Sunday, our last full day in Nice, was also our first rain day. When it rains in Nice, it pours. We headed out to meet Nelson and Colette, friends from Toronto, for a coffee.
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Our usual walk past Place Messéna -- OMG, the King and Queen of the Carnaval are gone!
The Carnaval ended on Saturday night instead of Sunday, due to the expected rain. |
We spent an hour with our friends at Malongo Cafè and then headed up the hill to the Musée Matisse, which was about a 40 minute trek in the rain. We walked up Boulevard de Cimiez, a street designed in the 19th century to accommodate the growing demand for hotels and grand villas. The neighbourhood of Cimiez in the hills has some wonderful architecture, including some buildings from the "Belle Époque" period just before WWI.
He had one daughter, Marguerite (1894-1982), with the model Caroline Joblau. In 1898, he married Amélie Parayre (1872-1958); they raised Marguerite together and had two sons. Jean (1899-1976) and Pierre (1900-1989). Both Amélie and Marguerite were models for Matisse. His marriage with Amélie ended in 1939, when she left Matisse due to his suspected affair with her young Russian emigré companion who was also his assistant.
Matisse was visiting Paris when the Nazis invaded France in June 1940, but managed to make his way back to Nice. His son, Pierre, already a gallery owner in New York since 1931, begged his father to flee. Matisse was about to depart for Brazil, but changed his mind and remained in Nice, as he did not want to leave France. He was allowed to exhibit during the war.
In 1941, he was diagnosed with cancer and while recovering in bed from complications from the surgery, he developed a new art form using paper and scissors. While Matisse was mostly isolated in southern France during the war, his family was involved with the French resistance. Pierre helped Jewish and anti-Nazi artists escape occupied France. His daughter Marguerite was active in the resistance and tortured by the Gestapo and was sent Ravensbrück concentration camp. She managed to escape from the train and survived in the woods until she was rescued.
After Matisse's death, the family, in agreement with the city, chose to set up a museum in the Villa des Arènes. It opened its doors in January 1963.
The Musée Matisse is part of the vast heritage complex of Cimiez, the former Roman city of Cemenelum. The museum consists of the Villa des Arènes, a 17th century Genose dwelling, which was extended with a new wing between 1987 and 1993. The permanent collection is rotated and there are large temporary exhibits to constantly bring fresh perspectives to Matisse's work.
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| Entrance |
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| Doors into the Museum |
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| Poster for the exhibit |
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| In the lobby area of the museum (ground floor) - Matisse cutouts |
A very large temporary exhibit entitled:
Tom Wesselmann: After Matisse had just opened on Friday. It was a fabulous exhibit.
Through a selection of 41 artworks, the exhibition explores the multiple ways in which Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004) expressed his admiration for Matisse, from his first collages in 1959 to his last works, the Sunset Nudes series in the 2000s. Tom Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1931, and moved to New York in 1956. Matisse had just died in 1954, but his work was still quite present on the American art scene. Wesselmann was very interested in the popularization of Matisse. He transposed the Matissian nude into the cultural context of the 1960s with his Great American Nudes series, the works he did with the model Monica at the end of the 1980s and the Sunset Nudes series in the 2000s, which were a final homage to Matisse. Wesselmann was influenced by Matisse's use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship.
There was one large Wesselmann piece in the lobby. There was also a small section devoted to just his works and the remaining works were interspersed with Matisse paintings, sculptures and photos on the upper floors.
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Sunset Nude with Matisse Odalisque, 2003
Wesselmann usually referenced Matisse in the titles of his pieces |
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The information cards with each painting often referenced the original Matisse paintings
which inspired Wesselmann's pieces. |
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| Before heading upstairs, we went to visit a small side room with large paper cut-out entitled La Piscine (The Swimming Pool). In 1952, Matisse executed La Piscine directly on the four walls of his north studio at Le Régina in Cimiez. He said "I like to look at it because I always loved the sea and as I am not able to swim anymore, I surrounding myself with the ocean". |
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| La Piscine |
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| His cut-outs are so unique |
There were some accompanying photos of the room with La Piscine in Matisse's Studio.
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| Héléne Adant, La piece au sol de marbre. Au mur: les rouages découpées de la Piscine et de L'Escargot et dessins au pinceau, La Régina, Nice, ca. 1952 |
We then went upstairs to the start of the Wesselmann exhibit.
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Jerry Goodman, Wesselmann in front of Great American Nude #1 in his Bleecker Street
apartment/studio, 1961 |
There was a beautiful oil on cut-out aluminium that Wesselmann worked on in the 1990s.
