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Marseille-Provence 2013 Positively Brilliant!

I N T O
For decades, the titans of the art world were lured again and again to the Cte dAzur, whose incomparable light offered new artistic possibilities. The masterpieces they left behind are celebrated in MP2013s Grand Atelier du Midi, expected to be the blockbuster show of the year.

THE

LIGHT
By Sara Romano

Claude Monet
Cap dAntibes: coup de Mistral (1888)
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Marseille-Provence 2013 Le Grand Atelier du Midi

Paul Czanne
LEstaque vue du golfe de Marseille (1878-1879)

ega-yachts and micro-bikinis are

the first things that spring to mind when you hear the words South of France. Perceived almost exclusively as a place for ogling starlets and playing on the beach, this sun-kissed region seems an improbable launch pad for some of the most ground-breaking art ever made. Yet that is precisely what it was. For nearly a century, the South of France played host to a veritable pantheon of painters: Paul Czanne, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso. A two-part exhibition paying tribute to that remarkable legacy is one of the high points of Marseille-Provence 2013, a show with so much artistic wattage that it almost single-handedly justifies the areas stint as European Capital of Culture. The 200 works by nearly 50 artists in Le Grand Atelier du Midi will be divided between two separate venues: the Muse des BeauxArts de Marseille (also known as Palais Longchamp) and the Muse Granet in Aix-en-Provence. The title is an homage to Van Gogh, whose lifelong dream was to convene a community of artists in an atelier du Midi (studio of the South). Were going to be evoking le Midi in the broadest sense, through an exhibition that extends from Collioure to Bordighera, says cocurator Marie-Paule Vial, former director of the Marseille museum and now head of the Muse de lOrangerie in Paris. We want to demonstrate that the Midi wasand still isa great open-air studio. The exhibition starts in the 1880s, when Czanne was working in Aix, and ends in the 1950s, with the death of Matisse and Bonnard. Rather than organize it into two chronological halves, the curators have made the Aix show all about formof which Czanne was the undisputed modern masterand Marseille all about color, for which Van Gogh was universally recognized. Explains co-curator Bruno Ely, who runs the Muse Granet, Visitors can see the exhibits in whichever order they please without detracting from the overall experience. What the two-part show proves once and for all is the South of Frances unparalleled status as an artistic gold mine. Never has there beenand never, no doubt, will there again bea resort, a pure pleasure zone that contributes quite this degree and quite this quantity of remarkable artistic innovation, says Kenneth E. Silver, a professor of art history at New York University and the author of Making Paradise: Art, Modernity and the Myth of the French Riviera. Theres no question that some of the most beautiful, sensual and really delightful pleasure pictures were made in the south.
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Albert Marquet
La Terrasse, lEstaque (1918)

The South of France wasnt always a pleasure zone. For much of

the 19th century, before rail lines reached it, the area was decidedly unappealing. The Cte dAzur was impoverished and insalubrious, a swampland, in fact, says Maurice Frchuret, who runs the Muse Chagall in Nice, the Muse Fernand Lger in Biot and the Muse Picasso in Vallauris. In the first half of the 19th century, there were all kinds of health risks, not least malaria, so few visitors went there. Aristocratic foreign travelers, the British in particular, were the first to put the Riviera on the map. After setting up a small community in Nice in the late 18th century (an era immortalized by the citys Promenade des Anglais), they spread out along the coast, emulating former Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham, who built a villa in Cannes. Affluent Americans, Germans, Russians and Belgians followed. By the late 19th century, even Queen Victoria was among the winter vacationers. The Riviera got its biggest branding boost in 1887 when Stphen Ligeard, in a bestselling guidebook published in Paris, dubbed it the Cte dAzur. It became one of the most mythic sobriquets ever coined. It wasnt until the early 1920s that the Cte dAzur became a summer destination, thanks in no small measure to Picasso. In the spring of 1923, the artist, a Riviera regular, teamed up with American expatriates Gerald and Sara Murphy to ask the owner of the famous Htel du Cap to keep rooms open from May to September.

