By Maryanna Gabriel
Marquis de Sade Castle |
Avant Garde Sculpture |
A name that strikes chills and where the word "sadism" is derived. I had said to my daughter I did not want to
go into it when we visited the Marquis de Sade castle. It turned out to be a non-issue.
The castle is one stark wall, the majority of it in rubble. The Marquis was a
psychopathic byproduct of aristocratic parents combined with self indulgent
narcissm (to put it mildly) along with an intense hatred for his “mummie”. He died in prison mad, sick, penniless, and alone. So much for sexual decrepitude. The villagers pillaged the castle
during the revolution. I don’t get the feeling he was very attentive to his
fiefdom. The village of LaCoste has now become a renewed focal point as Pierre Cardin, the famous French designer, made real estate purchases in
this medieval looking town in 2001, the de Sade castle being one of them. The
avant-garde Cardin has commissioned works of art that surround the de Sade
castle and they interplay with the landscape high on a plateau, indifferent to
the ancient stone buildings they overlook and to the history below.