Share‘Radical and innovative’: Cézanne’s love letter to a coastal French paradiseA painting of Paul Cézanne’s sanctuary
represents the artist at the height of an ‘intense surge of creativity’
L’Estaque aux toits rouges by Paul Cézanne is one of the finest views of L’Estaque
the Provençal fishing village where the artist forged a radical new way of depicting the world around him.
Exhibited in 1936 and hidden away ever since, this remarkable piece will finally come back on view as part of The Cox Collection: The Story of Impressionism
taking place at Christie’s New York on 11 November
While Cézanne is primarily associated with Aix-en-Provence
the village of L’Estaque near Marseille was a place that he returned to again and again when he sought sanctuary
His relationship with the village began when he holidayed there as a child with his mother
when Cézanne left Paris to avoid conscription into the army following the start of the Franco-Prussian War
Cézanne once again fled to L’Estaque to avoid the disapproval of his father
who had discovered Cézanne’s semi-secret family life with his unwed partner Hortense and their illegitimate son
L’Estaque aux toits rouges is one of the emblematic works of that time
Cézanne transformed the landscape into planes and facets of colour
Shadows are gone and the Provençal light is depicted through a brighter palette
buildings and the flat blue sea vibrates at a perfect tension
Head of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art department in New York
says that the painting incorporates ‘warm Mediterranean light in its purest form’ as well as ‘the solid architectural forms that mark Cézanne’s career’
He describes it as ‘one of the key expressions that would lead
‘It is radical and innovative,’ says Carter. ‘What others in the Impressionist movement were doing was capturing the immediate effect of light, what Cézanne was doing was looking at how we perceive objects.’ This would have a profound effect on painters who followed Cézanne, as later visits to L’Estaque by artists such as Georges Braque show
he breaks down the colour and the structures stroke by stroke
‘The Cubists took these explorations to their terminal conclusion.’
Photograph courtesy of Fonds Alain Mothe - Société Paul Cézanne
The intense light and striking landscape of L’Estaque provided Cézanne with the path towards this artistic aim
Now working predominantly from elevated viewpoints
he began to capture nature in an increasingly simplified and monumental manner
L’Estaque enabled Cézanne to reconsider how he portrayed the world. ‘It’s like a playing card,’ he wrote to his friend and mentor Camille Pissarro in 1876
‘Red roofs against the blue sea… It’s olive trees and pines
The sun here is so frightful that it seems to me the objects are silhouetted not in white or black
but it seems to me that this is the opposite of modeling.’
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Cézanne was ‘coming into his own’ as a painter
painterly works of his early career and refined his brushwork and approach — resolving questions of volume
The series of paintings created by Cézanne in L’Estaque made the village ‘a site of proto-Cubism’
Carter adds: ‘Cézanne’s landscapes of the 1880s led Braque there.’
While L’Estaque aux toits rouges speaks for itself
it started a conversation that would reverberate down the history of art
Georges Braque (1882–1963), The Terrace at the Hôtel Mistral
Lauder Cubist Collection © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS)
l'Estaque was a modest Mediterranean port to the northwest of the industrial city of Marseille
Of the many artists who spent time painting its scenic vistas
none was better known than Paul Cézanne (1839–1906)
It was partly in homage to this revered and recently deceased artist that Braque traveled to l'Estaque in the summer 1907
The influence of Cézanne's art can be seen in Braque's The Terrace at the Hôtel Mistral
with its increasingly subdued palette and use of geometric forms to render the terraced park
Braque's painting was titled simply La Terrasse when it was included in the artist's 1908 exhibition at Galerie Kahnweiler
Twelve-and-a-half years later when it was auctioned at the first Kahnweiler sequestration sale
it was listed as La Terrasse-L'Estaque
It was not until 1949 that the painting was first identified as a view from the Hôtel Mistral
a popular seaside establishment with a distinctive pedestrian bridge that connected it to a restaurant on the fishing port (FIG
Braque's painting was likely based not on the Mistral but on the more luxurious Grand Hotel Château Fallet
Originally constructed in the seventeenth century as a manor house
the Château Fallet (which is extant although no longer a hotel) has views of the port and sea beyond
the property included gardens and adjacent stands of pines
The hotel management permitted artists to set up their easels on the terraces
which may explain why its distinctive balustrade appears in paintings by not only Braque but also fellow-artists Raoul Dufy (private collection)
…which the most celebrated is Houses at L’Estaque
These works reflect the influence of Braque’s idol
Cézanne; this influence is seen most obviously in the fact that L’Estaque was a favourite painting site for Cézanne
but also in the fact that Braque emulated the older painter’s use of colourful tilted…
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Paintings worth up to $613 million stolen in ParisThe Associated PressPARIS — A lone thief stole five paintings worth up to half a billion euros ($613 million) total
including major works by Picasso and Matisse
in a brazen overnight heist Thursday from a Paris modern art museum
The paintings were reported missing early Thursday from the Paris Museum of Modern Art
across the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower
Investigators have cordoned off the museum
in one of the French capital's most tourist-frequented neighborhoods
A single masked intruder was caught on a video surveillance camera taking the paintings away
according to the Paris prosecutor's office
The intruder entered by cutting a padlock on a gate and breaking a museum window
Their collective worth is estimated at as much as €500 million ($613 million)
The stolen works were "Le pigeon aux petits-pois" (The Pigeon with the Peas) an ochre and brown Cubist oil painting by Pablo Picasso; "La Pastorale" (Pastoral)
an oil painting of nudes on hillside by Henri Matisse; "L'olivier pres de l'Estaque" (Olive Tree near Estaque) by Georges Braque; "La femme a l'eventail" (Woman with a Fan) by Amedeo Modigliani; and "Nature-mort aux chandeliers" (Still Life with Chandeliers) by Fernand Leger
where investigators were studying surveillance video
Paper signs on the museum doors said it was closed for technical reasons
On a cordoned-off balcony behind the museum
police in blue gloves and face masks examined the broken window and empty frames
The paintings appeared to have been carefully removed from the dissembled frames
A security guard at the museum said the paintings were discovered missing by a night watchman just before 7 a.m
The guard was not authorized to be publicly named because of the museum policy
Museum officials and police would not immediately comment on reports that the alarm system had malfunctioned or been disabled
Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe said in a statement that he was "saddened and shocked by this theft
which is an intolerable attack on Paris' universal cultural heritage."
