I grew up in Saint-Paul-de-Vence during my adolescence and that period marked my childhood in a profound way. The most sought after destination was the Colombe d’Or where artists of the plastic arts and cinema mingled in the most natural manner, epitomizing the essence of that golden period. It became our second home and there was not a day we didn’t visit it or ate there, and became friends with the stars of the time, but especially of the founder Titine who was also one of my father’s best friends.
We kept in touch with her and in 1984 when Ben did his first Colombe she immedately wanted to have it and placed it on the wall in front of her room on the first floor.
The same year Ben did another version that we installed in our courtyard in Sa Bassa Blanca. Tony Snowdon liked it very much and posed on it with Judy Brittain during his stay at Sa Bassa Blanca that he was photographing for a Vogue reportage.
That gave me the idea to pursue this tradition and record the passing of time through the flow of friends, a sort of conceptual work about time and friendship. Like Opalka who then worked with the same gallery as me, when he made the decision on his “program”, his “life project”: to materialize duration, to manifest time in its movement and its irreversibility through numbers starting from unity. Forty years later it is time to celebrate the power of friendship and peace the Paloma brought to our life through the last 44 years.
Yannick Vu
