Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Did Y'all Hear...

...that in 2008 an as yet unidentified 40-something year old Belgian art dealer bought the last home of Spanish surrealist Pablo Picasso in the historic village of Mougins, about 20 minutes from the Promenade de la Croisette in Cannes, for between 10 and 12 million Euros—that's $13 to $16 million U.S. dollars—gave the well-situated Provençal pad a striking minimalist make-over and popped it back on the market with a hair raising and hoopla-ensuring $220,000,000 asking price?

Current listing details and previous reports in the newspaper Nice Matin (via the hardworking kids at Curbed) show the stone-walled 35-room hillside villa, once known as Mas de Notre-Dame du Vie and now dubbed Domaine L'Antre du Minotaure, stands three stories high, has 10 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms, a guest house and a guard house, two swimming pools, a tennis court, an extensive gardens.

Now children, this property has an impeccable pedigree and it is certainly something to behold even if the austerely finished and sparely furnished day-core ain't your thang but 220 million George Washingtons? Well...Your Mama thinks it's probably best to let the gloriously opinionated children and any prospective buyers decide whether the 14-17 time mark up over the reported 2008 sale price makes a lick of real estate sense, even with the no-doubt time consuming and costly renovation and restoration.

1,2,3...Go!

listing photos: Corcoran

14 comments:

Madam Pince said...

Dear Lord ... not me, Mama.

Anonymous said...

Axel Vervoodt...all the signs point to him unless The Staging Lady in the Pink Toyota hopped in her Pink G4 with all her secret stash of Shabby Chic seating and Appalachian Primitive tables etc...must say it would make a wonderful hotel! How odd not one Picasso is thrown in with the sale, maybe the open book is.

Grrrowler said...

I think it's a gorgeous house. But, my guess is that an unpaid intern in the real estate office fell asleep on the keyboard when typing up the listing. It HAS happened before: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/sleeping-german-banker-accidentally-transfers-100925397.html

I can't think of any other scenario in which this would warrant a $220,000,000 price tag.

Rosco Mare said...

Gor-jus property with great provenance. I'm disappointed because the minimalist interior remodel seems to have erased a lot of the rustic charm I imagine existed here.

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Anonymous said...

Picasso french?

Anonymous said...

This is one of the houses that Picasso bought by trading a painting or paintings for it.

Mama, I love you, but Picasso was about as French as I am. He was Spanish, but lived out most of his life in France due to the political situation (ie, Civil War, Franco) in his home country. And while he had a surrealist period in the 1930 (paintings from which - like La Reve - are fetching top dollar today) he was an abstract painter and one of the fathers, along with Georges Braque, of Cubism.

lil' gay boy said...

It is indeed a lovely property; the developer seems to have struck a nice balance between modern livability and historic preservation without drifting into an overwrought homage.

It appears to be quite a sizable property compared to its neighbors (who sit cheek-by-jowl with each other), and before and after aerials show extensive, yet sensitive, upgrades to the property.

Although skating close to a quarter of a billion clams in price, given its provenance it seems a sure-fire bet for some Russian oligarch to acquire instant cachet.

The Swan said...

Rustic stones could they speak...Jacqueline, Picasso Paloma and others voices. The interiors are monastic, the plantings are spectacular....tulip fields and wisteria in a riot of colors! Very Picasso indeed!

Anonymous said...

The owner obviously believes the "there's one born every minute" idiom.

Anonymous said...

for 220 million Picasso should have painted the whole damn house himself.

lil' gay boy said...

Anon 1:00,

Priceless!

#shayblahblah said...

Shady BlahBlah here. As you already know, or maybe you don't, but I assume you do because this is where all the "plugged in" people schmooze, Madame Alexis DeTraina is a close personal friend of mine and axed me to write and ask you one question.
Is it haunted?

shadyblahblahwitha hashtaginfrontofit said...

sorry, that was supposed to be shady blah blah....I just learned how to tweet today from my 13 year old.