« Nous voulons développer
un projet d’école de l’économie bleue qui pourra se tenir sur le site et l’emprise du Grand port et qui
voire des milliers de jeunes venant de nos quartiers nord qui veulent embrasser ce destin méditerranéen auquel nous voulons l’ouvrir »
lançait Emmanuel Macron en juin 2023
Du haut de son estrade, sur l’esplanade du Mucem, la mer dans le dos, le président de la République était venu faire un point sur le plan Marseille en Grand
ce projet est lancé au lycée professionnel de l’Estaque (16e)
Mais d’un label délivré par le rectorat Aix-Marseille
Le but étant de rendre plus visibles certaines formations de l’économie maritime
« C’est le premier déploiement de quatre formations labellisées économie bleue autour de l’industrie maritime
des métiers de la sécurité
sous-préfète chargée du suivi et de l’animation du plan Marseille en Grand depuis janvier
le rectorat et le lycée ne souhaitent pas communiquer à ce stade
le rectorat a tenu plusieurs réunions avec les grands donneurs d’ordre
dont le Grand port maritime de Marseille (GPMM) ou l’armateur CMA CGM
sur les besoins de la filière locale
Cette nouvelle appellation devrait aussi profiter de la marque « Marseille en Grand » et de sa « capacité d’agrégation »
assure le préfet Christophe Mirmand
Cette logique de labellisation « économie bleue » devrait concerner d’autres établissements du Département et de la Région prochainement
Si le lycée de l’Estaque est « une première pierre » du dispositif
le préfet des Bouches-du-Rhône évoque également la création de « formations d’enseignement général avec une dominante liée à l’économie de la mer »
« C’est important de montrer qu’au niveau national il y a un engagement fort »
toujours serein sur l’avenir du plan élyséen
malgré l’instabilité gouvernementale de ces derniers mois
No matter how many times she leads tours through the 10 galleries showcasing the Cleveland Museum of Art’s (CMA) blockbuster exhibition, “Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection,” CMA deputy director and chief curator Heather Lemonedes Brown never fails to marvel at the breadth it encompasses
“Most exhibits are thematic or based on a single artist
But there’s something for everyone here,” says Brown
as she points to canvases by Henri Matisse
Pablo Picasso and Andrew Wyeth displayed with porcelain vases and bowls that have remained pristine despite being more than 500 years old
“is really about a pair of collectors who had eclectic tastes and a great love for many forms of art.”
the Pier 1906 - artist Georges Braque">The Port of l'Estaque
the Pier 1906 - artist Georges BraqueOn view through Sunday
the exhibit is a treasure trove of more than 100 works of art amassed over two decades by Shaker Heights residents Joe and Nancy Keithley
who donated their collection to CMA in 2020
and modern European and American paintings
the couple’s benevolent gift also features a selection of watercolors
European and American decorative arts and Chinese and contemporary Japanese ceramics
The magnificent collection is valued at more than $100 million and represents the biggest single gift of art in monetary value received by the museum since the bequest of $34 million left by Leonard C. Hanna in 1958
“Part of the pleasure for me is seeing that everyone seems to have a different favorite work of art in the exhibition,” Brown says. “Sometimes I’m surprised by what people really respond to. It might be a Milton Avery painting
It could be a Japanese contemporary ceramic or an Impressionist painting or an Old Master Dutch drawing from the 1600s
“Loving art is very subjective,” the curator adds
“but I hope we’ve installed the show in juxtapositions that provoke comparison and connection.”
• Yellow-Glazed Bowl: 1505-21
“The historical Chinese ceramics in the collection were driven by Nancy Keithley’s passion for them,” Brown says
“It’s truly extraordinary that despite how thin the porcelain is
The breathtaking color is known as ‘imperial yellow’ and
ceramics of this quality were made for the imperial household
The base has the seal of the Zhengde reign
“This style of painting represents the cutting edge of modern art
where color and paint are used very expressively and forms—such as the boats and mountains—are intentionally simplified
Instead of covering the entire canvas with thick paint
It’s not because he didn’t know how to paint with detail
It’s because he’s letting the paint show itself as paint
The hands of the artist really come through here
so to have acquired this Braque is a great coup.”
"Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection" runs through Sunday
Tickets are $15 for adults; $12 for seniors aged 65 and older; $10 for adults groups of 10 or more; $8 for member guests
Museum members and children under age five are free
the French artist was the ultimate icon of seriousness
touching works reveal the sly playful humour at the heart of his genius
devastating showThis article is more than 2 years oldTate Modern
It turns out he often let his little son use it
This openness to child’s play says a lot about the man
For Cézanne was the first western artist since the middle ages to claim a child’s freedom to depict things exactly as they pleased
Look at the label and you’ll see this has been lent from the Musée National Picasso-Paris
painted his breakthrough cubist canvases in 1908 in L’Estaque itself
Yet it isn’t just in massing cubistic houses that Cézanne blows tradition apart in his patient
takes so many liberties your brain gets dizzy
Beyond the diamond-shaped factory chimney is a blue sea that seems as hard as quartz
Painting can refashion the very substances of things
View image in fullscreenTaking liberties … The Bay of Marseille
Photograph: LWM/Art/AlamyCézanne the fun guy
he was the ultimate icon of seriousness in art
his paintings analysed as philosophical conundrums
his legacy claimed by the most intense avant garde pioneers
Yet there’s a sly playful humour at the heart of his genius
View image in fullscreenHaving a laugh … Still Life With Plaster Cupid (c1894)
It looks as if he is playing boules in curved space-time with his apples
And it is not only the laws of physics he makes jokes about
Still Life With Plaster Cupid (c1894) not only features an apple refusing to roll down a steep slope but also two onions with long sprouting leaves
positioned so they allude to the missing phallus of a plaster-cast Cupid
for all the virtuosity and authority of Cézanne’s later art
he was still the troubled bohemian he had been in his youth
The show starts with a puzzle: one of Cézanne’s noblest mature still lifes is juxtaposed with an insecure
looking at us weakly set against pink wallpaper
Cézanne went to school with Émile Zola who went on to invent the naturalist novel
And Cézanne’s own early art is just as raw
In The Murder (1867-70) one large figure holds a woman down with fleshy arms while the other raises a knife to stab her
It looks even more as if Cézanne might be processing psychological problems in The Eternal Feminine
bleeding from her blinded eyes and surrounded by a grotesque crowd of male worshippers
Young Cézanne expresses depraved thoughts about sex and death as freely as the poet and critic Baudelaire, who argued that “the painter of modern life” should be an observer of the contemporary. The Negro Scipio, a painting of a black male model from 1867, dwells on the man’s furrowed back in a way that artist Ellen Gallagher argues
may be intended to suggest the flogged back of an enslaved man
It’s conventional to tell a story of Cézanne’s development from such turbulent early work to his calm
yet nudity never stopped fascinating him – and his images of naked people never did settle into sophistication
A whole room of his later nudes shows him still obsessing over awkward visions of female flesh in his 1885-87 painting Five Bathers
in which a group of women created by his imagination come together just for him in a fuzzy melting landscape
View image in fullscreenA devastating finale … Mont Sainte-Victoire 1902-6
Photograph: TateThese are not real nudes but dreams forged in the midday heat of Provence
Just as Cézanne’s seas are rock hard and his lemon floats in midair
his bathers are his most intense assertion that art creates
If Cézanne began by lashing out at reality with paint
he ends up discovering that the only truth he can know is his own
Each fractured brushstroke of the paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire that are this show’s devastating finale is a document of the subjective way we all see and understand the world
But the mountain itself is always there – a huge solid chunk of fact
It obsesses him for reasons we can only guess
touching thing about this artist is how he takes apart reality without ever ceasing to care about it
This makes looking at his art one of the most heightened and extraordinary experiences you can have in a gallery – or anywhere
At Tate Modern, London, from 5 October to 12 March.