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| Blue Dance, 1996-2002 -- after Matisse's La Danse, 1910 |
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| Video: Klaus Benden, Tom Wesselmann: I Only Want to Paint, filmed in 1998, edited in 2010 |
In the same room were a series of bronze sculptures by Matisse with cut-outs in a nearby display case.
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Still Life with Goldfish and Rose, 1884 inspired by Matisse,
Poissons rouges et sculpture, printemps-été, 1912 |
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| Studies for Still Life with Goldfish and Daffodil, 1984 |
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| Matisse, Nu couché II, Nice, 1927 |
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Still Life with Two Matisses (Portrait), 1990-92, inspired by Matisse,
Marguerite à la toque de fourrure, 1918 |
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Claire and Tom Wesselmann in front of Great American Nude # 3
in their apartment on Bleecker Street, 1961 |
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| Wesselmann in his Bleecker Street Apartment, 1969 |
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| Admiring his work... |
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| Out the window was an immense Calder stabile-- still raining outside |
Matisse lived in the apartment building near the Cours Seyala market in Old Nice from 1921-1938. In that year he purchased an apartment in the former hôtel Régina in Cimiez, Nice (near the location of the Museum). He also spent some time near the end of his life in Vence, just north of Nice.
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| Figure endormie, Nice, 1941 |
There were a number of his earlier works.
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| Portrait de Madame Matisse, 1905 |
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| Figure à l'ombrelle, 1905. (picture of Amélie in the style of Signac) |
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| André Derain (1880-1954) , Portrait d'Henri Matisse, 1905 |
In his earlier period, Matisse was the leader of the Fauves, a group including Derain, Dufy, Braque, Van Dongen and others. The "Fauve" label dates to 1905, when a critic used this word to describe the brazenly coloured paintings that the group exhibited. They shared a common goal of relying on colour for expressive impact.
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| La Cour du moulin à Ajaccio, 1898 |
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| Nature morte aux livres, 1890 |
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Quote from Tom Wesslemann: I learnt a lot from Matisse. I remember spending hours studying reproductions of his paintings. I would challenge him in imaginary conversations
to tell me why he did each thing the way he did, 1965 |
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| There is a glimpse of the bottom of Matisse's painting, Purple Robe and Anemones behind Monica. Monica takes on the role of the odalisque. |
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| Tempête à Nice, 1919-1920 (We could relate to this picture, given the rainy day in Nice) |
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| Tête de Lorette sur fond vert, 1916 |
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| Petite Pianiste, robe bleue, Nice, 1924 |
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| Nature morte aux grenades, Vence, novembre 1947 |
Between 1961 and 1973, Wesselmann made a hundred
Great American Nudes.
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| Drawing for Great American Nude #20, 1961 |
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| Great American Nude #1, 1961 |
Toward the end of his life, Tom Wesselmann produced a series of paintings that are his last homage to Matisse. They were called
Sunset Nudes and were large scale compositions produced from 2002 to 2004. They were also reminiscent of some of his eclectic collages of the 1960s.
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| Man Ray at the Dance, 2004 with a reference to Matisse La Danse, 1910 and a photo by André Kertész, Danseuse Satirique, 1926 |
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| Monica with Tulips, 1989- Enamel on cut-out aluminium |
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| Sunset Nude with Matisse Self-Portrait, 2004, reference to Matisse, Autoportrait, 1937 |
The last section of the exhibit was entitled "Looking at the Odalisques Again" and featured a number of Matisse's odalisques that he painted in the 1920s, placing them in the context of popular culture of the time, which featured a resurgence of the popularity of commercial exoticism. Through Wesselmann's eyes, Matisse's odalisque became a pop icon.
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| Odalisque à la coupe de fruits, 1925 |
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| Arabesque, 1924 |
We really enjoyed the Wesselmann show which was a perfect fit with the Matisse Museum, which enabled many other Matisse works to be interspersed with the homages by Wesselmann.
We walked back to the apartment from the Museum, as we had just missed a bus. Luckily, it was all downhill. The rain had let up a bit. It was a quiet Sunday on the streets of Nice.
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| One last walk by the Cathedral in the rain |
We decided to take one last look at Matisse's apartment building where he lived from 1921-38. The market stalls were not there, so I was able to get a good photo.
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| Farewell, Matisse |
Alain made a salmon dinner with potatoes and tomatoes. Chocolate for dessert. Sunday was our last full day in Nice. On Monday February 27, we take the noon train to Marseille, the next stop on our adventure.
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