(for the Oxford Gazette, adding to the News
from New York column by Mary Ann Caws)
Summering Reflections from Provence
As well as the old music and
new music festivals in the medieval perched villages of Provence, like Oppède-le-Vieux --- two grand pianos were flown in to the
church once for a particular occasion – and the Mozart and Handel celebrations
in our nearby town of Carpentras, there are always gallery openings notable for
their chic simplicity.
Afterwards, you might want to
have a bite of supper in one of the restaurants by the river at L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue
– it always feels, to some of us, because of its poet René Char, like the arts center of the region. You could
go to the traditional Pescador, at
the “partage des eaux,” where the waters meet – or then one of the bistros on
the island of L’Isle, surrounded by the old-timey lights, or perhaps, if you’re
lucky, a few boats with jousting young men trying to push each other off the
boats with a long pole—or just a guitarist or accordionist going by under the
bridge. Across the river, the water wheel keeps turning with its long dripping
fronds of green.
On July 5, in the high-in-the-Lubéron
village of Ménerbes – famous for inhabitants like Nicolas de Stael and the onetime
mistress of Picasso, Dora Maar – there was a small and splendid exhibition of
the quite remarkable landscapes of the British artist Philip Hughes: “Les
Vallées de Ménerbes de 1974-2014”. These gouaches, pastels, watercolors, and
acrylics, are distinctive by their sharp
lines and patterns – as if seen from an airplane – reminiscent of the striped,
terraced, pale-colored beauties of the Scot Charles Rennie Macintosh, who left
Glasgow and his instantly recognizable architectural constructions for the South
of France: Port-Vendres, next to the more-than-memorable village of Collioure, the
“city of Artists,” marking the start of the “path of the Fauves” like Derain,
Dufy, and Matisse, where the old restaurant-hotel Les Templiers was the hangout
of Picasso and the others for the cuisine of the chef Pous, whose son Jojo kept
up the flavor of the place for years.
Macintosh (“Toshie” to his
adepts) was fond neither of the painters of Collioure nor of the inhabitants of
Port-Vendres. But the place he loved, and walking there – memorialized by a
path with reproductions of his paintings in the spots they had been painted
(“On the Trail of Monsieur Macintosh”), just as in Collioure the reproductions
of Derain and Matisse mark the way of the Fauve path in 1905. Macintosh asked
for his ashes to be cast into the sea near that so loved village, and his
partner and widow, Margaret Maconald, did just that..
The watercolors and gouaches
and acrylics of Hughes have nothing melancholy or misanthropic about them – from
the larger landscapes of Ménerbes countryside seen from Dora Maar’s garden,
with their written inscriptions, like diary notes, through the medium-sized
works with the boulders pressing against the mountains – what an
architecturally-sensitive mind has the painter! – to the small and
perfectly-patterned watercolors, they exude a kind of happiness like a walking
trail of nonchalant beauty. They reminded me this time of Macintosh’s path
through Port-Vendres – how a stroll can animate a canvas or a paper, or, indeed,
a life.
Outside the gallery of Pascal
Lainé, half-way up a road with an old stone wall against which informally and
elegantly dressed locals and visitors were leaning with a glass of wine and a
relaxed chatter, you felt that this was the Provence of always, in its relaxed
and summering finery, at its best .