The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) announced today that it had received a gift and a promised gift from a local couple of more than 100 Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Modern European and American paintings, drawings and prints and other coveted works that will enrich and transform the story it tells of the history of art.
Valued at over $100m, the gifts from the couple, Joseph P. and Nancy F. Keithley, consist of 97 works donated outright and 17 that are promised. All are in the possession of the museum, however, which is scrambling to put a large sampling on display as early as next Tuesday, says William Griswold, the institution’s director. A major exhibition comprising the lion’s share or all of the gifts is planned in the fall of 2022 along with the publication of a catalogue, he adds.
Griswold says the combined gifts are the largest to go to the museum since 1958, when the philanthropist Leonard C. Hanna Jr. made a stunning $38m bequest (today valued at $300m) that has bankrolled dozens of art purchases at the institution over the last six decades.
Caillebotte, Chickens, Game Birds and Hares (around 1882) Promised Gift of Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley, 2020/Cleveland Museum of Art
“It fills some interesting gaps,” Griswold says. “We had small holdings by the Nabis, for example, and this adds 25. The other thing is that it creates not only a possibility for new juxtapositions and dialogues but gives us depth in the work of individual artists.”
“We had no landscape and no still life by Caillebotte–now we have both,” he says. And five paintings by Bonnard donated by the couple boosts the museum’s total by the artist to nine, he notes. (The Keithleys are also giving the museum five Bonnard drawings; before it had none.)
Bonnard, Fruit and Fruit Dishes (around 1930) Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift, 2020/Cleveland Museum of Art
“It’s important to understand how rare it is for us to accept a gift of so many works from a single collection,” Griswold adds. (The museum generally prefers to cherry-pick.) “Ours is primarily a collection that has been assembled one gift or purchase at a time.”
He said that Joseph Keithley, who formerly led a company that manufactured advanced electrical testing instruments, and Nancy Keithley, who became a trustee of the museum in 2001, had consulted closely with the CMA in amassing their collection over the last two decades. “Their yardstick always was, ‘Was it good enough for the Cleveland Museum of Art?’” he said.
Around 18 months ago, the couple asked the museum to compose a list of everything in their collection that the institution wanted, “and it was virtually everything,” Griswold says. “Then in November they came to my office and said they’d been thinking about it a lot and wanted to give us everything on the list.”
“I think the Keithleys really saw it as a gift not only to the museum but to Cleveland.”
run by the heirs of collectors Jane Lang Davis and Richard E
has donated 19 works by artists including Bacon
gallery6 April 2020Top five museum acquisitions of the monthOur pick of the latest gifts and purchases to enter international museum collections—from £1m flower pyramids to an enigmatic portrait of a young black woman
This exhibition is made possible by The Florence Gould Foundation.
Additional support is provided by an Anonymous Foundation.
The exhibition is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Read, watch, or listen to stories about the exhibition on The Met website.
Color became sticks of dynamite. They were primed to discharge light.
A color for me is a force. My paintings consist of four or five colors which clash with one another expressively. When I apply green, that does not mean grass. When I apply blue, that does not mean sky.
For nudes, I go every morning at six to the woods in the mountain with my wife who poses calmly; we have gone there a dozen times and have never been bothered.
Watercolor materials are portable; they traveled well from beaches to the hillside and back. Today, Matisse’s watercolors are rarely seen, mostly residing in private collections.
Although Matisse and Derain spent most of their days sketching and sometimes painting outdoors, they produced several remarkable portraits in the studio. Amélie Matisse was a willing model, as was their great friend, the artist Etienne Terrus, who lived in the nearby village of Elne. Overall, the portraits of Collioure are more about painting and the autonomy of brushwork than naturalism.
Perhaps the most remarkable portraits from the summer of 1905 are the reciprocal likenesses Matisse and Derain painted of each other. Affirmations of their nourishing, productive partnership, these paintings bring to confident realization their many experiments in brushwork and color that summer.
Dans un hangar du port de l’Estaque (16e) à Marseille, à l’abri des regards, repose un monument de la technologie sous-marine : le SAGA
acronyme pour Sous-marin d’assistance à grande autonomie
Créé sous la direction du commandant Jacques-Yves Cousteau
ce géant des mers (28 mètres de long pour 300 tonnes) est le plus grand sous-marin civil jamais construit
Grâce à son moteur Stirling à propulsion anaérobie
« il pouvait rester jusqu’à 21 jours en opération sous l’eau
permettant aux plongeurs de réaliser leurs paliers de décompression directement à bord
Avant d’être ramenés à la surface en toute sécurité »
ingénieur mécanicien du SAGA qui a navigué avec Cousteau à bord du navire Calypso
Le célèbre commandant au bonnet rouge a imaginé et initié en 1966 la conception de cette « maison sous la mer autonome et propulsée »
destinée à abriter les plongeurs et l’équipage du sous-marin
dans la lignée des expériences Précontinent
Jacques-Yves Cousteau l’appelle alors « Argyronète »
en référence à cette araignée sous-marine qui forme une bulle d’air pour respirer
En 1970, l’explorateur met le cap vers de nouveaux horizons américains, coupant court au projet. La Comex le reprend en 1983 pour travailler en lien avec l’industrie pétrolière
Celle-ci récupère un certain nombre d’équipements dont la coque
les équipements hydrauliques et la sphère largable
Le SAGA est mis à l’eau en 1987
il bat le record du monde d’intervention par plongeur depuis un sous-marin civil
établi à 317 mètres au Cap Bénat
sous le commandement d’Henri Delauze et de Pierre Papon
ancien président de l’Ifremer
Il effectue également une plongée d’observation à 667 mètres
ce rêve technologique s’est vite heurté à la hausse des coûts entraînée par le choc pétrolier
LʼInstitut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer (Ifremer)
arrête sa participation au projet en 1990
Mais le vaisseau aquatique jaune n’est pas totalement tombé dans l’oubli. Si le sous-marin « crache-plongeurs » appartient aujourd’hui à la Ville de Marseille, l’association des Compagnons du SAGA
dont certains ont participé à sa création et aux opérations
Ceux-ci proposent des visites insolites du sous-marin tous les vendredis matin sur rendez-vous. Une visite virtuelle en ligne permet aux visiteurs de découvrir les différentes salles à l’intérieur du sous-marin
tandis qu’une immersion avec des casques de réalité virtuelle est en cours de développement
le président de l’association et ancien directeur commercial à la Comex
ainsi que les passionnés qui l’entourent
espèrent que ces initiatives permettront de « valoriser et transmettre » la mémoire de cette « capsule temporelle »
Plus de 700 personnes sont venues (re)découvrir le SAGA lors des dernières Journées du patrimoine
it seems only fitting to take a moment to look to the Museum's libraries to explore our own collection of source materials regarding early Modern art.»
