Arles encore

This new urban landscape is refreshing – renovated industrial buildings, new landmark tower and parkland accesible to all until early evening – and stimulating in conception and realisation. read about it here

” its nearly cubist geometry, coupled with the spectacle of its 11,000 stainless steel panels, inscribes it definitively in the Arles landscape. Conceived as an ode to the ancient town, Luma Arles has become like a tower of Babel for modern times” says fisheye. ” It’s clear Frank (Gehry the architect of the tower) hates the French” a comment on Dezeen.

Existing buildings have been refaced . . . the end of the Grand Halle will be covered with wisteria in a couple of years . . .

. . . and inside a work of Pierre Huyghe ‘After UUmwelt’ where worlds with animals, artificial intelligence and materials compose their own stories – sculpture and video – and manage to instil a sense of familiarity in an imense space (5,000m2). Interesting floor too . .

In La Mécanique Générale, I was taken with the aroma from the bands and swathes of eucalyptus forming the soft structure for Kapwani Kiwanga – Flowers for Africa – based on images that show floral arrangements and, in essence, that’s what it was which were present at a moment of historical importance when an African country gained independence. The flowers and foliage are left to dry so the decay evokes history, nostalgia and a sense of melancholy showing the failings of modernity and political degradation – social transformation, disenchantment and collapse. Stunning.

The park is only recently planted so work in progress and difficult and unfair to comment at this stage.  I shall return  . . .

. . and have lunch under here again.

In the Drum Cafe in the Tower, some walls are made of sunflower pulp and concrete and the pipes are exposed . . .

. . . and in The Main Gallery also in the Tower, Maja Hoffman’s Collection/LUMA Foundation is an eclectic grouping of conceptual pieces and labelled impermanent so presumably more to see in the future . . .

The interior reflects the exterior perfectly. Arles and the Arlésiennes are lucky.

 

In a house which becomes a home,

one hands down and another takes up

the heritage of mind and heart,

laughter and tears, musings and deeds.

Love, like a carefully loaded ship,

crosses the gulf between the generations.

Therefore, we do not neglect the ceremonies

of our passage: when we wed, when we die,

and when we are blessed with a child;

When we depart and when we return;

When we plant and when we harvest.

Let us bring up our children. It is not

the place of some official to hand to them

their heritage.

If others impart to our children our knowledge

and ideals, they will lose all of us that is

wordless and full of wonder.

Let us build memories in our children,

lest they drag out joyless lives,

lest they allow treasures to be lost because

they have not been given the keys.

We live, not by things, but by the meanings

of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords
from generation to generation.  Antoine de Saint-Exupery  Generation to Generation.

And a post from before.

soulages – musée fabre – montpellier – lit candles

In the Soulages rooms at the Musée Fabre – a retrospective ‘(Re)découvrir Soulages. Montpellier is where he studied and he has given works to be hung and kept in the city . . . .

. . . there are many ‘outrenoirs’ – paintings that have evolved from applying layers of paint – some textured – where the light is reflected. The intense weight and deepness of tone magnify the effect. Interesting to see the exploration of technique and result.

I am still obsessed with figures in space but I become obsessed with the canvases too.

Other colour tones are shown – this shows the use of brou de noix (walnut ink) – ‘L’acrylique et le brou, plus fluides tous les deuxque lapeinture à l’huile, permettent un étirement, d’où cette qualité spontanée de la trace’.

L’accord noir/bleu est un classique de la peinture, qui a toujours retenu Soulages: ‘Le rapprochement d’un noir et d’un bleu, me confiait-il en 1996, toujours quelque chose d’assez sensuel, on s’y livre avec une certaine volupté”.

Now I feel ashamed to stick the camera up to the canavs to take details – what was I thinking – how crass. But, perhaps I could learn something from the composition . . . . such vital, joyful work – so positive hence the choice of poem.

 

The days of our future stand in front of us
like a row of little lit candles —
golden, warm, and lively little candles.

The days past remain behind us,
a mournful line of extinguished candles;
the ones nearest are still smoking,
cold candles, melted, and bent.

I do not want to look at them; their form saddens me,
and it saddens me to recall their first light.
I look ahead at my lit candles.

I do not want to turn back, lest I see and shudder
at how fast the dark line lengthens,
at how fast the extinguished candles multiply.  Constantine P Cavafy

mind’s luck to live – collection lambert

At the collection lambert in December looking at works from the permanent collection.

