The Dado Syndrome

Dado – Les Orpellières

In 1994, Dado moves to Les Orpellières, an abandoned vineyard at Sérignan in France. The artist stayed there regularly until 1999, – the date of its inauguration – painting murals and making sculpture-objects.

Dado, On the ephemeral and the eternal (2023, 34 min)
A film by Sanja Blečić in collaboration with Snežana Nikčević.

With: Amarante Szidon, Dado’s daughter, Laurent Le Bon, President of Centre Pompidou, André Gélis, former mayor of Sérignan, Jérôme Hirigoyen, in charge of the mission, Coastal protection agency, Germain Viatte, honorary director of Musée national d’art moderne, Benoît Dagron, conservator-restorer, Aude Aussilloux, conservator-restorer, Émilie Lormée, conservator-restorer, Stéphane Bausch, graffiti artist, Laura and Pascal Catry, owners of the Embassy of the Fourth International.

This documentary, broadcast on Montenegro’s first national television channel (RTCG1) on February 21, 2023, was produced by RTCG to coincide with the major restoration project of Dado’s “Guernica in Color”, Les Orpellières, the abandoned vineyard covered in anonymous tags where the artist worked between 1994 and 1999, at the height of the Yugoslav conflict.

Located near Sérignan in the Hérault region of France, in an area classified Natura 2000 and rich in exceptional flora and fauna, this in situ masterpiece bears witness to Dado’s passion for the living and his fascination for tags, an urban language he discovered on his first trip to New York in 1962.

Launched in May 2022, the Orpellières restoration project, managed by the Conservatoire du Littoral, raises fascinating questions for the team of curator-restorers, since Dado worked on “living” walls, damaged and impregnated with humidity, integrating the destructive principle of nature into his work. Enriched by numerous previously unseen archives, the documentary also highlights the importance of tagging in Dado’s creative process during the 1990s, notably through his collaboration with tagger Stéphane Bausch on the walls of the Embassy of the Fourth International in Montjavoult.

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