Watson Library's collection includes a large number of books related to Cubism and the artists who worked in the style
Some of the newest and most notable treasures in our special collections include a number of the earliest publications on the topic
The acquisition of these rare and valuable modern materials was made possible due to the generosity of the Friends of the Thomas J
Lauder Cubist Collection © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS)
Apollinaire expanded upon the ideas presented in this essay in his 1913 publication Les Peintres Cubistes
he discusses the historical beginnings of the style
as well as what he sees as the four main trends in Cubism
He also discusses a number of artists associated with it—in particular Pablo Picasso
Both of these titles were published as part of a series called Collection Tous Les Arts
According to the back cover of Les Peintres Cubistes
this series consisted of practical guides for art lovers
While these books are significant as reference materials
the Watson special collections copies are also notable for their present state
Les Peintres Cubistes and Du "Cubisme" remain in excellent condition
Uncut pages along the top edges of both books suggest that neither has ever been read
Left: Cover. Right: Back. Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry. Der Weg Zum Kubismus
Left: Cover. Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and Painting in Particular. 1912. [A Version of the Sadleir Translation. The Documents of Modern Art. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 1947. Right: Cover. Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry. The Rise of Cubism
For more information about the Leonard A. Lauder Collection of Cubist Art, check out the Museum's microsite for the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art.
[1] Flam, Jack, "The Birth of Cubism: Braque's Early Landscapes and the 1908 Galerie Kahnweiler Exhibition," in Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection, edited by Emily Braun and Rebecca Rabinow (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014), 22–27.
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Also in this article: About the artist
When it comes to presenting an apparition, a hallucination, a mirage, some kind of transparency or semi-vanishing seems the way to do it. You may associate these visual effects with trick photography's double exposures, or with trick stagecraft. But the traditional image technology of oil painting, with its super-dilute suspensions of pigment, its elusively gradual blurs, can handle dematerialisations masterfully.
If it chooses to. But in fact, the older Old Masters don't do it much. There are one or two images – by Bosch and Tintoretto – where spirit phenomena are represented by bodies that have gone see-through or are partly fading away. But generally, a phantom or a vision is depicted as something solid. The dematerialised supernatural only becomes normal with Romantic art. After that, the spirit realm is almost always designated by being merely half-there.
Turner is a great, but ambiguous performer in this mode. In his art, it's not just the occasional body but the whole world that goes into shimmering, gaseous meltdown. The earth, the sea and the sky disappear and blend in glare and haze and mist. Whether these fades and dissolves signify natural atmospherics or supernatural manifestations is a point that Turner usually leaves up in the air.
Impressionism, on the other hand, blurs appearances thoroughly, but it doesn't indulge in any dematerialisation effects. Behind the loss of focus, the physical world remains substantial, opaque, secular. Though edges may get very fuzzy, there's no suggestion that things are fading away or fading into one another.
But the painted fade-out has another high point in European art, in a body of paintings made by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque between 1909 and 1911 – landscapes, still-lives and portraits, for which the standard name is Cubism. These pictures are full of dematerialisations. It's hard to see them as either optical or spiritual. Still, together with a profusion of short, sharp dividing lines, dematerialisation is Cubism's leading visual characteristic.
But even as you describe this "scene", you lose it. You've already got too close. You're giving the picture a level of attention at which the thing you're trying to grasp – the huddle of separate buildings – begins to disperse and disintegrate. None of those hard-edged houses amounts to a complete solid. Their edges and planes don't fit together properly. Ground cuts into building. Near and far switch. Forms interpenetrate and dissolve.
Like a traditional vignette, the whole image fades out at its perimeter, into the surrounding margin of blank canvas. And within the image, for every firm straight line that establishes an edge or a corner, there is a fade, in which one defined area blends into another – wall into roof, building into ground, ground into background.
Not that these dissolves are executed seamlessly, imperceptibly. There's none of the "magic" of Turner's oil paint. Braque puts the paint on like a heavy-handed Impressionist, in patches of juddery dabs. When these patches dissolve, they do so by petering out into blankness, or by encroaching into one another like mingling flocks. The dematerialisations have a blunt, unmysterious, material obviousness.
The picture surface is a field of pulsation, as the promise of a scene keeps being made and keeps being broken, as definition alternates with dissolve, as things go in and out of grasp, plain enough – but catching you every time.
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07-19-2018DESIGN
Here’s why art–and paintings in particular–are a surprisingly potent way to gauge the future of machine intelligence
CloudPainter’s AI Imagined Portrait. [Image: courtesy Andrew Conru/Robotart]
BY Jesus Diaz
“I don’t know if you watch Westworld,” Andrew Conru says
“but the artistic process may be a very simple algorithm.”
So it’s reasonable to argue that the artistic process is also a set of pretty simple algorithms that can have complex outcomes
The way artists look at and reinterpret the world
result in a particular aesthetic–impressionism
part of it is the artist’s physiology,” Conru says
and the brain interact to introduce an element of unique randomness” in each brushstroke
though they may cause powerful emotions in viewers
Could machines ever create art that moves us
Conru–who holds a PhD from Stanford in mechanical engineering and
Robotart is a benchmark for gauging how close we are to that goal
is judged both by a public voting system and a panel of art critics
The critics weigh three criteria: originality and aesthetics; painting techniques like layering
or blending of brushstrokes; and the art’s technical contribution to the field
Some of the 100 artworks submitted by 19 teams this year were extremely convincing
some human artists are taking advantage of robot “apprentices” to aid their output
using the robot to do the heavy lifting before finishing it the same way many artists use studio assistants for these tasks today
the entries suggest that we’re getting much closer to the moment when humans won’t be able to tell the difference between machine-generated art and human-generated art
Saltz pointed out at one of his works and said “that doesn’t look like a computer made it.”
But Saltz followed that apparent compliment with a major caveat: “That doesn’t make it any good.”
emulating human sensibilities acquired through deep learning
We’re light-years away from the sci-fi vision of AI that has the kind of consciousness upon which great art is made
and Conru thinks that no matter how intelligent machines become
human viewers will always respect human artists more than machine ones
the same way human grand masters elicit more admiration than computer grand masters
there’s room for plenty of debate–and imagination–when it comes to the future of AI
would there really be any difference between the art humans create and the art those new life forms create
Perhaps these new beings could push our human practice of art
into an entirely original new phase and let us see the world through eyes that are not human
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The Museum Langmatt in Baden, Switzerland, has provoked an outcry with its intention to sell three paintings by Paul Cézanne. The works are among the more valuable pieces in its small collection and will be sold at Christie's New York in November.
The museum houses the Impressionist art collection of Sidney and Jenny Brown—of around 50 works in total—in a villa designed for them, where the family lived for two generations. The collection and house were bequeathed to the city of Baden in 1987. The Browns earned their fortune in engineering and founded Brown, Boveri & Cie., which grew into the multinational corporation known today as ABB.
The city of Baden and the Langmatt Foundation say they need to raise SFr40m ($44.4m) to keep the museum operating, and the foundation plans to use the revenue from the art sales to set up an endowment fund to secure its future.
But critics say the paintings on offer at Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale on 9 November are among the jewels of the collection, especially Cézanne’s Fruits et pot de gingembre (fruit and pot of ginger, around 1890-93).