The breakthroughs that occurred in the 1960’s and 1970’s and the new ways of considering art that they led to, fostered artistic practices in the last 60 years and nurtured Yvon Lambert’s vision

‘Minimal art, conceptual art and land art, fields in which Yvon Lambert was one of the very first proponents in Europe, start off this new itinerary at the museum, in the company of some of the main players in these foundational artistic movements’.  – from the website.

For me the interior and exterior compositions are as compelling as the installations, photography, video and small amount of figurative painting . . .

     

. . . in front of the window, a minute silk pillow (Pillow for the Dead by Rei Naito) in a glass case shrouded in reflection of the plane trees in the entrance courtyard and close up of a pile of wooden masks dumped on the floor of one of the rooms . . .

. . . looking again into the courtyard, a grandmother walking and holding a small baby in her arms – she looked charmimg in the space.

In a corner, smashed tea glasses tea vases  (Erratum by Latifa Echakhch) and a glass sphere in the right angled gallery on the top floor where most of the figurative painting was hung. It was a relief to get here – the circulation is problematic but interesting . . .

. . . a few installations use sound. This very large head (Kamoya by Marguerite Hummeau) groans  – I preferred it in reflection . . .

. . . looking down at some pots in a courtyard and yes, it is an installation,  and looking up at the canopy of planes so hence the poem by Alison Fell.

In the ghost-mist above the rooftops

planes stalk one another

 

in spirals, punctilious,

Like the rakings of a sand-garden

 

In which someone might sit

and count his blessings.

 

Some bits of luck these last

Few days: ground has a good

 

fell to the heels, hair

Likes to crouch under it hat,

 

fingertips nest nicely

In their woollen gloves.

 

It’s the nose’s luck to be

stuck so firmly to a face,

 

it’s the mind’s luck to live

in the limitless house of the head. December Lightyear  Alison Fell

 

Son oeil, à l’horizon de lumière gorgée,
Voit des galères d’or, belles comme des cygnes
Sur un fleuve de pourpre et de parfums dormir.

(He sees, on the horizon filled with light,
Golden galleons as lovely as swans,
Moored on a broad river of scented purple.)

Je me mire et me vois ange! et je meurs, et j’aime
—Que la vitre soit l’art, soit la mysticité—
A renaître, portant mon rêve en diadème,
Au ciel antérieur où fleurit la Beauté.

(I can see my reflection like that of an angel!
And I feel that I am dying, and, through the medium
Of art or of mystical experience, I want to be reborn,
Wearing my dream like a diadem, in some better land
Where beauty flourishes.) Stéphane Mallarmé

 

 

 

 

 

 

ville et campagne

Ville – Arles; appreciating a sculpture by Marc Nucera – elegant but purposeful and somehow wistful –  in front of the Chapelle de Méjan. Then on to the Foundation Vincent Van Gogh  . . .

. . . where the courtyard displays a feature bursting with colour and water.

Inside, one of the exhibitions is Soleil Chaud, Soleil Tardif. Les Modernes Indomptés. Vincent’s railway carriages with other works showing the influence of Millet and Monticelli; some Calder patterns; Polke’s work well lit.

Metaphors of the sun, Mediterranean region and experimentation from Modernists and Post Modernists. Joan Mitchell’s Sunflowers . .

. . . and No Birds. Also de Chirico and videos of performances by Sun Ra alongside vibrant LP covers – those were the days.

Later works from Picasso: Man playing the Guitar and Old Man Sitting.

Upstairs in the original rooms . . .

. . . an exhibition of an English Modernist, Paul Nash, curated as Eléments Lumineux –  “works imbued with a surreal atmosphere and a sense of the finite, against a background of death and war”(catalogue).

From the roof terrace, a well manged parthenocissus clings to the walls of a secret courtyard. And out into Place du Forum to gaze upwards.

Ville – Nimes; banks of Cistus monspeliensis flowering with panache alongside Esplanade Charles-de-Gaulle.

Campagne – Anduze. La Bambouseraie en Cévennes a couple of weeks ago with wisteria in full bloom – heavenly scent – Davidia in discreet bloom and the final flowers on Akebia quinata and  so final whiff of chocolate.

from a previous visit

The Mind is a wonderful Thing  Marianne Moore

is an enchanted thing
like the glaze on a
katydid-wing
subdivided by sun
till the nettings are legion.
Like Giesking playing Scarltti;

like the apteryx-awl
as a beak, or the
kiwi’s rain-shawl
of haired feathers, the mind
feeling its way as though blind,
walks along with its eyes on the ground.

