L'ECHAPEE BELLE…. OF CHRISTIAN TORTU

"Heureux qui sait quitter à temps le grand chemin
pour s'engager sur la petite route blanche qui escalade
ses jardinets en terrasses et l'anneau de
ruelles herbeuses qui l'enserre… "

Julien Gracq
Carnet du grand chemin

For many years having wandered the small roads of his chilhood,
With the season's rythm's,
Christian Tortu knows well these little roads which Julien Gracq is talking about.
These country paths are where nature is seen by itself
With no disguise and no dysplay.

In the heart of the Angenvin country where he was born, he learnt to read nature.
Since this time, each one of his bouquets is inspired by it, infinitely interpreting it again at the mercy of his emotions, the circumstances and the colours of the weather.

All his creations
Express a similarity to the joy one feels
Upon stopping before a beautiful landscape

With Christian Tortu, vegetal becomes a call to an imagenary journey ;
Afar from the known paths
Towards an unprejudiced and frontierless place somewhere

Within these few pages, he is taxing us along
His own "Echapée belle"

BACK TO SOURCE :
FROM "TRAINING" NATURE TO "SHARING NATURE"

A chilhood very close to nature

This is secret for no one, Christian Tortu is proud of his farming origins. In tortu's family, there are market gardeners from father to son from the mists of time. Work is hard but life is
Full of daily joys and esthetics emotions that nature provides plentifully : wild flowers grown in the corner of wall, or a simple nicely-shaped branch of foliage that he meets at the turn of a path. His mother brings them back and lays them somewhere in the house, or she mixes them with flowers picked from her own garden. Indeed, besides the family house, Christian Tortu's father has laid out for her a whole square of flowers to be cut.

Around the age of six, Christian too has his own "small garden" : a few vegetables namely cabages for his rabbit and flowers can be found. At this time he becomes a regular reader in seed-merchants' catalogues that are left behind for his father by some travelling salesmen. Little pictures, only a few prints and mainly lists of plants' are names that makes him dream.

Suggest rather than shiw. Leave a part to fancy. These are the basis ot Christian Tortu's creative proces are already there.

The small garden is growing with the boy. And from 12 or 13 years old, he embarks on cultivation of flowers to be cut. Modesly of course, for family bouquet. Until one day when, victim of his success already, his production fully oversteps the family and friends'needs. The only solution in order to dispose of his excess of produciton, lies in taking his bike and touring the "downtown" flower shop. And it works. After these first contacts with the profession, he makes the most of his holidays by working in several flower)shop in Saumur and brilliantly passes graduation. But at the great displeasure of his entourage, Christian Tortu can not imagine going to university of "seriously working".
He is only sure of one thing : he wants to stay in contact with nature.

Beginnings of the parisien epopee
Brought up with time and season's rythm, horizon as a limit, he also knows already, that he needs freedom. After some shilly-shallying, he delclares for the statue of free-auditor in the horticulture school of Angers where he learns how to read nature in books. And he is about 22 when he decides to go to work and to put into practice his botanical knowledge. Florist-worker in different provincial cities for a few months, he goes up to Paris in 1977 to become master of workshop at Pierre Declerc'q in the XVI th arrondissement. For a year only, he states.

But parisien people kept back some surprises for Christian Tortu. "Caught between concrete and bitumen", they feel far from nature and only long for discovering it. Their frantic quest suddenly give a new sense to the florist'work in such a way Christian Tortu had put into practice in the country, where, he says "people don't have the same feeling of want". Since then he feels as if he was "vested with a mission" : to bring the nature in the heart of the city.
He understands as well that confronted to such a demand, he will be able to carry on this work his own wat, give it its genuine dimension : flowers will more no be "still objects" or "misrepresented knick-knacks", but a world where you can slip away, a word full of emotions. Haloed by his native greenness, Christian Tortu begins to frequent jet-set society of fashion, arts and advertising.

A country dream in the heart of the city

Christian Tortu indulges himself to the full. But 6 years after, he feels like quiting everything. Leave compulsions, leave this working rythm, leave Paris, until he falls on a flower-shop, carrefour de l'Odéon, with a huge bay-window open on the rue des 4 vents (the 4 winds street). The adress alone is promising of meetings at the turn of country path. He will nor resist.
He acquires the trade ground with all the vases, cardboard and trasnparent plastics boxes, stalks and iron picks, that he readily throws away to replace them by his famous lay-pots, unpretentious, his buckets and gardener's watering-cans. Flowers, foliages, moss and fruits and vegetables overspread space. N°6, carrefour de l'Odéon soon becomes an "islet of nature" in the heart of the city. In less than 2 months, success is appointed.

Dangerous affairs

This success does not escape the expert eyes notice. Behind the florist, Christian Tortu the creator has soon been spoted. At the end of the 80's, after his immediate rise to success, he feels he needs to lay on a powerful structure. A big group opens theirs arms widely and the florist, infatuated with freedom, yields to its advances. But after 2 years of happiness, the affair grows bitter.
Christian Tortu repurchased his name and his freedom. Of course he keeps a painful memory from this time. But our of this also comes a new energy, like a new initation imposed by life and by the city. A stage after which he rises again, stronger, more nature, ready for the great adventure.

