Cultural Tourist.
Sometimes, in January,
the British winter seems interminable. As we all become more global some people
interpret this as a necessity to flee and guaranteed sun in the middle of our
winter is expensive. Two generations ago those who could afford it, migrated to
the South of France. My grandparents were amongst them and in fact my
grandfather died whilst on one of these winter outings aged 89 in 1958.
After a particularly
grey highland winter we decided to follow in their footsteps and rent a flat in
the medieval part of Old Nice. On the fourth floor, with only two small
windows, one to a covered inner courtyard, and the other down a quiet side
street, we have been woken each morning to the sound of heavy rain. Luckily, so
the guidebooks tell us, Nice is second only in culture to Paris. So, as is
usually the case when we visit new cities, we become cultural tourists.
MAMAC Nice or Musee
d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporian is within easy reach of our flat, and so as
it was raining we decided to start there. Although the building is conspicuous
in its modernity and claims to have formed a new town square which felt more
like a traffic junction, the entrance was surprisingly hard to find and we past
a group of homeless men cooking their lunch on a camping stove three times
before we found the door. Once inside, however, the building worked well as a
temple to twentieth century art with galleries at each corner and wide airy
passages that linked them. This gave each chapter of the collection room to
breathe. For me what was enjoyable was the introduction to new names. French
artists that I had not heard of before and who stood in equal stature to the
best of modern painting.
The gallery is
unashamedly French, with little use of the English language and as my French is
a poor schoolgirl version, I got bored with the struggle of translation and let
the work speak for itself. Everyone finds a voice to resonate with and I found
the work of one man in particular, very engaging. Jean Charles Blais uses the
French tradition of haute couture to inform his work and in particular, in the
work seen here, pattern cutting. The reference to tailoring provides an
indirect commentary to the human condition. Some of his work was more direct
with drawings of body parts painted on layered surfaces made from old posters.
There was a touching piece of feet, painted in the early Van Gogh style. In
fact his work seemed tender, something I think unusual in much modern painting
especially by men! A large stricking piece comprised three moving lines
projected onto a wall showing a changing configuration of the human head.
Our second wet day was
spent at the Musee Matisse. Trudging through a sodden town to find a bus that
took us up a hill, it felt exciting and unusual to be almost alone in a
wonderful collection of such an iconic hero of so many. The museum is in an
attractive villa sitting in a park with an olive grove up to the front door and
orange trees standing like sentinels. Beyond the terrace as the house looks out
to sea, are roman ruins on all sides. An awe inspiring situation to house such
a museum, The collection itself contains a number of iconic masterpieces, many
placed in a context of their making, with drawings, sketches and preliminary
paintings to place the work into its context, rooting them like the olive trees
outside. This was supported further by some of the painter’s possessions being
placed amongst the paintings and including the wooden silver coloured chair
carved like a shell that appears in several pictures. Unlike some overstuffed
museums where every classroom, jigsaw puzzle and chocolate box reproduces the
original but where you remain unmoved through over exposure to an image
exploited by advertising and popularism, here the work sang in the space around
it, a semi domestic setting and seemed to me as fresh and relevant today as it
must have been when it was made.
Despite the wet we had
two great days of culture, it felt like drinking a great bottle of wine, and
despite returning with soaking shoes, socks and feet, we both enjoyed every minute.
The author and partner
at the market!
