Matisse Called It His Masterpiece...

When someone tells me about a place in Provence that they adore, I sometimes ask if they'd write a guest post about it so we all can enjoy. This time, not only was that person a career journalist but a journalist of the very highest order! I've been reading Jesse Kornbluth for years: in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and elsewhere. I was fascinated when he told me he had just written a play about the Matisse Chapel in Vence on the French Riviera...and delighted when he said he'd love to share his Matisse story with us here. Jesse's full bio and details about the play (which opens April 4 in Westchester County, New York) appear at the end of this post.

The chapel that Henri Matisse designed in Vence is a must-see for pretty much everyone visiting the South of France. It’s a painless expedition from Nice: a pleasant half-hour drive along the coast and into the hills, and there you are. The Chapelle du Rosaire is a small building. You can experience it quickly in the cool of the morning and move on to a lovely lunch at Le Michel Ange.

Roughly 200,000 people a year visit the Chapelle du Rosaire. I suspect most of them leave if not moved then at least appropriately impressed — every tour guide tells visitors that Matisse, one of the most celebrated artists of the last century, described the chapel as the “masterpiece” of his career. The story behind its creation? It’s no secret, but it seems to be known only by hard-core art lovers and scholars. It certainly wasn’t known to me when I waltzed through the chapel decades ago.

A few years ago, a random Internet search led me to the back-story, and, fascinated, I narrowed my search to learn how and where it had been dramatized. It hadn’t been. So although I’d never written a play, I applied the skills of my long career in journalism: I read every biography of Matisse and every art book about the chapel. And then I wrote “The Color of Light.” As a drama, the story of the chapel deals with a single question: How did Matisse, a lifelong atheist, come to design a place of worship for Catholics?

The answer: a woman. Of course. But not in the way you may be thinking.

In 1942, Matisse was 72, divorced, living in Nice and recovering from an operation for cancer. His only companion was his chilly Russian assistant. Needing a night nurse, he hired Monique Bourgeois, a 21-year-old nursing student. In the 15 nights they were together, Matisse came to love her like a daughter. But when he learned that she was going to become a nun, he was enraged. They parted on bad terms.

Five years later, Matisse was living in Vence. So was Monique, who was Matisse’s friend again — even if she was now Sister Jacques-Marie. Her convent prayed in a chapel that was once a garage. When it rained, the roof leaked. She asked Matisse to design a stained glass window so the nuns could raise money and repair the garage. He had another idea: a new chapel. Which he’d both design and pay for. Over opposition, Matisse spent years focused on the project. Jacques-Marie, who had unwittingly been photographed with Matisse for Vogue, wasn’t allowed to attend the dedication.

It’s easy to be underwhelmed by the chapel. It’s as close to empty as possible. No organ. No seats for a choir. Nothing to look at but colored windows, a few figures and some black designs and abstractions on the glazed white ceramic tiled walls. But to see it as a building that contains Matisse’s art and some colored windows is to miss his intent. For him, the building itself was art, an environment designed to lift your spirits and bring you closer to wherever you find the divine.

The main feature of the chapel is light. There are many windows, some clear, some blue, green and yellow. But not just any blue, green and yellow. The blue is a shade Matisse said he’d only seen twice, once on the wing of a butterfly, once in the flame of burning sulphur. The green is bottle green.  And it’s lemon yellow. When the light streams through, the colors merge on the white tiled floor and come alive. Children sometimes cup their hands and try to gather a present for their parents. They get it.

Most of the figures on the wall are non-threatening. That can’t be said of the Stations of the Cross. Matisse depicted the 14 fatal steps of Christ’s last day on a single wall in a jumble of graffiti-like figures that suggest broken limbs and profound grief. The church was horrified. It seemed the chapel wouldn’t be built. But Matisse was an astute politician: You don’t see The Stations of the Cross as you enter.