The new territories

Bucked up by this revival, Christian Tortu is eager for new spaces. He settles on 5th avenue in New-York. After all, a city which has chosen the apple as a symbol can only host a florist with enthusiasm, a florist who dares to use them for bouquets.

"Christian Tortu" was a name. "Christian Tortu" becomes a brand that Christian Tortu, the man, intends to administrate its growth and master its image. To give a unity to it and kee^it coherent everywhere he has implanted, he launches a line of products carefully composed. For this matter, the conduct rule he adopts is simple : he only designs products he would want to use ant that fit with every day life to make life smoother and more beautiful. To escape, just a moment.

In the heart of the matter, nature remains queen : the natural wax-made perfumed candles take you away into the "forest", in a garden full of "lily of the valley" or remind you of a "tomato's leaves" scent from a forgotten garden, far away in the chilhood.
The "fresh water" vervain like effluvium, maakes feel like surrounded by a sort of well-being.

It is the same for the greenness department that he conceived for Raynaud. Not only did he "decorate" plates or cups, he also imagined his ideal dinner-service, thinking the shape of the pieces over, miwing styles : the rice cup thus skirts the dessert plate or the coffee cup. The differents motifs match together, escaping habits and social conventions.

Readily iconoclastic and always passionate, Christian Tortu can only works if he enjoys it and if freedom is left to him to share this pleasure.

In the same spirit that he deals with all the jobs of scenography which are put into his hands : from fashion shows of famous stylists (Dior, Valentino, Chanel, Balmain…) to the festival of Cannes, to the prestigious parties of the Colbert comity to exhibitions in museums.

What we now call "Tortu's spirit" inevitably blows on all his creations .

"TORTU'S SPIRIT OR THE ART OF CROSS-BREEDING"

Brought up in the country side "where everything is under hand", he has always found it natural to make bouquets where all kind of species are mixed. "We must not exlude anything or distrut something you first leave aside" he asserts.

Initiated to cross-bredding from chilhood, Christian Tortu has made a creative principle out of it. When simplicity of a shape matches well with subtil refinement of colours and scents. When the roughness of branchs meets with the delicacy of petal, with the curves of a fruit, he arachnoid-like strucure of foliage or the hardiness of a vegetable, or fragility of a flower.

The cross-breeding is consubstantial at the state of nature which mixed at any kinds and senses, colours and materials. Without his alchemy, a work remains decorative, incapable of sugesting the least amount of emotion nor to transform itself in the landscape "mixing of kinds is part of life" Christian Tortu considers. It is natural source of life, happiness and emotion.

The spirit of tolerance and broad-mindedness in fact characterizes of all Christian Tortu's creations and it rules his whole personnal and professional life. In this spirit he shows his passion for nature, in thousands of manners. He does not hesitate to explorate always nex territories, to discover new works.

Adept of cross-breeding ahead of time. Christian Tortu transforms it in an apprenticeship of the world, contributing in this own way to take us away in the heart of life rignt into "l'air du temps".

A contagious vegetal enthusiasm

There is only one step between creative principle to management method. In the same way he likes to work with a team since crossing of ideas enables to improve, to find new shapes of putting things together. About 13 people are beside him and all of them work in perfect harmony with the creator.

Christian Tortu has an intuitive listening quality. Artist and stage-manager of the ephemera. He knows how to be atuned the universe he is entering never departing from his deliberately candid look, somehow offset and full of humor. He creates things as he sees them, he creates what he sees. His power is to see diffrently and how to know to share his vision of the world.

CHRISTIAN TORTU, A FLORIST ?

This question can seem to be inapropriate. But then

If you consider the whole of his creations and the spirit in which he works, isn't Christian Tortu as much painter, a decorator, a naturalist, a designer, a stage-manager or even a magician.
Like his bunches where kinds ans species readily mixe-together, qualifiers are superimposed, which clash and mix together in order to try to understand the man who readily describes himself as "a potographer who shares with others the emotion of a landscape with a simple centring".

However there is a link between all these "professions", a strong and malienable link: nature
Nature is a absolute model : model of life, authencity and simplicity.
Nature as an ispiration source, requirement balance and principe freedom.

Thus, apart from this multiplication of activities that betrays a never-failing curiositu and a truly artistic sensivity, a man is revealed, a man who wants before anything "to help to better catch the beauty of the world".

The revendication of such a ambition tends to take Christian Tortu out of the florist restrictive category and to give him a "humanist" statue. A humanist of new kind whose theorical corpus is become vegetal and phrases, bunches.

A far from the great concepts and great theories, he keeps on going with his simple and fragile flowers, his unusual assemblings being as much lessons of modesty and tolerance.

With determination, simplicity and softness, he has overthrown, revolutionized his profession of origin. If Christian Tortu still claims the name of florist, it is because he has changed the profession's codes from a long time. "In each bouquets, he likes to repeat, there is the part you sell and part you give : emotion".

No doudt that with Christian Tortu, XXth century will be vegetal or will not be.