The Happy Party, home of Jean-Paul Binet, Saint-Paul-de-Vence

The story behind The Happy Party mosaic is one of friendship between Aimé and Marguerite Maeght, Marc and Vava Chagall and Professor Jean-Paul Binet. A leading thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon, Binet left his mark on the history of medicine, especially in the field of open-heart surgery. During his career, he published over 500 articles, wrote a book on the history of heart surgery, L'Acte chirurgical, and was a member of many international learned societies, the French Academy of Surgery and the French Academy of Sciences. He was the Maeght family’s cardiologist, especially Marguerite’s, who had a heart condition.

Dr. Binet was also passionate about modern art. Through the Maeghts, he became friends with famous artists who exhibited at their gallery, including Alberto and Diego Giacometti and Joan Miró, who made a lithograph commemorating the 1,000^th open-heart operation at Marie-Lannelongue Hospital in 1972. As a token of thanks for his medical care, the Maeghts seem to have given him a house in Saint-Paul-de-Vence neighboring that of Marc and Vava Chagall. That is probably how Binet and the Chagalls became close and began corresponding regularly¹. As the Chagalls’ primary medical caretaker, he gave them advice on their health² and referred them to specialists³. As a token of thanks, the artist gave him several dedicated drawings, including Couple with Gladioli⁴ and The Heart Transplant⁵.

Nothing in the archives specifies the context in which the mosaic was commissioned, but we do know that Chagall worked with Lino Melano. On July 6, 1971⁶, he sent him a gridded, very small model of The Happy Party, 40 × 17 cm, that he had begun making in May⁷. Despite the theme’s non-evocative title, the subject reconnects with the Mediterranean landscape, like Orpheus, home of John and Evelyn Nef, Washington, DC [Orphée, maison de John et Evelyn Nef, Washington DC] (1968 - 1971), the mosaic in John and Evelyn Nef’s home in Washington, D.C.⁸. The composition’s central feature is a tall, slender, green tree occupying almost the entire height of the work. Its shape recalls that of a cypress tree, at the bottom of which there is an orange goat. In the background, the village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence overlooks Provencal terraces and plants, barely sketched in with brisk, free strokes. Two pieces of glued fabric structure the outlines of the church steeple and the tightly-packed village houses. In the upper part, an azure sky surrounds a face-to-face couple in profile looking at a colorful bouquet of pink and blue fabrics. The model is glued to another sheet and Chagall added a geometric frieze all around it in shades of green and orange, echoing the decorative motifs used in his lithographs since the 1970s.

A much larger complementary sketch (80 × 34.2 cm) features a wealth of details rendered by a profusion of multicolored fabric collages that breathe joy and life into the vibrant scene. The village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, the bouquet held by the lovers and, on a smaller scale, the tree are made up exclusively of glued fabrics featuring floral motifs in vivid hues. These details contrast with pastel-hued watercolor washes, creating subtle harmony between the lively fabrics and soft colors. The originality of this sketch lies in the bold use of dried plant inclusions glued directly to the surface, like a herbarium⁹: Cypress and yew leaves and cornflowers endow the work with an organic, tactile dimension. Unlike the model, there is no decorative frieze.

To create the mosaic in 1971-1972, Melano faithfully reproduced the model, carefully respecting the lines and color distributions. He painstakingly reproduced the floral motifs of the glued fabrics and the shapes of the paper cut-outs, while the transposition of the sky's blue shades imitates the sketch’s watercolor wash effect. The sky is so dominant that the light background, a hallmark of Chagall's mosaics, is barely perceptible. The geometric decorative frieze adds depth to the scene, creating a visual opening to the village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence from Professor Binet's terrace. Binet took down the mosaic and sold it in 1990. Today it is in an anonymous private collection.