It has memory’s ear
that can hear without
having to hear.
Like the gyroscope’s fall,
truly equivocal
because trued by regnant certainty,

it is a power of strong enchantment. It
is like the dove-
neck animated by
sun; it is memory’s eye;
it’s conscientious inconsistency.

It tears off the veil; tears
the temptation, the
mist the heart wears,
from its eyes – if the heart
has a face; it takes apart
dejection. It’s fire in the dove-neck’s

iridescence; in the inconsistencies
of Scarlatti.
Unconfusion submits
its confusion to proof; it’s
not a Herod’s oath that cannot change.

 

 

art on show – large space + small space – Château la Coste + Max Sauze garden

Richard Serra – an installation, a sculpture, a site specific sculpture – at Chateau la Coste to be viewed and interacted with on the Art and Arhcitecture walk around the domain. Seemingly I just snap away at things I like nowadays . . .

. . . remnants of the old farming estate have been kept such as the threshing floor outside a new chapel which I didn’t photograph.  A more interesting building ‘Four Cubes to Contemplate our Environment- a maze like structure from Tadao Ando. A palimpsest of translucent layers/facades offering plenty to absorb and think about  . . .

. . . on the way down to The Meditation Bell.

The Oak Room (Andy Goldsworthy), outside above and inside below, caught the imagination of the kids.

Big names here – Gehry, Ando, Bourgeois, Benech, Sigimoto – in this large glamorous and glossy winery vineyard cafe dining shop gallery space ‘art escape’.  Most likely the Ai Weiwei ‘Mountains and Seas’ might have flown away as my visit was some time ago . . . but I remember the very very beautiful work.

By contrast, also near Aix en Provence, a jardin remarquable, in a small town – Éguilles. Max and Anne Sauze have created somehing special in a relatively small space around one lone tree. Now there’s more and consequently increased shade and lots of bamboo. Max, the master of metal, is also a master of arrangements, of collections . . .

. . . and of pleating paper. All objets are recycled and put together to form whimsical and quirky and thought provoking ‘things’.

Mostly site specific and crossing from design to architeture to horticulture but intensely personal.

In every corner and on all surfaces, he can’t stop himself – thank goodness.

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician–
nor is it valid
to discriminate against ‘business documents and

school-books’; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
‘literalists of
the imagination’–above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them’, shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry. Marianne Moore   Poetry 

all in a month – pompidou + twombly, dry gardens + filippi, cevennes et des fleurs

A busy month of eclectic experiences starting with the city – looking from the 6th floor of the Pompidou Centre  across the panorama . . .

. . . and looking down onto a canopy of plane trees. Here to see . .

Cy Twombly’s work from a career spanning 60 years. It was a marvellous exhibition; sadly over now. ‘Untitled’ painted in Rome during his minimal and conceptual phase in 1970’s to . . .

the ‘Rose Series’ Gaeta 2008 drawn from influence/ inspiration/ silent dialogue with Rilke’s poems. Stunning and thought provoking and an exhibition that has kicked me into reading Homer again – what a delight.

City to coast and plant buying. As equally pleasurable as being immersed in paintings. At Pépinière Filippi, plants suitable for dry gardening are displayed in a garden setting  – this below is perhaps yucca spp – possibly Yucca rostrata  – as well as . . .

. . . in the nursery. I can’t describe the excitement and anticipation of seeing  lines of pots and the plants that they hold  – mad I know.

And then it’s off to Bouzigues for some seafood to be enjoyed with a good view of Sète.

Coast to country and walking for a few days in the Cévennes. Through the chestnut woods and over streams passing dry stone walls coated in mosses and lichen. Moss is a plant but lichen a type of fungus needing algae so a symbiotic relationship . . .

. . . we encountered some history too – a group of huts set on a plateau -restored in hommage to the protestants who fought in the Camisards’ War in early 18th C. They fought a guerilla warfare ambushing the King’s men and them melting back into the wooded countryside. Locals also hid in the the buildings in the 1940’s  – the Nazis being too lazy to climb through the dense landscape.

In Saint Hilaire-de-Lavit, forgotten vehicles and a wondrous chêne vert in the graveyard . . .

