Page 70 - Studio International - July/August 1967
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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.