“It is outrageous,” says Tobia Bezzola, the president of the Swiss branch of the International Council of Museums (Icom). “For Icom, this is an absolute no-go. We have written an official letter to the foundation. They are selling off core elements of the collection to finance future operating costs.”
Cezanne’s Quatre pommes et un couteau (four apples and a knife, 1885) © Christie’s Images
Bezzola also warns that the sale could set “an enormously dangerous example” to other museums. “Cities and cantons in Switzerland are very often tempted to propose the sale of artworks to cover the operating costs of museums,” he says. “It is so very short-sighted.”
Icom’s guidelines on deaccessioning objects from museum collections stipulate that “in no event should the potential monetary value of an object be considered as part of the motive for determining whether or not to deaccession.”
Christie’s describes the format for the sale as “unique”, in that if the first lot, Fruits et pot de gingembre, fetches the target amount of around $44.4m, then the remaining two paintings will be withdrawn from the auction. The still life is estimated to fetch between $35m and $55m.
The other two works on offer are Quatre pommes et un couteau (four apples and a knife, 1885) and La mer à L’Estaque (the sea at L’Estaque, 1878-79).
Markus Stegmann, the director of the Museum Langmatt, concedes that the sale is “painful,” but says it is a last resort to save the museum after alternative efforts to raise funds to keep the Langmatt Foundation afloat failed. The museum is also in desperate need of renovation, which is to be financed by the city of Baden, the canton of Aargau and individual donors, with the foundation itself contributing some funds.
Cezanne’s La mer à L’Estaque (the sea at L’Estaque, 1878-79) © Christie’s Images
“The foundation is almost insolvent,” Stegmann says. “This is an emergency measure. I understand the reactions—the concern and the fears—but it is about the very existence of the museum and its collection. Our goal is to invest the money in a fund that will ensure us the income of SFr1m per year that we need to keep the museum going.”
Alfred Sulzer, a former president of the board of the Langmatt Foundation and a great-nephew of the Brown couple, said he is convinced the planned sale violates the deeds of the foundation and goes against the conditions in the donor’s will. His lawyer wrote to Christie’s in early October, asking the company to inform potential buyers of his view that the sale is illegal. Sulzer says that if the sale proceeds he “will pursue this to the highest court in Switzerland”.
But Stegmann says the foundation is confident that the sale is permissible under its rules. “The process of making this decision has taken several years,” he says.
one of three Cézanne paintings included in the sale
was found to have been sold under duress after the Nazis took power in Germany
news17 September 2020Cranach, Courbet and Corot: a closer look at what the Brooklyn Museum is selling off The institution is deaccessioning its only Cranach and 11 other works to finance care of its collection
news16 April 2025Monet riverscape could splash down for more than $30m during New York auctionsThe painting headed to Christie's
was on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for more than 30 years
Government places temporary export bar on Cézanne painting
An important Cézanne landscape view of the Mediterranean
which has been on public view in Cambridge for nearly 30 years
is in danger of leaving the UK unless more than £13.5m can be raised
The British government on Monday placed a temporary export bar on Cézanne’s Vue sur L’Estaque et le Château d’If
Purchased by the industrialist Samuel Courtauld in 1936 and passed down through his family, it was on long-term loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum from 1985 until last year when a decision was taken to sell it
That sale took place at Christie’s in February where
as one of the highlights of its impressionist and modern art evening sale
it sold to an anonymous overseas buyer for £13,522,500
said “this quietly beautiful painting” had adorned the walls of the Fitzwilliam “where it has been enjoyed by countless visitors”
Vaizey said: “I hope that the temporary export bar I have put in place will result in a UK buyer coming forward and that the painting will soon be back on the walls of one of our great public collections.”
a small fishing village next to Marseilles
While there are 35 Cézanne paintings in British museum and gallery collections
The recommendation to government was made by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest
on the grounds of the painting’s “outstanding aesthetic importance”
Committee member Aidan Weston-Lewis said the view from L’Estaque “inspired some of his [Cézanne’s] most ground-breaking pictures” of the 1870s and 1880s
“This is a rare opportunity to fill a significant gap in the UK’s otherwise impressive holdings of Cézanne’s work.”
The decision on whether to grant an export licence was deferred until 21 December and could be deferred for a further six months if a serious attempt to raise the funds is made
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Home » On Board the SAGA: The Long-Range Submarine Imagined by Captain Cousteau
Imagined by Captain Cousteau and built for the oil industry by COMEX, the SAGA (formerly Argyronète) has been in a hangar in Marseille since the 1990s
We had the chance to board and dive into the history of this innovative underwater technology gem
which unfortunately did not achieve the commercial success it was hoped for
The hangar housing the yellow submarine is only a few kilometers from DirectIndustry’s editorial office
the SAGA (in French Sous-marin d’Assistance à Grande Autonomie)
the Long-Range Assistance Submarine imagined by Jacques-Yves Cousteau in the late 1960s under the name Argyronète has been sleeping in L’Estaque
The idea for an underwater habitat came from Jacques-Yves Cousteau in the 1960s
The famous French oceanographer wanted to allow divers
and scientists to live underwater at previously inaccessible depths
The main objective was oceanography and the observation of aquatic biodiversity
faced high costs and dependency on surface weather conditions
leading Cousteau to propose a habitat attached to a submarine
he asked the engineers at the Center of Advanced Marine Studies (CEMA) to develop a vessel that was not dependent on weather conditions and sea state
This small aquatic spider is capable of living underwater thanks to its ability to create an air bubble for breathing
Cousteau’s idea was to build an autonomous house under the sea that could function independently
“Cousteau’s idea was to create a submarine in symbiosis with diving.”
construction of the 28-meter-long submarine began
and steel regulators were built and assembled in a hangar in L’Estaque
some limitations were already pointed out: with only 28 meters in length
the submarine was too small to carry surface-rechargeable batteries with a diesel engine
doubts were raised about its ability to maintain energy throughout the planned missions
the goal was to offer a solution for the oil industry rather than marine exploration as Cousteau had envisioned
the submarine would be equipped with innovative technologies to make this solution competitive and efficient
former Commercial Director of COMEX Africa and Mediterranean
the offshore industry had high demands at that time
Oil companies were seeking a vessel that would allow divers to work on oil fields down to -450 meters for extended periods
The envisioned missions included maintenance of underwater wellheads
construction activities like connecting flexible lines
The submarine could also carry equipment like ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) to inspect pipelines up to -600 meters
There was also talk of missions in Antarctica since oil companies were planning to drill under the ice
Daniel Balzano worked at the SAGA design office
“We retrieved Cousteau’s plans and made new exterior and interior modifications
With the innovative technologies we installed
we tripled the vessel’s autonomy compared to the Argyronète
It went from ten days of autonomy at 100 meters to three weeks of autonomy at 450 meters for diver interventions
regardless of surface weather conditions.”
now called SAGA (as Cousteau did not leave the rights to use the name Argyronète)
was completed and inaugurated in October 1987 in the presence of the then French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac
The first sea trials under real conditions began
The objective was to prove that the submarine could indeed perform underwater work at great depths
it commissioned an outfall at 185 meters depth off the coast of Monaco
the SAGA carried out a three-week mission at 317 meters depth for an archaeological mission at Cap Bénat
in front of the French Porquerolles islands
We follow the companions of the SAGA aboard their yellow submarine
It consists of three parts: an atmospheric pressure compartment housing the six crew members
a hyperbaric chamber for up to six divers (intended for underwater missions on oil installations)
and a detachable sphere to evacuate crew members and bring them to the surface in case of an emergency
Divers were to be rescued using a turret to respect decompression stops
A fiberglass hull (fairing) protected external equipment such as batteries
The laminated ballast was a notable innovation
This lightweight yet robust material allows the submarine to maintain its buoyancy
The SAGA submarine features four main innovations
“The propulsion system has been improved
The submarine transitioned from a conventional diesel-electric system to an anaerobic Stirling engine
Oxygen and fuel are supplied by cryogenics
meaning they are stored in liquid form at very low temperatures
The diameter of the gas cylinders has been increased
and the pressure has been doubled from 200 bars to 400 bars
A control computer has been installed to manage the submarine’s systems more efficiently.”
