Côte d’Azur - an art historian’s paradise
Newsletter 09.17.2023
Me in Renoir’s Garden, Cagnes-sur-Mer
Bienvenue and welcome back to Musée Musings, your idiosyncratic guide to Paris and art. This week reporting from the Côte d’Azur. I took the train this time because Julia and Barb (both of whom have places down here) insist that it’s the only way to travel from Paris to the Côte d’Azur. And as I don’t like all the rigamarole surrounding air travel, especially the two or more hours that are added on to a flight, whether that flight is one hour or fourteen hours long. For Barb, whose place is close to Nice and Julia, whose husband picks her up, I’m guessing, in Antibes, the train is fine. But I hadn’t done my homework, so I didn’t realize that the delightfully fast TGV from Paris to Marseilles, becomes a milk run from Marseilles to Nice, with stops at Toulon, Cannes and Antibes, among others, each for nearly 15 minutes, thereby doubling the length of the trip.
And my trip wasn’t over once we got to the Nice. The Europcar line at the train station was interminable and although I booked a compact manual, we were upgraded to a beast of a machine, worthy of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor not the politician. At least it was an automatic.
I thought I was prepared for the windy roads of the arrière-pays, the mountainous countryside behind the Mediterranean coast, after staying in St. Jeannet the first time I visited the Côte d’Azur and La Gaude the other time. I thought I knew what awaited me when we climbed into that huge Citroen and drove to the home I had chosen on HomeExchange. (Figure 1) I figured that as long as I had my nausea bands on, I would be okay. How wrong I was. This lovely house is nearly an hour from Nice, The last few miles of the trip are a series of hairpin turns (virages en épingle à cheveux) on roads big enough, but just, for one car but where cars coming from the other direction never cease to arrive and to terrify. The natives are, of course, the most aggressive drivers. We tourists waste their time, keep them from getting to where they are going. And they are right. But that means that one starts and ends each day’s journey wondering what horror lies ahead. Not ideal for someone for whom sightseeing is her raison d’être.
Figure 1. Baou de St. Jeannet from my home for the week in Vence
Whinging (Australian for complaining) over. The exhibition at the Bonnard Museum in Le Cannet on Loisir (Leisure) was relaxing (Figure 2) and the village delightful (Figures 3, 4, 5, 6). It was great to get back to the Fondation Maeght (Figure 7) for an exhibition on the work of the Canadian artist Jean-Paul Riopelle, (Figures 8, 9) Joan MItchell’s long time lover. He left her after 25 years for a younger artist. I knew his name mostly through her rancor. Turns out, I like his work better.
Figure 2. A montage of the paintings in the exhibition on Loisir, Musée Bonnard, Le Cannet
Figure 3. Le mur des amoureux, mural by Peynet in Le Cannet
Figure 4. Detail of mural above
Figure 5. Another mural, this of Bonnard with a spray can, Le Cannet
Figure 6. Family Tree of families & descendants brought from Italy to Le Cannet to cultivate the land (Me in Mirror),
Figure 7. Me in sculpture garden at Fondation Maeght
Figure 8. Paravent by Jean-Paul Riopelle, Fondation Maeght
Figure 9. Totem pole with head of owl, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Fondation Maeght
One day, we traveled to Opio for that village’s olive oil. (Figures 10, 11) An olive oil tasting was followed by an olive tasting. It was only as we were leaving did we learn that the mill is closing at the end of September. After 7 generations, there’s nobody in the family who wants to run it. That’s definitely sad especially since the thyme-rosemary scented olive oil is delicious, as are the green olives marinated in orange peel and fennel seed. I’ll tell you more about all that as well as the Jean-Honoré Fragonard Museum in Grasse that I am visiting today and the exhibition at the Matisse Museum in Nice which I hope to visit, too. It’s the fabulous exhibition I saw in Paris with Ginevra. And I’ll tell you about all the lovely meals I’ve been eating, mostly thanks to the boulangerie and traiteur that are both just at the beginning (or end, depending upon which way you are going) of the treacherous journey to my lodgings.
Figure 10. Moulin d’Opio, founded in 1848
Figure 11. Olive tasting at Moulin d’Opio
Today, we’re back to Barbie. If you haven’t seen it, I hope that my review might in some small way, encourage you to do so. If you have, I hope you’ll send me a note and tell me what you thought of it.
Gros Bisous, Dr. B.