In our world, old age means a winding down, assisted living, and death in an antiseptic hospital room. But the Chapelle du Rosaire celebrates the exact opposite. It’s a late-life success story, with a creative flowering, a great love, and a good death at home. That story, told as a play, might deliver a transcendent theatrical experience. I dare to hope I’ve done that.

Jesse's Bio: Over the years, Jesse Kornbluth has been a contributor or contributing editor at Vanity Fair, New York, The New Yorker, The New York Times and many others. In 1996, he co-founded Bookreporter.com, now the hub of the internet’s most successful non-commercial book network. From 1997 to 2002, he was editorial director of America Online. In 2004, he launched HeadButler.com a cultural concierge site. Having once been married to a woman whose family owned a home in Provence, Jesse fondly recalls, among other things, the roast chicken at the Regalido in Fontvieille, the grilled steak at the Vallon de Gayet in Mouries (thanks to a recommendation from his mother-in-law’s hairdresser) and the incense at the Christmas Eve service at the church in Saint-Remy. Jesse's play, "The Color of Light," will be staged from April 4 to 28 by the Schoolhouse Theater in North Salem, NY, a pleasant drive or train from Manhattan. For info and tickets, click here. To reach Jesse directly: jessekay@aol.com.

Photos: (1, 3, 4, 5, 6) The Color of Light. Matisse designed three sets of stained glass windows for the chapel. All three make use of just three colors: an intense yellow for the sun, an intense green for vegetation and cactus forms, and a vivid blue for the Mediterranean Sea, the Riviera sky and the Madonna. The color from the windows floods the chapel's interior, which is otherwise all white. (2) Henri Matisse and Sister Jacques-Marie.  (7)  Matisse's Stations of the Cross, an ensemble of 14 scenes leading to the crucifixion, is one of three murals in the chapel. (8) Matisse started work on the chapel in 1947, at age 77; the project took four years to complete. (9, 10) Matisse also designed liturgical vestments for the clergy at the chapel, using the traditional ecclesiastical colors of the religious seasons: purple, black, pink/rose, green and red. For more about the Matisse "chasubles," click here. 

For a lovely video tour of the chapel from the BBC, click here. 

Nice Celebrates Matisse Until September 23

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its Musée Matisse, the City of Nice is presenting, for the first time, eight simultaneous exhibitions celebrating Henri Matisse and his work.

From the heights of Cimiez to the Promenade des Anglais and passing through Old Town, the eight  exhibits are being  presented simultaneously in eight local galleries and museums: the Musée Matisse, the Musée d’Archéologie, the Théâtre de la Photographie et de l’Image, the Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, the Palais Lascaris, the Galerie des Ponchettes, the Villa Masséna and the Musée des Beaux-Arts.

Nice ranks #2 in France after Paris, for the numbers of visitors to its city museums; close to 700,000 people visited in 2012. The city wanted to highlight the diversity of these museums and, at the same time, celebrate on a suitably grand scale the character, work and legacy of this legendary painter who so loved the Côte d’Azur.

In  September 1905, the art critic Félix Fénéon bought Matisse a train ticket so he could  discover Cannes, Nice, Monaco and Menton. Matisse was from the North,  born in Cateau-Cambrésis in 1869. Twelve years later, in December 1917, Matisse returned to Nice and settled into a small room in the Hôtel Beau-Rivage. He set up his workshop a few meters away, on the Quai des États-Unis, at  24, Rue Saint-François de Paule. He spent nearly 40 years in Nice and the surrounding area, until his death on November 3^rd, 1954, and throughout this time he “honoured the Côte d’Azur with unwavering fidelity and passion’’ which included, of course, the creation of numerous masterpieces. He is buried in Cimiez Cemetery.

To create the show, called A Summer for Matisse, pieces have been loaned from a wide range of French and foreign museums including the Centre Pompidou, the  Château de Versailles, the Musée d’Orsay, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Andy Warhol Museum. There have also been numerous loans from Musées de France, especially from those museums located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur region, as well as from private collections.

