Dani Lartigue, the only son of Jacques Henri Lartigue and Madeleine Messager (better known as Bibi) would have been ninety-six on August 23, 2017. He died Wednesday, June 28 in Saint-Tropez, where he had been living for many decades. An inescapable figure of the country, a painter, he had created a charming Butterfly Museum, which he loved so much and one can still visit today. But Dani is also and especially the involuntary hero of many of his father’s famous photographs. His childish silhouette definitely inhabits our images of happiness according to Lartigue.
It is Dani who is at the center of the Lartigue exhibition entitled La Baule – 1913-1929 which has just opened its doors and is on view until October 1st. In those years, Lartigue and Bibi lead a worldly life, embellished with resorts on the coast. A particularity of stays in La Baule, is precisely the very family character of most shots. On the beach, in the rocks or in the waves on a makeshift trimaran, Dani is often found in La Baule, who, eight years old in 1929, appears as his father’s favorite model. It is to this quality that Hervé Guibert made reference when he wrote: “Dani is a sublime actor of childhood.” It is clear that Lartigue’s fascination with his son Dani was to resonate with what he himself wrote of his own memories: “Being a child, I had such an illusion of love for everything around me …”
Martine d’Astier et Martine Ravache
Martine d’Astier is the director of the Donation Jacques-Henri Lartigue. Martine Ravache is an art historian and curator.
Lartigue à La Baule – 1913-1929
July 1st to October 1st, 2017
Musée Bernard Boesch
35 rue François Bouguoin
44 510 Le Pouliguen
France
http://www.labaule.fr/musee-bernard-boesch
