Holiday in Cap d'Antibes - Musée Picasso

As every year since I was born, my family and I spend some time at our house in Antibes, South of France, and I always visit Picasso's Museum since I really love the place, its direct view on the sea, the terrace filled with amazing sculptures.

This year, the Museum was different due to the fact that Picasso's works of art had been transferred to  Montecarlo for another exhibition, but, nevermind, I have the museum's book and I can tell you which works you can usually find there.
It wasn't disappointing for me because I had seen Picassos many times, so I was very happy to discover other artists together with a few which are always exhibited there.
Here's the complete list of the artists you can find in alphabetical order:

Jean-Michel Atlan

Balthus

Anna-Eva Bergman

Cèsar

Antoni Clavé

Max Ernst

Hans Hartung

Fernand Léger

Alberto Magnelli

Joan Mirò/Josep Lorens Artigas

Zoran Music

Bernard Pagès

Francis Picabia

Pablo Picasso

Anne et Patrick Poirier

Jacques Prévert

Germaine Richier

Michel Sima

Nicolas de Stael

I really like the book's introduction, written by Jean-Louis Andral, look at the picture of the Palace and just try to feel that atmosphere:

"I don't really remember when, or how, I got the news - rather extravagant, I thought - that Picasso was decorating the Museum of Antibes." This is how Jaume Sabartés, the secretary and close friend of Picasso, began the introduction to the work Picasso à Antibes published by René Drouin in 1948, with photographs by Michel Sima commented by Paul Eluard. "However," he continued, "accustomed as I had been for so long to identifying Picasso with the Palais Grimaldi, it was not really difficult to accept the idea that he could do something for the museum."

With true stories, as with legends, the best ones belong to tales recounting the immanence of destiny, of the fantastic entering reality. 

So, once upon a time there was a Chateau; like a sentry, it faced the mother of all seas, on the ramparts of a very historic small town. There was also a fabulous artist who would be famous in his century, leaving his mark forever. Their meeting must have been foretold in the stars, for Picasso might well have entered the Chateau Grimaldi as owner rather than invited artist. For he knew the Riviera very well and used to spend his summer holidays there from the beginning of the 1920s, between Juan-les-Pins, le cap d'Antibes and Antibes. This is how he spent the summers of 1923, 1924 and 1925 at Antibes, in a period when the Chateau Grimaldim abandoned by its previous occupants, the military engineers, was put up for sale by the State. Picasso was interested and thought about buying it. But another buyer got there first: the town of Antibes, convinced of the heritage value of the building thanks to the intervention of a decisive personality. 

The museum not only became a celebration of modern art and of painters who painted Antibes, but also a reflection on certain artistic movements' forerunners, as you will notice in a minute.

I was shocked and thrilled when I saw this painting by Fernand Léger: Composition à l'aloès n°1, and the thing that shocked me the most is that it was painted in 1935 in a way that remembers the use of colour of pop art, which still had to reach its complete form.

Composition à l'aloès n°1, 1935
Oil on canvas
90 x 130 cm

Here's the artist's comment on his own work:

"If I take some objects like a bit of bark and the wing of a butterfly and from these compose some purely imaginary picture, you will probably not recognise the bark, nor the butterfly wing, but will ask what it all represents."

Here are pictures of my Picasso's favourites: 

Nu assis sur fond vert, 1946
Oleoresinous paint on plywood
165 x 147.5 cm

Pecheur assis à la casquette, 3 November 1946
Oleoresinous paint on plywood
106.5 x 82.5 cm

Le Corsage à carreaux, 26 March 1949
Lithograph; composition using wash and ink on lithographic paper, transferred to stone; printed on vellum, 20/50
66 x 50 cm

La Femme à la fenetre, 17 May 1952
Sugar aquatint on copper; printed on vellum, 2/50
90 x 63.6 cm

Faune blanc jouant de la diaule, 1946
Oleoresinous paint and charcoal on vellum
66.7 x 50 cm

Nature morte à la bouteille, à la sole et à l'aiguière, 1946
Oleoresinous paint and graphite on fibrocement
120 x 250 cm

La joie de vivre, 1946
Oleoresinous paint and charcoal on fibrocement
120 x 250 cm

Picasso painting Satyre, faune et centaure au trident, 1946
Oleoresinous paint and charcoal on fibrocement (three panels)
250 x 360 cm

Ulysse et les sirènes, September 1947
Oleoresinous paint and graphite on fibrocement (three panels)
360 x 250 cm

This is Joan Mirò's sculpture, exhibited on the terrace:

La Dèesse de la mer, 1968
Red crank clay, decoration painted with oxides and enamelled, cement pedestal
182 x 32 x 60 cm

Some other works I particularly loved...

Alberto Magnelli

Femme et Enfant, 1914
Oil on canvas
70 x 55 cm

"Daniel Abadie, the executor's of the artist's will, said, in 1983, that the artist practised 'a veritable decanting of the image, only retaining of his 'shorthand' character the cursive organisation of the line and the rhythm of the areas of solid colour."

And, last, but not least...

