Henri Matisse, Odalisque with Magnolia (detail), 1923.
Study evening - includes two lectures, Q&A and a short break. Tickets £20
Light and warmth have always been magnets. Especially for artists born and raised in Northern greyness and cold rain. The diamond-bright light glancing off the Baie des Anges, slicing through dusty grey Provençale shutters, the changing moods of the restless sea throwing up a salty mist on the French windows, and the pungent aroma of Provençal herbs crushed under foot, have all conspired to draw artists from the North and to hold them in this crucible of light. It was the physical reality of Provence that transformed the works of Henri Matisse, Paul Signac, André Derain, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and many others.
This two-lecture evening with Hilary Hope Guise will transport us to Provence and the Côte d’Azur in a search of liberating ideas of a futuristic Golden Age – an idyllic pastorale in which there would be no suffering, no ageing, no hard labour, and no industrialization – in short, an age of indolent odalisques and naked sun-bathers, and this Eden was to be found in the Midi.
We may start by finding Matisse in St Tropez with Signac, and then move to Collioure to meet Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Georges Braque, and return to Matisse’s studio in Nice. We’ll go up the hill to St Paul de Vence to visit Chagall and then West to Antibes, Mougins and Vallauris to see Picasso. Finally, following Picasso’s coffin to Vauvenargues where he is buried on the slopes of Montagne St Victoire, we arrive where it all began, with Paul Cézanne.
Proceeds from ARTscapades ticket sales benefit museums, galleries and other arts-based organisations and projects.
This is an online event hosted on Zoom which can be watched live, or on-demand for one month afterwards. You will receive your link to access the event in your email confirmation and the on-demand link after the event ends.