He obliged. By the following summer, just about every other hotel on the Riviera was doing the same. The first great artist to depict the region was Czanne. Born and raised in Aix-en-Provence, he had immense affection for his birthplace and represented it over and over throughout his life. His first subject was the family estate on Aixs outskirts, the Jas de Bouffan, with its pond, orchards, vineyards and alley of chestnut trees leading up to the 18th-century manor house. He decorated the walls of the salon with murals, made portraits of family and friends, and painted the manor itself. Even the chestnut trees were recorded Theres no question that some of the for eternity: Les Marronniers most beautiful, sensual and really delightful du Jas de Bouffan (c. 1885) are part of the Aix show. pleasure pictures were made in the south. Czanne also famously invited the estates pipe-smoking staffincluding le pre Alexandre, a gardener, and Paulin Paulet, a his sights on the South of France in the late 1880s. Two years after arfarmhandto pose for his famous Card Players series. While none riving in Paris, Van Gogh found himself itching to get away from the of those pictures is in the exhibition, another masterpiece from the sight of so many painters who fill me with disgust as human beings. period is. La Femme la Cafetire (c. 1895), an angular blue por- With help from his loving art-dealer brother, Theo, Vincent escaped trait of a member of the household staff sitting next to a coffee pot, to Arles, where he rented a four-room yellow house on a square near returns to Aix for the first time in more than six decades. the old town hall. At present Im unhappy with myself and unhappy While living at the Jas de Bouffan, Czanne made repeated visits with what Im doing, he wrote to Theo in May 1887, but I can
F R A NCE S PR I NG 2013

to the fishing village of LEstaque, 20 miles away, where his mother owned a house. LEstaque: View of the Bay of Marseille (1878-79) is one of many canvases he produced there, an important early image of the coast and a highlight of the Marseille exhibition. When Czannes family sold the estate in 1899to the artists lasting regrethe moved to a variety of locations outside Aix. He obsessively painted the nearby Mont Sainte-Victoire, rendering it in at least two dozen oils and watercolors, which are among his most admired works. The Aix-en-Provence exhibition includes Le Rocher Rouge (c. 1895), which he painted from a house located on the mountains western flank. The exhibitions other pictorial poster boy, Vincent van Gogh, set

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glimpse some possibility of doing better in the future. And I hope that later on, other artists will come to this part of the country. One artist did arrive soon thereafter, thanks to the monthly stipend promised him by Theo van Gogh. Paul Gauguin spent nine turbulent weeks in the yellow house, and the pair worked furiously. Gauguin left suddenly in December 1888 after Van Gogh threatened him with a knife and subsequently sliced off his own ear. The exhibition displays a string of masterpieces from that tempestuous period: Van Goghs LArlsienne: Madame Ginoux (1888), La Chambre (1888) and La Mridienne (1889-90), as well as Gauguins Les Alyscamps (1888), thought to be one of the first paintings he did in Arles. All are from the Muse dOrsay, one of the most generous lenders to the exhibition.

oastlines were not a new theme in French art. From the

Paul Czanne
Le Rocher rouge (1895-1900)

mid-1800s, artists had taken advantage of rail links connecting Paris to the shores of Normandy and Brittany to paint en plein air. By the late 1800s, those northern shores were old hat. Normandy is trodden by as many pedestrians as the Boulevard des Italiens, moaned writer Guy de Maupassant. So it was that in 1883, two monuments of Impressionism headed south for fresh visual thrills. Hopping on the new train lines connecting a string of Mediterranean resorts, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir travelled from Marseille and Hyres to Monaco and Menton, crossing the border to Bordighera, Ventimiglia and other points along the Italian Riviera. Monet was dazzled by what he saw yet had a hard time transferring it to the canvas. How beautiful it is here, but how difficult to paint! he wrote. He was profoundly challenged by the blinding light and the powerful northern wind known as the mistral. He returned in 1888 to try again, spending close to four months in Antibes. The result: 39 paintings, which he later showed in Paris, to lukewarm critical reception. Three works from the period are on view in Marseille, and a fourth is in Aix. The light in the south is so intense that, if anything, it tends to blanch, to wipe out color, says Professor Silver. What Monet