Here is a detailed overview of these four major innovations
The significant innovation of the SAGA lies in its great autonomy
The SAGA has an energy autonomy comparable to a 2000-ton military submarine thanks to its two 75 kW anaerobic Stirling engines and liquid oxygen storage
the engines operate by combusting fuel with pure oxygen in a pressurized combustion chamber
using a thermodynamic cycle with helium to move the pistons
The combustion gases are expelled into the seawater at different depths through a patented exhaust suppressor
Conventional diesel-electric submarines operate as follows: On the surface
diesel engines recharge the submarine’s batteries
the submarine uses battery power for operations since diesel engines cannot run without oxygen
anaerobic Stirling engines operate in a closed circuit
They do not require oxygen from the submarine’s habitat
allowing for longer submerged periods without needing to surface to recharge the batteries
the submarine can travel 1500 nautical miles underwater to reach the underwater work site
the submarine’s autonomy depends on the amount of onboard oxygen
One cubic meter of liquid oxygen provides approximately 845 liters of gaseous oxygen
which is twice as much as high-pressure storage of the same volume
The submarine has two external storage units
each holding 3 cubic meters and capable of carrying 6500 kg of oxygen
An evaporator converts the liquid oxygen into gas
“Using liquid oxygen to power the engines was a first for a submarine
there are Swedish submarines with engines powered by liquid oxygen.”
The submarine featured high-pressure (400 bar) composite tanks
made of a steel body reinforced with Kevlar Epoxy fibers
double the mechanical strength with only a 15% increase in weight
this material was not yet used in the underwater environment
It was a significant advancement in terms of strength and durability.”
The control and piloting functions of the SAGA were largely automated to allow for single-person operation
This was crucial given the small crew size
We start with the survival capsule on the roof
designed to evacuate the six crew members in case of an emergency
“The SAGA submarine was designed to operate in hazardous environments
there are always standby ships for rapid rescue interventions
The survivors would never have had to wait days for help.”
We descend via a ladder into the submarine
600 sensors continuously monitored all vital parameters
Philippe explains that the computer systems of that time
are now comparable in capacity to an iPhone
The pilot could steer the submarine using two cameras and an inertial navigation system that precisely located the position of the vessel
used a joystick and sonar information to position the submarine on the seabed
“He positioned the front jack and knew that 15 meters behind
there was another jack to be placed.”
Philippe shares that before integrating all the equipment into the submarine
and electricians then manufactured the components on-site
Philippe points out one of these handmade components: the hull penetrations
Their star-shaped copper design immediately evokes the Steampunk aesthetic of the Nautilus
the futuristic submarine imagined by Jules Verne in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Often called “mushrooms,” hull penetrations are openings on the submarine’s pressure hull
“These passages are essential for allowing the passage of fluids
The fluids or signals enter through these passages
and exit to control various functions.”
the divers are pressurized to the working depth
A master chamber manages all diving parameters
prepares the necessary gases for the depths
The station integrates decoding systems to facilitate communication
as the divers’ voices were distorted by the helium-based mixture they breathed
and lighting to the divers when they are outside
A precise system ensures that the diver does not ascend or descend incorrectly
which could disrupt the decompression phase
The hyperbaric chamber could accommodate six divers
It was pressurized from the inside out and reinforced with isothermal and thermal protective coating
This is where the divers live during their mission and where they must wait for several weeks after their mission to adhere to the decompression stages
These stages depend on the time spent underwater and the depth reached
the divers are slowly brought back to normal pressure at a rate of twenty-five meters per day
It typically takes 12 days for divers who worked at a depth of 350 meters to return to the surface
COMEX’s sales team began pitching to their target clients in the oil industry
three years had passed since the project’s resumption and the proof-of-concept stage
oil companies had developed offshore platforms and imagined ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) for underwater maintenance missions
These ROVs could tighten and loosen valves and reach great depths without needing decompression stops
the industry no longer needed submarines with divers
Another factor that indirectly affected the SAGA was the Gulf War
which led to a decrease in investments from oil companies
but the more promising work opportunities in the oil sector were in the North Sea
particularly in Stavanger (Norway) and Aberdeen (Scotland)
the projects became increasingly deeper and required less personnel
the SAGA’s journey started too early with Cousteau and was resumed too late by COMEX
It has been stationed in a hangar in L’Estaque since then
Although the SAGA did not achieve the commercial success that was anticipated
its innovative technologies for the time have left a mark on the industry
“These engines have been integrated into various attack submarines
Iran also launched three submarines equipped with Stirling engines
The main advantage of the Stirling engine lies in its excellent energy efficiency
making it viable for missions on Mars or the Moon
Stirling engines are also used in energy farms.”
