Can we separate the artist from his work? This inflammable philosophical debate took place in a popular district of the Paris region, divided vis-à-vis a monumental light installation by the famous French plastic artist Claude Lévêque, today accused of rape of minors.
The subject is very sensitive: testimonies, complaints of rape or sexual assault and investigations targeting personalities, artistic but also political, have multiplied in France in recent years. Certain investigations were closed without follow-up.
On the heights of the city of Montreuil, which adjoins Paris, three large stainless steel circles set with light bulbs unfold around the pillars of a decrepit water tower, in the central square of the Bel Air district.
Almost invisible during the day, the work lights up at nightfall. Then the circles are transfigured into blue hoops, which seem to twirl gracefully around the structure.
However, since January, this nocturnal hula-hoop has ceased.
Montreuil turned off the installation “Modern Dance”, a few days after learning that its designer, internationally renowned, had been the subject since 2019 of an investigation for rape and sexual assault on minors under 15, which dates back to mid-1980s.
“Sad” and “gloomy” neighborhood
Claude Lévêque, 68, is accused by a fifty-year-old sculptor who says he was a victim with his two brothers.
This extinction – without dismantling – had been decided “to respond to the shock of the inhabitants which was expressed at the time”, explains the town hall. “The work was obvious to passers-by” and even imposed itself on those who no longer wished to see it, estimates the city, which must contractually maintain it for 25 years.
During a year of status quo, the three circles thus remained in place on the water tower, extinct, ignored.
It was then that a slingshot woke up. At the end of November, the Bel Air neighborhood council sent a letter to the town hall asking them to turn the installation back on.
In this text, consulted by AFP, this body of participatory democracy argues that the inhabitants have appropriated this work, now integrated into “local heritage”, and that appreciating it does not mean any form of support for its creator.
Without this illumination, this working-class district has become “sad” and “gloomy”, laments the letter. Many residents don’t even know anything about the story with Claude Lévêque and just think that the work is down, or broken.
“I do not understand the meaning of turning off the lights to fight against pedophilia,” annoys Delphes Desvoivres, a sculptor living in Bel Air and one of the initiators of this petition.
“Magical and beautiful”
For this woman, who testified before the commission on pedocriminality in the Church of the sexual abuse inflicted on her father by a priest, “turning off the lights never helped anyone get better…”.
For the inhabitants of Bel Air, the work of Claude Lévêque was a kind of local pride. Something unique, rewarding. “It’s magical and beautiful. Honestly, apart from the bars of buildings, there is not much beautiful in the district, ”testifies Mimoun, resident of social housing for 16 years.
Commissioned by the municipality to the plastic surgeon, resident of Montreuil, “Modern Dance” also symbolized a form of rebirth of the district. Its installation in 2015 marked the culmination of a decade of gigantic urban renewal works to rehabilitate this area which was afflicted by insecurity and poverty.
However, even locally, the re-ignition of Modern Dance is not unanimous. And sometimes gives rise to electrical exchanges.
Kindergarten teacher, Cécile Miquel regularly showed her students the work of Claude Lévêque, an artist she admired.
However, since the revelation of the case, the installation of the plastic surgeon causes in her an epidermal rejection. “I have had enough of this injunction to separate things from everything,” she told AFP. “We are what we do. We cannot store pedophile acts in a drawer ”.
With her association of parents of pupils, this contemporary art lover firmly defends the extinction of the lights “to show that in 2021 we want things to change. That children understand that they have the right to speak and that the adults will be there to listen to them, take note and act on them ”.