understood was that he needed to exaggerate the specific hues to con- curator Vial of the painting, which is included in the exhibition. vey the brilliance of that light. Perhaps thats why the critics were The big window opens onto a big black rectangle. There was origiangry at him; they thought there was something a little vulgar in his nally a landscape in the background, but Matisse covered it up with pinks and blues. very dark color. Monet ultimately returned to northern France and his haven at Matisse sat out World War I in his comfortable homes in and Giverny, near Paris. Renoir, on the other hand, decided to settle on around Paris, yet the Riviera continued to beckon. In 1917, a bout of the Riviera and create a haven of his own. He spent the last 11 years bronchitis gave him a good reason to scurry south, leaving behind his of his life in a grand one-story villa in Cagnes-sur-Mer known as Les family, the international avant-garde and the Paris weather. Collettes (now a wonderful museum), replete with olive groves, vineAfter staying in temporary accommodations (including the fouryards and noisy hens. In his large atelier, he painted the local girls star Htel Beau-Rivage, whose entrance can still be seen on rue Sainthired by his wife for olive- and grape-picking. Several examples of his Franois de Paule), he moved into a handsome yellow building at output from the period are on display in both exhibitions, including 1 place Charles-Flix, facing the sea. He joined the Club Nautique the 1908 Les Collettes. de Nice, where he became such an avid rower that he won a medal, Around the same time that Renoir was busy buying Les Collettes, and frequently took in the dizzying sights and smells of the outdoor another giant of modern art was sniffing around the coast. Henri market on Cours Saleya. Matisse had spent a summer in Saint-Tropez with Paul Signac in But what Matisse loved most was the light. When youre in 1904 and, after briefly dabbling in Signacs trademark Pointillism, he northern France, the sky is bright, then clouds appear all of a suddecided to plot his own artistic course. den. The light changes constantly, says Marie-Thrse Pulvenis de The following year, he made the tiny Catalan port of Collioure Suligny, chief curator at the Muse Matisse. In Nice, the light gave his summer retreatled there, no doubt, by his Toulouseborn wifeand returned year Monet was dazzled by what he saw yet after year. His Porte-fentre profoundly challenged by the blinding light and the Collioure (1914) is almost a conceptual work, says copowerful northern wind known as the mistral.

Henri-Edmond Cross
Cyprs Cagnes (1900)
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Auguste Renoir
Rochers lEstaque (1882)
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Marseille-Provence 2013 Le Grand Atelier du Midi

Today, Picasso and just about every other major artist who ever graced the Provence-Alpes-Cte-dAzur region have at least one tourist destination to their name.

Vincent van Gogh

LArlsienne: Madame Ginoux (1888) > La Mridienne (1889-90) >

Matisse the impression of being in a theater. All he had to do was open and close the shutters to adjust it. Rather than park his easel along the coast and paint seascapes, Matisse spent days in hotel rooms and studios, bringing the outdoors in through reflections, mirrors, open windows, horizons, says Pulvenis de Suligny. His aim: to give this impression of infinityof foreground and backgroundnot through perspective but through color. There are many outstanding Matisses in the show, not least of them Le Marocain en vert (1912-13), borrowed from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The canvases are filled with the exotic rugs, throws and cushions that gave his studios a Moorish touch and made his young models resemble Oriental odalisques. (His favorite model, Henriette Darricarrre, was a musician with ballet training; she posed extensively for Matisse between 1920 and 1927 and became his companion.) From 1938 to his death in 1954, Matisse occupied two floors of the former Htel Regina, where Queen Victoria had once stayed. Though wheelchair-bound after an operation in January 1941, he never stopped creating and innovating. He devoted the rest of his life to decorating the lovely Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence with murals and stained glass, and to making paper cutouts that are a key component of his uvre and duly represented in the show. Matisse is buried in Cimiez, near his final home and near the museum that now bears his name.
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Henri Matisse
Intrieur Nice, la sieste (1922)

