Chasing Picasso

On Monday, the summer blockbuster "Picasso-Cezanne" show opened at the Musee Granet in Aix. It's first time the two masters have been united in a stand-alone show and there's lots of hoopla surrounding it, which you can imagine. But addition to "Picasso-Cezanne," there are scores of other important Picasso sites to visit this summer, including the Chateau de Vauvenargues, where Picasso lived with his second wife, Jacqueline; as of today it's open to small-group tours for the very first time (18 people max at a time, by appointment only).

In Cezanne's studio there's an exhibit of photos of Picasso taken by his friend, the Arles-based photographer Lucien Clergue and, hung in Aix's Vendome Pavillion, a show of 50 rarely seen photos taken by Jacqueline Picasso. The Picasso show continues at the Cathedrale d'Images in Les Baux until January 10th, 2010. And there's more. The French Government Tourist Office (FGTO) is suggesting a 10-stop self-guided tour from Antibes (location of the Musee Picasso) to Avignon (which the artist first visited in 1912 with his fellow painter Georges Braque).

You'll find all the info you need on the 'net. A good place to start is this special site created by the FGTO. And I found these three articles--in The New York Times, the Sunday Times and the The Wall Street Journal Europe--particularly helpful and well done.

Above: Picasso's "Arlequin" (1917) is on view in the "Picasso-Cezanne" exhibit in Aix.