Obscure Passages

LP031

The A. Desombres museum

Localization:
Laguiole - Aubrac highlands - France

Destination:
Von Rathen property - Mylos.

Discovered by:
Fran�ois Schuiten et Benoit Peeters.

Ferryman: No.

Status: Destructed.

Means: Paintings and photography.

   The museum A. Desombres, from the name of its owner and principal exhibitor, was located on the high plate of Aubrac, close to Laguiole in France.

   As its name indicates it, this museum was closely related to Augustin Desombres painter unfortunately and wrongfully ignored from the end of the XIXth century. After various professional disappointments, Augustin Desombres undertook a long journey in Aveyron, on the top-plates of Aubrac where it discovered this building given up for a long time and considered unsaleable because of his gigantism. The young painter from the start was seduced by this masonry and decided to acquire it to install his workshop there. He then forsook painting on fabric to make profitable the particular made interior decoration of the vast profiled framings, bordering the walls of a perfect planitude and, tie started from these spaces, thus joined again with the tradition of the fresco.

   The history of Augustin Desombres lasting these years in Aveyron remains extremely confused. In spite of certain assertions which question the obviousness, it seems proven today that it is during these years and in this place that Augustin Desombres would have had the occasion on several occasions to make the Passage towards the world of the Obscure Cities, "the Other World" as he called it himself. In an extremely mysterious way, Augustin Desombres disappears one day of November 1912. Its body was never found.

   Tthe Desombres museum is certainly one of high the places attested as being a Passage place. Indeed, in addition to that of Augustin Desombres, there are two different cases of Passages at least which were listed in this building: the one of the appraiser Vigoleis Koelber and the one of Mary Von Rathen. The incredible circumstances of these two Passages, even if they were reported to us with certain details remain very strange. Indeed, none passages or physical openings never could be discovered. It seems in this case that the means of passage was a subtle combination of circumstances between the painting of Desombres and the flash of a camera.

   Today, this place does not exist anymore! Whereas the museum was open in 1913 and that it accomodated rare visitors until 1989, it was this year destroyed there in our dimensions following a wretched mercantile operation. This place remains however quite long-lived in the obscure cities, but it does not allow any more the passage.