Art Expos – Ellen’s Choice

with Ellen Turner Hall

Art lovers are spoilt for choice in our beautiful region so which exhibitons to visit?

P-O art critic and writer, Ellen Turner Hall’s passion for art leads her all over the P-O, visiting exhibitions featuring some incredible artists, both living and long-departed, some famous, others waiting in the wings.

Here are just a few, but you can read more of Ellen’s reviews here.

Musée d’art moderne, Céret

Max Jacob: Le cubisme fantastique
29 June to 1 December 2024
www.musee-ceret.com

A mystery. An enigma. A paradox. The descriptions of Max Jacob are as various as his character. An intimate friend of Picasso and his artistic milieu, Max Jacob wrote with remarkable clarity about the revolution which was Cubism.

In spite of stating in a letter “I haven’t done cubism”, a few of Jacob ‘s drawings of Céret in 1913, demonstrate the contrary. His Cows in the river combines a clear study of cattle with a distorted cubist landscape.

While many of Jacob’s drawing are executed with the lightest touch, his words are forceful and direct. In another letter he wrote, “Everything is at right angles in this homeland of Cubism: houses…, shop fronts…, people’s noses, men’s shoulders and women’s breasts, the twisted olive trees of the fields.”

A lover of opera, theatre, circus, and all kinds of popular entertainment, Jacob became a bit of an acrobat himself searching for the delicate balance between farce and tragedy as witnessed in his painting At the circus. By dividing his talents between poetry, art criticism, painting, astrology and mysticism, Jacob never gave himself wholly to any single goal.

The various portraits of him by Picasso, Jean Metzinger (the poster of the exhibition), Modigliani and Cocteau among others all concentrate on the deep-set eyes and wrinkled forehead, the head of a thinker. Perhaps the greatest tribute is that by Francis Picabia who represents Jacob as a torch, suggesting Jacob illuminated the way for others, helping them understand the moment and interpret it through their individual styles.

Musée d’art moderne, Collioure

Plein Soleil: Collioure 1945-1985
8 June to 29 September 2024
www.museecollioure.com

The sun is the subject of this summer exhibition, reminding us “the sun never allows you to forget the shade”.

Plein Soleil tells a dramatic story, touching, violent and hopeful in turns. One of the pivotal actions took place in 1962 in the aftermath of the Algerian war. The local fishing industry was already in decline when the Algerians arrived with state-of-the-art fishing boats. Seeing they could no longer compete, the fisherman of Collioure made of their traditional wooden barques a massive bonfire on the beach and watched their past go up in flames.

A painting by Sarthou shows the hunched figures of three women, their heads and bodies shrouded in black, repairing fishing nets in the shade of a boat. One feels the violence of the sun, the difficulty of their task, the toll it takes on their lives. It is a portrayal of bleak survival. In marked contrast is Plage de Collioure by Martin Vives in 1970. The boats have disappeared from the beach to be replaced with bikini-clad tourists soaking up the sun, lying at ease, enjoying a carefree day.

Noteworthy is René Perrot’s colourful canvas of sea urchins against a pink background, Jean-Jacques Prolongeau’s porcelain vase decorated with bathers and Alice Martinez-Richter’s painting of a white-clad fisherman suggests a Christ-like figure trapped in his own ropes.

The period of 1945 to 1985 also marks a story of renewal and regeneration. With the end of the local fishing industry, tourism offered a way forward. In 1985 the Museum of Modern Art was inaugurated. Its mission to encourage and welcome new artists under the Collioure sun continues today.

Musée Rigaud, Perpignan

La terre, le feu, l’eau, l’air
22 June to 29 December
www.musee-rigaud.fr

This retrospective of Jean Lurcat’s work emphasises the elemental , experimental, and protean nature of the artist’s journey.

Jean Lurçat (1892-1966) started his artistic career as a painter, later turning his hand to designing tapestries and ceramics, pursuing the ideal of making art integral to everyday life. In his paintings Lurçat combines the banal with the surreal. A plain white table is engulfed by a jungle profusion of leaves. A voluptuous bather dancing in the sun creates a grotesque black shadow on the sand.

In his monumental tapestry Apollo, les quatre éléments (1961) Lurçat fills the space with his personal symbols : sun, stars, fish, leaves, mermaids, and man to compose his vision of perfect harmony.

While human figures dominate the four panels of a woven screen, the lower sections depict an overflowing cornucopia, a desert landscape, swimming fish and a galaxy among constellations. Here is life in all its abundance and essential mystery.

The largest section of the exhibition is devoted to the decorative plates, vases and urns which Lurçat produced during his regular visits to Perpignan’s famous pottery workshop at San Vicens. His fish vase is a notable example of Lurçat’s mastery of balance and proportion. On a grander scale, stand the colossal figures he created on lava tiles for a building in Perpignan. One holds the moon to his ear, the sun to his bare midriff, his lower body draped in a long blue skirt of stars, the whole wreathed in leaves. Lurçat’s vision of man as the centre of all creation.