maintain the memory of this Marseille submarine
aims to preserve this maritime and underwater heritage
They regularly organize visits to the vessel in L’Estaque upon request
to raise awareness among young people and future engineers
While the three works that Cézanne exhibited in 1874 at the first Impressionist exhibition were not fully in line with the Impressionist technique of quickly placing appliqués of pigment on the canvas
he did eventually abandon his relatively dark palette in exchange for brilliant tones and began painting out of doors
encouraged by the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro (1830–1903)
His Bathers (1976.201.12) of 1874–75 demonstrates a developed style and tonal scale in one of his first paintings of this theme
The landscape of Bathers has the brilliance of plein-air painting
drawn from the artist’s imagination (Cézanne rarely painted nudes from life)
The complex process of drawing inspiration from these two sources
The Fisherman (Fantastic Scene) (2001.473)
while its subject recalls the themes of fantasy familiar from the 1860s; it too could be the product of two polar sources
In his still-life paintings from the mid-1870s
Cézanne abandoned his thickly encrusted surfaces and began to address technical problems of form and color by experimenting with subtly gradated tonal variations
or “constructive brushstrokes,” to create dimension in his objects
and Apples of about 1877 (29.100.66) shows Cézanne’s rejection of the intense contrasts of light and shadow of his earlier years in exchange for a refined system of color scales placed next to one another
The light of Impressionism resonates in this work
but signs of a revised palette are especially apparent in his muted tones
Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses (51.112.1)
reveals Cézanne’s artistic evolution and mastery of this style of building forms completely from color and creating scenes with distorted perspectival space
are rendered without use of light or shadow
but through extremely subtle gradations of color
In such still lifes as Dish of Apples (1997.60.1) of about 1876–77
Cézanne ignores the laws of classical perspective
allowing each object to be independent within the space of a picture while the relationship of one object to another takes precedence over traditional single-point perspective
especially Braque’s impressions of L’Estaque of about 1908
Cézanne began a series of five pictures of Provençal peasants playing cards
Widely celebrated as among the finest figure compositions completed by the artist
The Card Players (61.101.1) demonstrates his system of color gradations to build form and create a three-dimensional quality in the figures
Continuing on this theme of the rural laborer
Seated Peasant (1997.60.2) celebrates the dignity of working-class citizens of Third Republic France (1870–1940)
and collectors Henry Osborne Havemeyer (1847–1907) and his wife Louisine Havemeyer (1855–1929)
Posthumous exhibitions at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune and the Salon d’Automne in 1907 in Paris established Cézanne’s artistic legacy
James VoorhiesDepartment of European Paintings
“Paul Cézanne (1839–1906).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pcez/hd_pcez.htm (October 2004)
More from the Timeline of Art HistoryView all
C’est une première étape pour le réaménagement des plages de Corbières
le principe de rachat d’une parcelle de 4 964 m2 à l’État (la Direction régionale de l’environnement
de l’aménagement et du logement)
Elle est située le long de la route départementale 568
la municipalité avait déjà approuvé le principe de « restructuration
requalification et extension du site balnéaire de Corbières » avec le déblocage d’une enveloppe de 350 000 euros pour financer les études et travaux préalables au réaménagement
Sur ce terrain mi-boisé mi-parking (voir le plan ci-dessous)
les études devraient arriver à leur terme début 2025
avant de passer l’étape des marchés publics
Il reste aujourd’hui à approfondir des enjeux réglementaires et de sécurité pour les inscrire au cahier des charges
Récupérer ce parking permet d’abord à la municipalité de réduire le nombre d’interlocuteurs dans le dossier
certaines zones du littoral nord appartiennent à la Ville de Marseille
au Grand port maritime de Marseille (GPMM) ou encore à la Métropole
Enlever l’un des propriétaires conduit ainsi à « simplifier les démarches »
assure la Ville qui selon nos informations pourrait aussi mettre la main sur le parking de la plage du Fortin (plan ci-dessus)
vise à redonner de l’accessibilité aux plages nord de Corbières
notamment pour les personnes en situation de handicap et pour les secours
La municipalité va donc y réorganiser le stationnement et créer une voix d’accès pour les véhicules de secours et de services
Pour aller plus loin dans sa démarche
la Ville souhaiterait qu’une nouvelle ligne de navette maritime soit mise en place au départ du Vieux-Port
Mais les navettes maritimes sont de la compétence de la RTM et la Métropole
les services métropolitains assurent que ce sujet n’est pas d’actualité
le niveau de desserte actuel (navette maritime à l’Estaque et bus) étant jugé suffisant
Le terrain de 5 000 m2 en question fait partie d’une volonté politique plus globale d’agrandissement des plages de Corbières, dont le maire de Marseille, Benoît Payan, nous a fait l’annonce en avant-première en juin 2022
« Un secteur où il y a la plus forte densité urbaine et le moins de plages »
La Ville souhaite ainsi relocaliser et moderniser la base nautique de Corbières
cette infrastructure est « trop petite
le bâtiment est mal isolé… »
Le nouveau site devrait déménager entre le tunnel du Rove et le port de Saumaty
Sur le quai de la Lave, le GPMM avait lancé un appel à projets en 2018 pour offrir une seconde vie au site
Mais les différents interlocuteurs (Métropole
GPMM…) peinent encore à se mettre d’accord sur le zonage et les choix des activités
« J’espère que le bon sens va l’emporter »
« L’arrivée du Belem nous a montré la vivacité du tissu associatif au nord
en aviron et en canoë qui ont participé à la parade »
ajoute l’écologiste pour qui le rééquilibrage entre le nord et le sud presse
What underworld connoisseur ordered this impeccable crime
Henri Matisse's La Pastorale (1905) is an important step in his discovery of an idyllic world of pure colour and unshackled eros
The calmly posed nudes listening to pan pipes in a bright woodland are closely related to his masterpiece Le bonheur de vivre
The thieves have stolen Arcadia itself – this beguiling vision of a free
untroubled life goes to the heart of what makes Matisse the 20th century's most gracious dreamer
Georges Braque's 1906 painting L'olivier pres de l'éstaque shows him under the influence of Matisse and the so-called "wild beasts" or Fauves
whose release of savage colour was the revolutionary artistic discovery of the mid-1900s
It is an intense and fiery landscape that makes you feel the heat – and perhaps that physical impression of the sunburnt air is telling
for Braque would soon create in collaboration with Picasso a far more tangible
carnal art than that of the ethereal Fauves
Pablo Picasso's Le pigeon aux petits-pois (spring 1912) is a formidable manifestation of their earthy "cubism"
the world is taken apart as a hungry diner might decompose the carcass of a bird: like bones sticking out of unrecognisable meat
fragments of objects and letters – a candle
a claw – emerge from planes of brown and white pigment
Lines slashed through space or across flatness give you not the sight
but the actual weight and texture and taste of the world
It is a still life attacked by Michelangelo's chisel – what a great work of art
It is a measure of the quality of this haul that in comparison with these three precious works by the three greatest masters of the last century
the paintings by Modigliani and Léger are lesser works
But that is not to dispute their very great beauty
Modigliani and Léger are part of the same story the earlier paintings tell: both were shaped by cubism
both turned it into something more decorative and gorgeous than Picasso ever intended
Modigliani's 1919 portrait La femme à l'eventail mixes cubist style with his legacy as an Italian steeped in Renaissance beauty
Léger's Nature-mort aux chandeliers (1922) is one of those almost art deco paintings by him that distil the excitement and strangeness of the modernist age in a way that just makes you want to get on a train to Paris and run up the Eiffel tower
These five works together add up to a better choice of the best art of the 20th century than you could find in most modern art museums
A fine collection has been robbed in the most intimate and horrible way of its treasures
we must hope – lost sight of some of the truly great works of the modern age
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The painter of the future will be such a colourist as has never been,” Van Gogh predicted
That painter would operate in l’atelier du midi – the imagined laboratory of artistic experimentation that Van Gogh tried so unsuccessfully to launch
Van Gogh was sure that “the whole future of modern art is to be found in the south”
achieved his goal of liberating colour from representational constraint
leading to a new painterly expressiveness that would ultimately take Matisse to the borders of abstraction
another lonely experiment – Cézanne’s transformation of the landscape around his native Aix-en-Provence
the chestnut tree park the Jas de Bouffan and the dark Bibémus quarry
the sphere and the cone” – paved the way for cubism
Rachel Spence reports on how contemporary artists such as Charles Avery are using their work to tell stories
These are modernism’s canonical stories but they have never been more comprehensively amplified
taking place this summer at Marseille’s splendidly refurbished
fantastically elaborate Second Empire Palais de Longchamp
opening with Van Gogh’s scorched wheat fields and interior of his Yellow House
inaugurated by Cézanne’s “La Montagne Saint-Victoire” and “Maison sous les arbres”
concentrates on form – so sharply delineated in the southern sunlight that the effects provoked artists to explore new abstracting or chromatic approaches
was typical of the many northern painters whom the Midi astonished into incoherence
multicoloured barques,” he stuttered to Vlaminck on arriving at Collioure
Everything I’ve done up to now strikes me as stupid.”