More than 700 Matisse works are currently on display in themed shows ranging from The Music in the Work’ (Musee Matisse), On the Subject of Swimming Pools (Musee d’Archeologie) and Matisse: The Jazz Years (Palais Lascaris).  Matisse on the Bill (Galerie des Ponchettes) delves into advertising  poster art while Palm Trees, Palm Leaves and Palmettes (Musee Masena) explores these recurrent motifs.

All shows are ongoing until September 23, 2013.

A 10€ pass allows one adult entry to all eight museums for seven consecutive days. You can buy the pass at any participating museum.

For  more details and a list of what’s where,  click here. There’s additional info in English on the press release here. The official site is here but the pages are only in French.

For lots of other great Nice info, check out the Nice Cote d’Azur Tourism website here.

And for wonderful photos of the artist, click here.

Photos: (1) A pochoir print of Matisse’s “Polynesia.” (2) Purple Robe and Anemones, 1937. (3) Poster from a Matisse show in Nice, 1950. (4) Le Cirque, planche II.  (5) Poster from a Paris show in 1956.  (6) Self portrait in a striped T-shirt, 1906. Matisse, like Bonnard, loved cats. He lived at Villa le Rêve with Minouche and Coussi. (7) This 12 x 11-foot ceramic-tile Matisse mural called La Gerbe (The Sheaf) was commissioned in the early 1950s; read a story I wrote about it here.

Monet, Renoir, Chagall...in Les Baux

What used to be the Cathedrale des Images is now the Carrières de Lumières...the Quarries of Light...a magical space in a vast cave-like quarry at the base of the village of Les Baux. And their new sound and light show is about to begin. It's called ''Monet, Renoir...Chagall: Journeys Around the Mediterranean'' and you have almost a year to see it: it runs from March 8, 2013 to January 5, 2014. 

The Cathedrale closed in 2011 and re-opened a year ago, with new management (the folks at Culturespaces) and state-of-the-art technology. Rumor has it that more than €2 million was spent to refurbish the 5000-square-meter site at the time; the last show (''Gauguin, Van Gogh: Painters of Color'') drew great reviews and 239,000 people came to see it. Now, thanks to further improvements done in advance of the new show, close to 100 video projectors will generate the carefully choreographed movement of 3,000 images over an area of more than 7,000 square meters, onto walls as high as 14 meters (45 feet), onto the ceilings and even the floor. 

Here's what Culturespaces says about ''Monet, Renoir...Chagall: Journeys Around the Mediterranean'':

''In the second half of the 19th century, many artists left Paris and the North behind, attracted by the light of the South, setting up their easels between the Spanish border and the Italian Riviera. Their artistic personalities were revealed through the contact with seascapes portraying the Mediterranean coast which they depicted in a wide diversity of styles. After a prologue devoted to Joseph Vernet, visitors will be plunged in seven sequences into the world of the Impressionists, with Monet and Renoir, the Pointillists, with Signac and Cross, the Fauves, with Camoin, Derain, Vlaminck, Friesz, Manguin, Marquet and Valtat, etc....and of course Matisse. You'll also discover the palette of bright colours used by Bonnard and Dufy, ultimately coming to one of the most important colourists of modern art: Chagall. All together you'll see, through dramatic projections, 15 artists' impressions of the Mediterranean and its extraordinary light.'' 

The Carrières de Lumières is located in the Val d’Enfer, a stone's throw from Les Baux. The quarry was created over the years for extracting the white limestone used in the construction of the village of Les Baux and its chateau. In 1935, economic competition from modern materials led to the closure of the quarries. Dramatic and otherworldly looking, the area has inspired artists of all sorts; the Val d'Enfer provided the setting for Dante’s Divine Comedy and Gounod created his opera Mireille here. Later, Cocteau came to film The Testament of Orpheus in these very quarries. The Carrières du Val d’Enfer has been awarded Natural Monument status in France. 