Nicolas de Stael

Le Concert, March 1955
Oil on canvas
350 x 600 cm

Le Fort Carré d'Antibes, 1955
Oil on canvas
114 x 195 cm

"Too close or too far from the subject, I don't want to be systematically one or the other."

Entering the Venetian Mood - Great Films set in Venice

I apologize for the recent lack of posts, but I've been away and busy with flats-hunting, and the organization of my week in Venice. 

I will publish a lot of material from the last exhibitions I saw, and I am also preparing a dedication to Bruce Springsteen's career after reading his biography.

So, while preparing all this, I decided to dedicate a short post to the most famous films set in Venice, in preparation of the Venice Film Festival.

Hope you enjoy it!

Let's go back to the 1950s and to one of the greatest authors of all time: Orson Welles and his Othello, which also won the Palme D'Or in Cannes in 1952.
Luchino Visconti celebrated Venice more than once: first, in his Senso (1954), reflecting the decadence of aristocracy. In 1971, he came back to shoot the adaptation of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, in which, decline, one of his favourite themes, is the center of the plot.

The melodrama Summertime (1955) directed by David Lean shows the adventures of a stunning Katharine Hepburn on the Lido.
Two years later Dino Risi will direct Venice, the moon, and you starring the unforgettable Alberto Sordi in the character of a fond gondolier.
In 1962 Joseph Losey will direct Eva starring the beautiful Jeanne Moureau.
One year later Gianfranco de Bosio directed The Terrorist, set in the winter of 1943. 

Back in 1935 also the musicals' stars Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers reconstructed Venice in the studio for Top Hat, one of the greatest American Musicals.

The famous Giacomo Casanova is the protagonist of Luigi Comencini's film Childhood, vocation, and first experiences of Giacomo Casanova, Venetian (1969) and also of Il Casanova by Federico Fellini (1976), which is considered one of his masterpieces.

Always in 1976 Joseph Losey will direct his Don Giovanni.

In 1982, Michelangelo Antonioni directed Identification of a Woman starring the Canal Grande as location.

San Barnaba's church is part of a mystery in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Marhsall Herskovitz directed Owner of her destiny in 1988, whose story takes us back to the Venice of the Fourteenth Century. This historical period was also used by Mauro Bolognini in the film La Venexiana in 1986.

If you love English comedies you must watch Blame It on the Bellboy (1992) by Mark Herman.

The hilarious Woody Allen also chose Venice as setting in the comedy Everyone says I Love You (1996).

A comedy of other kind is Bread and Tulips (1999), directed by Silvio Soldini.

The psychological thriller Toyer (2004) starring Juliette Binoche directed by Brian de Palma uses the Venice Carnival as background to a serial killer's story.

However, the film which suscitated most attention in the last years was probably the adaptation of The Merchant of Venice (2004) directed by Michael Radford, and starring Al Pacino, Kate Blanchett, Ian McKellen, and Joseph Fiennes, together with the film dedicated to the life of the composer Antonio Vivaldi: Antonio Vivaldi, a prince in Venice (2006), directed by J.L. Guillermou.

"Venice never quite seems real, but rather an ornate film set suspended on the water."

(Frida Giannini)

Aren't you already in love? 

My Favourite Films of All Time - Part 5

Amour, Michael Haneke (2012)

"Anne: It's beautiful.
Georges: What?
Anne: Life. So long."


Chocolat, Lasse Hallstrom (2000)

"You don't misbehave here. It's just not done, did you know that? If you don't go to confession, if you don't... dig your flowerbeds, or if you don't pretend, if you don't pretend... that you want nothing more in your life than to serve your husband three meals a day, and give him children, and vacuum under his ass, then... then you're... then you're crazy."


Bonnie and Clyde, Arthur Penn (1967)

"You know what you done there? You told my story, you told my whole story right there, right there. One time, I told you I was gonna make you somebody. That's what you done for me. You made me somebody they're gonna remember." 


This is England, Shane Meadows (2006)

 "I just wondered if you'd like to be my girlfriend. I think you're lovely."


Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick (1987)

"These are great days we're living, bros. We are jolly green giants, walking the Earth with guns. These people we wasted here today are the finest human beings we will ever know. After we rotate back to the world, we're gonna miss not having anyone around that's worth shooting."


 Mona Lisa Smile, Mike Newell (2003)

  
 "I've heard her called a quitter for leaving and aimless wanderer. But not all who wander are aimless, especially those who seek truth beyond tradition, beyond definition, beyond the image. I'll never forget you."


Notting Hill, Roger Michell (2003)

 "Anna Scott: Can I stay for a while?
William: You can stay forever."


The Blues Brothers, John Landis (1980)

"They're not gonna catch us. We're on a mission from God." 


Citizen Kane, Orson Welles (1941)

"Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything... I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a... piece in a jigsaw puzzle... a missing piece." 



The Woman Next Door, Francois Truffaut (1981)

"I suspect that Mathilde and Bernard won't be buried together. if I had to select an epitaph for them it would be, "Neither with you, nor without you.", but I doubt whether I'll be asked."