Tour De Force

Towering art, A-list architecture and world-class cooking is transforming a quiet corner of Provence into an elevating escape.

- Georgia Dehn

At the time of Louise Bourgeois’ death in May 2010 a question mark hung over where one of the artist’s largest, most ambitious works would end up. I Do, I Undo, I Redo, an installation consisting of three 9m-tall steel towers that visitors could climb, created for the inaugural Tate Modern Turbine Hall exhibition exactly a decade earlier, had been packed away in storage since it was taken down.

In the year before Bourgeois’ death, Irish property developer and businessman Patrick McKillen went to visit her in New York to propose transporting the towers to her native France and installing them at McKillen’s 600-acre estate Château La Coste, an organic winery and expansive art and architecture park in the heart of Provence.

McKillen was already well acquainted with Bourgeois’ long-time assistant Jerry Gorovoy, having bought a Crouching Spider – the first in a series of six and the only one in France – for Château La Coste some years earlier. You are greeted by the giant arachnoid sculpture rising from the reflecting pool in front of the Tadao Ando-designed Art Centre (housing the main reception and a restaurant) when you first enter the estate, which McKillen opened to the public in 2011. It was McKillen’s radical idea of installing the piece on the water that sold the deal to Bourgeois. Given she had been so happy with the idea, McKillen felt empowered to suggest another.