From A Single Stone, A Postman Built An Ideal Palace
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The extraordinary visionary outsider artist Joseph Ferdinand Cheval was born in Charmes a small village near Hauterives, France in 1836. He was from a poor peasant family. His mother died when he was 11, and by 12 he had left school to work with his father. By 1854 his father had die too, and the young Cheval left his small rural village and went to work as an apprentice baker in Valence. In 1858, he married the young Rosalie Revol, and they had two sons, Victorin and Cyril. Their eldest son Victorin died when he was only 1 year old. In 1867 at the age of 31, Cheval became a postman.
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In his own words Cheval explains what inspired him to build his palace, "I was walking very fast when my foot caught on something that sent me stumbling a few meters away, I wanted to know the cause. In a dream I had built a palace, a castle or caves, I cannot express it well... I told no one about it for fear of being ridiculed and I felt ridiculous myself. Then fifteen years later, when I had almost forgotten my dream, when I wasn't thinking of it at all, my foot reminded me of it. My foot tripped on a stone that almost made me fall. I wanted to know what it was... It was a stone of such a strange shape that I put it in my pocket to admire it at my ease. The next day, I went back to the same place. I found more stones, even more beautiful, I gathered them together on the spot and was overcome with delight... It's a sandstone shaped by water and hardened by the power of time. It becomes as hard as pebbles. It represents a sculpture so strange that it is impossible for man to imitate, it represents any kind of animal, any kind of caricature."
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Taking ideas from postcards and magazines he delivered on his postal rounds, Cheval who was 43 when he started the construction of the Le Palais idéal, worked tirelessly day and night on his masterpiece. At first he would collect stone he found on his rounds in his pocket, then in a basket, and eventually a wheelbarrow. He cemented the stones he found using with lime, mortar and cement.
Locally Cheval was thought to be mad for building his folly, but he was undaunted. The existence of Le Palais idéal became known further afield in France, and gained recognition among the art-world in France. An article about the Chavel and his palace appeared in the magazine "La Vie Illustrée", in 1905. But not everyone approved of or understood what Chavel had created. The French Ministry of Culture claimed that, "The whole thing is absolutely hideous. Appalling bunch of insanity that is clouded in a boorish brain."
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Chavel died on August 19th 1924, and was buried in a tomb he built in the palace. Over the years the palace became highly regarded by leading lights in the modern art movement of Europe, often inspiring them to crate works of art based on the palace and Chavel. Pablo Picasso, created a series of artworks inspired by the palace. Max Ernst, the German artist and pioneer of Dadaism and Surrealism created a collage in 1932, entitled "The Postman Chavel". And André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, wrote a poem similarly entitled "Postman Chavel". The palace is now recognised as one of the finest examples of outsider art, or naïve art architecture in the world.
Along with eccentric geniuses like Edward James, who built Las Pozas in a rain forest in Mexico, Ferdinand Chavel has taken his place as one of the greatest exponents of great art created by an unquenchable drive to express themselves on a massive scale. |
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