamic two-part programme, of which the first stage was the Educational Museum Gordes, created in 1970. The center of Aix-en-Provence inaugurated in  early 1976, completed the idea of the Vasarely Foundation.

The aim of this museum is not therefore to constitute a self-contained whole, but to form part of an ensemble.  In fact, the idea is not only to create a retrospective of the work of a painter devoted,

Based on aesthetic consideration,  but above all to clearly reveal, through the chronological of this work, the various milestones that marked the journey of a central underlying idea.

It was this idea which gave the work all its cohesion and internal logic, whose significance will be fulfilled and expanded in the research work which the Aix foundation is now proposing to undertake: namely the integration of visual beauty at all levels within the community, in order to create a human space par excellence. "

Claude Desailly in the Guide Book of the Museum of Gordes - 1976