Page 70 - Studio International - July/August 1967
P. 70

Côde d'Azur                              the first museum built for a single artist and entirely   and outdoor sculptor, Maeght enlarged the con-
                                                                                         ception to an art gallery which took seven years to
                                                consecrated to his work. The facade is gay with a
       galleries                                polychrome mosaic-ceramic 1,600 ft long from a   build. For each room is orientated to daylight with
                                                                                         ingenious windows and semicircular cornices that
                                                design by Léger intended for the Olympic stadium
                                                at Hanover. In the grounds is a children's garden   reflect the light at 45 degrees. Artificial light is only
       Chateau Grimaldi; Vallauris;             of polychrome sculpture 24 ft high; whether   used in spots on some of the sculpture by Calder
       Musée Leger; Musée Renoir;               children would enjoy playing in it and what they  and others.
       Fondation Maeght; Musée Matisse;         would play we shall never know, for they are not   It is designed for a permanent collection and
       St Pierre, Villefranche                  allowed to. Léger designed the 30-ft-high window   temporary exhibitions and, as at Louisiana in
                                                in the entrance hall, and the tapestries there, one   Denmark, the rooms are separated by outdoor
                                                of which has seventy-five different threads of grey.   vistas. Giacometti has not only a room to himself,
                                                 Surviving this calculated assault one comes to the   but also a courtyard. Chagall has an outside
                                                pictures. And here is a superb collection in un-  mosaic and a room of pictures chosen and placed
       Peter Stone                              broken array from the impressionist portrait of his   by himself. There is a Bonnard room, a Kandinsky,
                                                uncle of 1905 to the painting he was engaged on at   a Braque, and a Mir& I found Miró's sculpture
                                                his death fifty years later.             ineffective, particularly the rhinoceros arch giving
                                                 Even in 1905-6 his drawings of the nude had the   on to a wall relief. Though he made constructions
       Outside great cities there can be few areas more  spirit of cubism, and we see him still painting with   in relief as long ago as 1929 and has had works
       richly endowed with art galleries than the Cote   beautiful softness in his completely cubist work.   cast in bronze for more than twenty years, his
       d'Azur around Nice. On a recent trip I visited   Then the curvilinear machine people appeared  sculpture here has not the authority needed.
       eight of them—two general and six devoted to  and he became harder before separating his draw-  But the site and architecture really call for greater
       individual artists.                      ing and colour. In this collection you can follow  art than a selection from one generation can be
        At Antibes is the sixteenth-century Château  his individual vision right through without a hiatus   expected to provide.
       Grimaldi, with its fourteenth-century tower, where   and admire his integrity and consistency of de-  I found the Musée Matisse at Cimiez, a suburb
       Picasso went to paint in 1946. It was a happy time   velopment.                   of Nice, terribly disappointing. No catalogue, no
       in his life; the war was over and Françoise Gilot   The Musée Renoir at Cagnes is as empty of  photographs, inadequate labelling—rather as if he
       had come to the château with him and given birth   pictures as the Musée Léger is full, but it is just as   were a local boy whom they felt they ought to
       to his son Claude. Here are paintings, drawings,   full of spirit. The garden with its olive trees which   honour but did not want to. And the works ex-
       prints, sculptures, ceramics, all light-hearted and   he painted so often, now a bird sanctuary, Pomona   hibited do little more than confirm him as a good
       gay, and sometimes (like the Daphnis and Chloe   presiding over the terrace, the porcelain he painted   decorator.
       series) enchanting. Yet in this great stone building   when he was 15, his jacket, cravat and walking   At Villefranche Jean Cocteau realized his child-
       one needs something deeper.              sticks, the wheelchair at his easel and the model's   hood ambition of restoring the Romanesque chapel
        One gets it at Vallauris, in the little Romanesque   couch, the smiling plump concierge who might   of St Pierre and decorating it with stories from the
       chapel which Picasso decorated with the theme of  easily be his model were he still alive.   saint's life—the walking on the water, the denial,
       war and peace. On the left wall is war, on the   The most important gallery as such is the Fonda-  the delivery from prison. The style is linear, the
       right peace, and on the end wall a composition   tion Maeght at St Paul, which originated as a  spirit half-humorous. To get the movements of the
       that acts as a perfect colour-lead between the two,   memorial chapel to the son of Aimé Maeght, the   many angels that swarm over the vaulting he went
       but is too oversimplified and symbolic for unity. A   Paris dealer, in which there is an exquisite window   regularly to football matches, and one can see the
       measure of the success of the whole is that one finds   by Braque, violet with two points of turquoise.   motions he derived from the pass, the drop kick
       oneself increasingly avoiding war and enjoying  Braque also made a mosaic fish-floor for a rain-  and the tackle. Pillars, soffits and the ceiling over
       peace, particularly the final group of the cook, the   water pond in a similar colour scheme with more   the entrance are treated with geometrical decora-
       writer and the woman who reads while feeding her   blue.                          tion, a delicate network recalling the nets of the
       baby. At last, one feels, life has been achieved.   Using the services of the Catalans José Luis Sert   fishermen outside. It was a labour of love, and the
        The Fernand Léger Museum at Biot claims to be   as architect and Joan Miró as landscape gardener   delight that Cocteau felt is shared.
   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75