historical trajectory of the Midi. Even though the South of France was an unoccupied zone libre, most artists stayed away, turning their attention to more somber themes. One exception was Pierre Bonnard, who in 1939 escaped to the villa he had bought in Le Cannet, in the hills above Cannes, and never left. He had first visited the Cte dAzur in 1909 and had been dazzled, describing it as a taste of The Thousand and One Nights: the sea, the walls, the yellows, the colored light and its reflections...! Bonnard led even more of a shuttered existence than Matisse. He was confined to his home by his depressive wife, Marthe. So he retreated to his studio and painted the houses interiors from memory the dining room, the drawing room, the bathroomand obsessively depicted his wife, not as she was then, but as the slender young woman hed met years earlier. Paysage du Midi et Deux Enfants (1916-18) and Vue du Cannet (1920), both part of the Aix show, emphasize Bonnards connection to the Midi, while a permanent museum in Le Cannet pays tribute to his substantial legacy. Picasso spent the war years in Paris but missed the Cte dAzur terribly. He had made more or less annual visits to the region between 1919 and 1939, producing myriad beach paintings of his then-girlfriend Marie-Thrse Walter. When the war ended, he returned to the coast with his new < Pierre Bonnard Le jardin l'arbre rouge (1909) partner, Franoise Gilot, an aspiring

orld War II spelled another break in the art-

artist some 40 years his junior who would bear him two children. In late 1946, he was invited to paint murals inspired by ancient Greece on the upper floor of the Chteau dAntibes, an edifice that is today the Picasso Museum. He then rented a series of rooms in Golfe-Juan where, one fine day on the beach, someone suggested that he take up ceramics in the nearby town of Vallauris with Georges and Suzanne Ramie. Vallauris, in ancient times, had exported cooking vessels throughout the Roman Empire. It had becomein the words of Picassos biographer John Richardson the Svres of schlock. The first time that Picasso and Gilot visited the Ramies workshop, the artist decorated two or three clay plates. He spent the afternoon there, just fooling around, and then we left, writes Gilot in her autobiography, My Life With Picasso. It was all very casual, almost like making a drawing on a tablecloth in a restaurant and then walking off and leaving it. The following year, Picasso was coaxed back by the potter couple and agreed to work if they would provide him with an assistant. Soon, the Iberian polymath was so taken with the discipline that he moved his family to Vallauris and produced thousands of ceramics, adorning them with men, women, animals and mythical figures. He was working in a new medium, and for Picasso, working in a new medium was always tremendously vital, says NYUs Silver. The pieces Silver rates the most highly are the ones that Picasso mass-produced, shortly after joining the French Communist Party. He invented high-quality work that was accessible to everyone he says. Of course, collectors of unique ceramics dont want to hear that. Ever eager to fill the shoes of the giants who came before him, Picasso bought the Chteau de Vauvenargues, a majestic 17thcentury edifice, in 1961. Exhibition co-curator Bruno Ely says the artist bought the secluded property to get away from his hilltop villa in Cannes, where he was harassed by journalists and admirers who got in the way of his work. Yet he also did it to appropriate the force and the power of Czanne. By purchasing the chteau, he possessed some 2,500 acres of the northern flank of the Mont SainteVictoire, the very mountain that Czanne so obsessively painted. Though Picasso would spend his old age in more comfortable and better-heated homes, it was at Vauvenargues that his wife chose to bury him in 1973. Today, Picasso and just about every other major artist who ever graced the Provence-Alpes-Cte-dAzur region have at least one tourist destination to their name. A large number of museums have opened in the South of France since those artists settled here, says Frchuret, who runs three himself. I cant think of any other French region, besides Ile-de-France, thats blessed with as many cultural and artistic institutions. Its absolutely remarkable, and we owe that to these artists. Le Grand Atelier du Midi will richly illustrate that point. It will also serve to pique the publics curiosity for each one of those artists, for the sun-drenched region where they spent their later years and for f the museums that lovingly preserve the traces of their stay.
Le Grand Atelier du Midi is a two-part exhibition: De Van Gogh Bonnard at the Muse des Beaux-Arts, Palais Longchamp, Marseille (musee-desbeaux-arts.marseille.fr); and De Czanne Matisse at the Muse Granet, Aix-en-Provence (museegranet-aixenprovence.fr). Both shows run from June 13 through October 13.
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This article originally appeared in the Spring 2013 issue of France Magazine.

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Marseille-Provence 2013 Positively Brilliant!

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