. . . and iris and wisteria still in bloom.

May Day is celebrated in the village with a Marché des Fleurs under the  55 plane trees – my front garden – which shade the colourful displays. Some are very bright . . .

. . . some less so . . .

and some are quite discreet. The poem from Rilke should wrap this post up well. à bientôt.

Rose

so cherished by our

customs

dedicated to our memories

became almost imaginary

for being so linked

to

our

dreams  Rainer Maria Rilke

town and country

The Wednesday morning market in Place aux Herbes in Uzès displays many produits du terroirs, regional products and specialties. It’s a more compact affair, so easier to negotiate and altogether a more satisfying experience than the Saurday jamboree. Now, in winter, the architecture lining the narrow emptier streets is also easier to appreciate – stand back, look up and admire.

Look across, breathe in and admire here too, south of the town, in the Gorges du Gardon. Ferula stems of last year’s plants still stand tall although brittle and with a feeling of just about hanging on . . .

. . . the Gard flowing from the west into a horse shoe curve and then bending out again to the east and on under Pont du Gard until it slips into the Rhone, I’ve posted about about this much loved walk previously .  . . .

. . . the winter sun highlights details like the dried fruits on the elder and the new growth of ferula . . .

From this panorama point le point de vue des castellas, a man made cave is visible used by the rock climbers who hang disjointedly like Looby Loo all along the south facing aspect.

The interior of the cave required a figure for purposes of scale but the view from this point was safer sans figure.

Neraby at the Galerie Marina, glimpses of the countryside still in skeletal mode  . . .

. . . and inside with Robert Lobet and inspirational work.

You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability rather
than
an asset – that in view of the fact that spirit creates form
we are justified in supposing
that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the
unit, stiff and sharp,
conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and
liking for everything
self-dependent, anything an

ambitious civilization might produce: for you, unaided, to
attempt through sheer
reserve, to confuse presumptions resulting from
observation, is idle. You cannot make us
think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are
brilliant, it
is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing
of pre-eminence. Would you not, minus
thorns, be a what-is-this, a mere
perculiarity? They are not proof against a worm, the
elements, or mildew;
but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance
without co-ordination? Guarding the
infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to
the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be re-
membered too violently,
your thorns are the best part of you. Marianne Moore Roses Only

 

 

variation – order, strength, delicacy of touch

This is another way of looking. A different way of looking, absorbing and learning. The last post was a flutter through the senses – specifically how lyrical planting can be interwoven with musical tone. Now I thought to use the same gardens (recently visited precedents and still fresh in the mind) to appreciate the variation in the planting style. Great Dixter offers up a masterclass in structural planting housing eclectic mixes of  seasonal supporting cast. Quite often sensational and always well judged in the proportion and scale of the planting groups as the photo above shows. It’s close by so I visit it frequently as a friend

I liked the theatricality and also responded to the dynamics of the Walled Kitchen Garden at West Dean and If I lived closer I would befriend it. Here functionality is foremost but very closely followed by the aesthetic – admire the husbandry and wallow in the beauty too . . .

. . . admire nerines – not to everyone’s taste  – this pleasing arrangement  inspires me to search for the more unusual, rather than the everyday knicker pink forms. Wayward actaeas bending over the low hedge in a shady bed contrast bizarrely with the summer beddding chrysanths + dahlias on the sunny side.

Produce in the glass houses is grown to maximise the fruiting and to please the eye. The necessary order and control seems to work in tandem with the delight of growing decorative plants too.

The Walled Garden at Marks Hall is purely decorative. A series of garden rooms flow through the middle level – designed for young and old with seating aligned to views out, the old fish ponds now a lake, and to the spaces incorporating play forms such as mounds and pits, balls and steps to balance and climb on plus an Alice in Wonderland planted tunnel. Horseshoes of hedging swirl across the obvious geometry – three dimensioned hard and planted surfaces but it is the asymmetry that makes this garden within a garden special and if I lived closer I’d become a friend just to enjoy . . .

. . . Peter Thurman‘s tree planting. Extra special.

Hauser and Wirth offers up this inside . . .

and this in the surrounding courtyard. Molinia ‘Moorhexe’, Sesleria autumnalis, cimicifuga, gillenia and deschampsia under the Celtis. Piet Oudolf’s planting is just enough to let the exterior space breathe.

