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

monclus – village above the Cèze – with voices.

Monclus sits above a snaking curve on the river Cèze. It boasts of being ‘one of the most beautiful villages in France’ along with many others. It is beautiful and picturesque and maybe, but I am not sure, a village of ‘second homes’ as Dutch, Belgian and Swiss surnames on the postboxes are noticeable. There is a shop and there is a reasonable bus service and a school . . . the river here has a melancholic charm maybe due to the meandering course and the relaxed, nicely unkempt bordering vegetation . . .

. . . in the village, some of the walls are clothed vegetation that appears to flow upwards and downwards. Medieval whispers emit from the walls bordering narrow ‘ruelles’ that take the visitor on a subtle, gently curving route to the château . . .

. . .with majestic donjohn towering above the château fortifications used by the Benedictines as a monastery for many years.

Place des Aires marks the summit of the village – it has immense charm and is well named. Now I start to look at details having absorbed the overall character  . . .

. . . I find I’m a tad smitten and look forward to swimming in the river here looking up to the village of whispering voices.

Imagines voices, and beloved, too,

of those who died, or of those who are
lost to us like the dead.

Sometimes in our dream they they speak to us;
sometimes in its thought the mind will hear them.

And with their sound for a moment there return
sounds from the first poetry of our life –
like music,in the night, far off,that fades away. Constantine Cavafy   Voices     trans Daniel Mendelsohn