The Carrières de Lumières are open every day from 9.30 am to 7 pm (March to September) and from 10 am to 6 pm (October to January).

Carrières de Lumières 
Route de Maillane  
13520 Les Baux de Provence 
Tel. : +33 4 90 54 47 37
carrieres-lumieres.com
message@carrieres-lumieres.com

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Now I Want a Matisse on MY Terrace!

I happened on this photo and found the scene—the composition, dappled light, low-slung modern furniture, lush materials and, of course, the Matisse--just incredibly beautiful. 

I had to know more!

The Brody House, in the Holmby Hills section of West Los Angeles, was commissioned by philanthropist art lovers Sidney and Frances Brody in 1949. It was designed by architect A. Quincy Jones and interior designer Billy Haines.

The house is 11,500 square feet on about 2.3 acres, with nine bedrooms and seven and a half bathrooms, a pool, a tennis court and a guest house. The Playboy Mansion is next door.

The Brodys moved in in 1951.

The following year, to fill a large white wall on this open-to-the-sky patio, the couple commissioned a 12 x 11-foot ceramic-tile Matisse mural called La Gerbe (The Sheaf).

Matisse worked on several different concepts before even knowing the exact dimensions of the wall and when the couple visited him at home in Cimiez (Nice), they apparently hated the design he proposed. Without wanting to insult him, they tried to persuade him to give it another shot but Matisse stood firm. Finally, his daughter and his assistant prevailed and he agreed to re-do the design.

You can read a wonderful detail-rich account of the whole process--how the piece was commissioned, created, transported and installed--written by Mrs. Brody here. 

Ok now fast forward. Sidney Brody died in 1983. After Frances followed in 2009, at age 93, the house was put on the market, listed at $24.9 million. It sold seven months later, for just under $15 million, to "a local investor." Proceeds from the sale of the home benefited The Huntington, where Frances was a board member for 20 years.

Meanwhile the Brody’s famous art collection, which included works by Matisse, Giacometti, Moore, Braque, Degas and Vuillard, went to Christie's in New York, where it brought in almost $226 million at auction in May, 2010. Christies' Erin McAndrew tells me that makes it the most valuable single-owner collection ever offered at the prestigious New York auction house. Christies' chairman called the Brody Collection “one of the greatest private collections to come to market.”

(The most notable work of the collection, by the way, was a 1932 Picasso painting of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, which had not been seen in public since 1961. Titled Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust, it sold for $106.5 million, which set a new world record for the most-expensive artwork ever sold at auction. The Brodys bought the painting in 1950, for $17,000, from the art dealer Paul Rosenberg.)

The Brodys' beloved Matisse mural, however, was bequeathed by the couple to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where it’s now on permanent display. The LA Times reported that "the 1-ton work was hoisted by crane from the atrium it had occupied for more than 50 years, lifted over trees, and transported intact to the museum." Read more of the story on the museum's website here.

While it makes me a bit sad to think this graceful tableau--this beautifully composed, casually elegant room--now exists only in photos, it’s fun to wonder what the new owners have done with the space. And of course it’s wonderful to know that the Matisse will go on to delight multitudes for years to come, thanks to that day, almost 60 years ago, that a young Los Angeles couple with vision and taste met the monumental talent of a modern art master, nearing the end of his life on the Cote d’Azur.

By all reports, the Brodys couldn’t have loved their Matisse more. In her notes, which appear on the LACMA website here, Frances Brody writes: "The ceramic has been up since early August, 1955...Far from becoming tiresome, its simplicity of design never fails to bring warmth, gaiety, color and beauty to an area observed by all who pass through any part of the house. This is truly the heart of our home."

Photo of Brody House by Oberto Gili, from The Finest Rooms in America by Thomas Jayne (Monacelli Press, New York, November 2010).