And in his field  – a gently sloping site –  grassy raised mounds offer the visitor a path through the centre with massed planting of perennials and grasses moving in from the boundaries. A bold concept but poor functionally with signage preventing any access to the mounds. Interesting to see how these very large areas of planting read in the early months of the year. I would ‘friend’ the gallery if they need me.

Between going and staying

the day wavers,

in love with its own transparency.

The circular afternoon is now a bay

where the world in stillness rocks.

 

All is visible and all elusive,

all is near and can’t be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,

rest in the shade of their names.

 

Time throbbing in my temples repeats

the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall

into a ghostly theater of reflections.

 

I find myself in the middle of an eye,

watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,

I stay and go: I am a pause. Octavio Paz Between Going and Staying

symphony – colour, texture, form and habit

I have always seen planting combinations as musical imagery and sensation – those I find stimulating and pleasurable (not always the same sensation)  – vocal and instrumental sounds in continual movement – sometimes in harmony and occasional discord, soft and raucous, slow and lively . . . .

Once I developed 5.000 square metres of planting on an operatic theme with individual concepts that followed the episodic scenarios through the composition. The selection, placement, scale meaning the numbers or amounts, relationship of group to group or just the single show stopper is much like the weaving of aural tapestry but one that is never still. And that’s the point. I like the fact that nature is in control really . . .

. . . in the Walled Garden at West Dean, human control is evident, as it should be as a place for production. But production, here is handled in a delightful chorus line of textures and pleasingly perfect in terms of the visual – texture, form and habit – even though really it’s all about the blindingly obvious – leeks, asparagus and the kale family. At Hauser and Wirth, Piet Oudolf’s Open Field seems like a scherzo within the surrounding countryside – fast-moving, dynamic and playful – the turfed mounds work visually at a distance  . . .

. . . the Radić pavilion sits at the far end of the field in a swirling skirt of asters and petticoat of pointy persicaria – a true coda.

Crescendo and diminuendo, meter and rhythm, sonata contrasted with a touch of toccata is how the planting resonates across the field even with the muted colour of autumn; when the colour can drain from the perennials and grasses. Breathe it in, listen to it and forget the nomenclature.

In contrast, The Long Border at Great Dixter, is never on the point of going into a winter sleep. Careful attention to infill divas and maestros means full on tempo.  It’s truly operatic.

At Marks Hall, it’s all about the trees and at their showy best in autumn – this autumn 2016 better than other years – through the arboretum, by the Walled Garden and in the Memorial Walk by the lakes.

This Walled Garden, unlike West Dean, has lost the original use and been developed into a collection of decorative planting combinations around five contemporary terraced gardens (more of this in the next post) open to the lake. Hedges read as intermezzos and the stands of upright grasses as reprises within the variations. An interesting landscape – to be revisited.

In our own schemes, we can’t help in indulging and relishing and delighting in musical tapestries . . . however . . .

. . . seeing Joan Mitchell’s Salut Tom in the Abstract Expressionism show (RA) reminded me of this planting scheme. So now I’ve jumped into another art form – gone on another tack – all good.

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep. Elizabeth Bishop

sheltering from the rain – tate modern

Back to see the Agnes Martin again and realised that I want to absorb it all again and again – no photography allowed and anyway the reproductions in books and on line are all poor, which I like; some plants and landscapes too don’t photograph well – they’re above and beyond our manipulations. So spent some time watching the video on the ‘landing’ of level 2 with little people jumping on and off the benches, falling over, crying, being promised things if they behave or threatened if they didn’t, being fed and all the usual activities of young families spending their day sheltering from the rain.

Here Agnes is saying:’and the older I get the more I like to paint’.

‘To progress in life you must give up the things that you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you do like. the things that are acceptable to your mind’.

in the collection displays, full frontal on the photography and an atmosphere akin to a jamboree – folks engaging in their own way – with work displayed that took my breath away. Read here for lists . . .

. . . Rothko and Richter incorporated with eclectic hangings. The Joseph Beuys room is included as part of the journey  . . .

. . . the strength of his work contrasted today with the watery views outside  . . .

. . . but then into a gallery where Bacon’s powerful colour concentrates the mind. A friend in New York posted  this  recently – similarities? or not? But she always makes me smile – an Essex thing perhaps.

Thought provoking words from Bill Viola and then plenty of time to mull them over in Brindisa watching the rain cascade over Borough Market while tasting a little tapas – good day.

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round. Margaret Atwood