in the strident red “Le Port de Collioure” and the pink/mauve cliffs of “Paysage au bord de la mer”
Derain’s colourist daring outstripped even Matisse’s
The Fauve breakthrough is superbly chronicled
The swarming dots and stabs of divisionism
radiant in Paul Signac’s “Femmes au puits”
in Henri-Edmond Cross’s “Le retour du pêcheur” and “La barque bleue”
are given weight as the 1890s bridge from impressionism (Signac was Matisse’s first buyer)
The individual characters of the Fauve accomplices are detailed: Othon Friesz’s swirling arabesques; Albert Marquet’s cooler tonality and calligraphic flatness
which would develop into cityscapes saturated with damp atmosphere
such as “Port de Marseille sous la pluie” and “La Place du gouvernement à Alger”; Braque’s shift from Fauve to cubist
l’Estaque’ (1918) by Albert Marquet Also arriving from northern France
Braque symbolically went for a different port: L’Estaque not Collioure
“There is something about the light that makes the sky of the Midi look higher
much higher than it does in the north,” he noted: in “Paysage de Provence
L’Estaque” and “Le Viaduc à L’Estaque” the horizon seems free-floating
landscape becomes malleable as Braque isolates features – mountain peaks
recalling Cézanne and heralding cubism’s rhythmic series of planes
Modernism’s canonical stories have never been more comprehensively amplified
Le Grand Atelier celebrates not only the pioneering moments of 1905-1914 but also the aftermath as classic modernism was assimilated
the surrealists made the Mediterranean a playground or stage set – Dalí’s sun-baked landscape “Moment de Transition”
Man Ray’s nonsense film about two travellers following the roll of dice
By contrast the meditative Bonnard folds together form and colour
wrapping elusive figures in chromatic veils (“Paysage du Midi et deux enfants”
distant hills and sea slip in and out of focus in a sunny haze
until in “Baigneurs à la fin du jour” (1945) figures evaporate poignantly into abstract blobs in the twilight
Matisse famously said that “in order to paint my pictures
I need to remain for several days in the same state of mind
and I do not find this in any atmosphere but that of the Côte d’Azur”
The billionaire’s swamp of overbuilding that is now the French Riviera may not resemble Matisse’s Midi but the bright
serene light is unchanged – still pouring through the shutters of a hotel room
as in the languid artifice of the outer/inner spaces in his 1920s paintings “Le Divan”
la sieste” and Montreal’s marvellously considered “Femme assise
It informs equally the startling pink nude within a landscape “Nu assis/Nu rose” (1909)
the staccato blue paper-cut bather who imitates her pose in “Baigneuse dans les roseaux” (1952) and
“Porte-fenêtre à Collioure” (1914) – a black rectangle fringed by vertical grey and blue bands
so austerely simplified that it was never shown in Matisse’s lifetime
pour faire rentrer les clients au Caravane café
Nicolas et Florian s’affairent pour concocter des bols de ramen
Ce restaurant de l’Estaque (16e) intimiste
a été sauvé par les habitants du quartier
« Quand Julie Biereye et Pascal Reneric m’ont dit qu’ils fermaient cet établissement
habitant et directeur du cabinet d’architecte éponyme
« Et ça fonctionne »
Avec d’autres Marseillais, comme Raoul Michel, le cofondateur du supermarché coopératif Super Cafoutch (2e)
il a persuadé 120 citoyens de les rejoindre : chacun s’engageant à mettre 100 euros dans un pot commun
les sociétaires ont obtenu un emprunt pour racheter le fonds de commerce en novembre 2023
Les murs restant la propriété des anciens patrons
Cette mise de départ a permis d’investir dans du matériel et de réaménager l’espace
La vaisselle et le mobilier ont été offerts par les sociétaires ou chinés aux Puces (15e) à deux pas
« Un vendeur a trouvé l’histoire tellement belle qu’il nous a donné le porte-manteau et les présentoirs »
« Je voulais absolument vendre à des gens qui allaient perpétuer l’âme du lieu », confie Julie Biereye, comédienne et chanteuse de rue, qui a « grandi et voyagé dans une caravane ». Elle a créé ce restaurant
pour faire découvrir la cuisine du monde aux habitants
La caravane est toujours solidement accrochée au mur
Le volatile en papier s’envole au Pays des Merveilles où le lapin blanc d’Alice
connu dans le livre de Lewis Carroll pour son retard légendaire
est représenté sur une fresque de l’artiste marseillais Pierre Pab
Conserver ce décor unique était une volonté chère aux habitants
qui vont et viennent pour donner un coup de main quand ils le peuvent
« Il nous faut huit bénévoles par semaine pour faire tourner le restaurant
On a un WhatsApp commun et Joël a même créé une application pour s’organiser »
Mais pas question « d’imposer » des jours
car « ça reste du bénévolat »
dont l’un est salarié à temps complet et l’autre à mi-temps
Ils achètent autant que possible « du bio
Le thé provient de la Cave de la Plaine (6e), le café est sourcé à la brûlerie aixoise Richelme
le jus de fruit au Super Cafoutch (2e)… On peut aussi boire du vin issu de l’agriculture biologique « qu’on ne peut trouver nulle part ailleurs à l’Estaque »
Les menus à la carte sont les mêmes toute la semaine pour faciliter la gestion des stocks
un brunch est proposé le samedi midi
entre 10 et 15 euros selon l’appétit
avec une assiette salée et sucrée
Le restaurant est rentable à partir de 30 assiettes par jour
pour un panier moyen de 15 euros par client
« Je crois en ce modèle et je veux qu’il se duplique »
déterminé à convaincre les Marseillais des avantages de ce système alliant les bons produits aux prix abordables
sans investisseurs ni gros donneurs d’ordre
des ateliers seront organisés le mercredi où chacun pourra donner des cours de cuisine
ou de musique… Des chefs locaux viendront aussi se relayer en cuisine au début de la semaine pour concocter un menu qu’ils transmettront au Caravane café
La transmission est en effet une mission fil rouge du lieu
organise une soirée festive ce soir
« On va cuisiner un plat italien avec une tarte au St-Nectaire et en dessert
celle qui garde un amour intact pour ce restaurant
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Freedom of Information releases and corporate reports
An important Cézanne painting that has been on long-term loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum
Cambridge for almost 30 years is at risk of being exported unless a UK buyer can be found to match the £13,522,500 asking price
In order to provide a last chance to keep it in the UK
Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has placed a temporary export bar on the painting
Vue sur L’Estaque et le Château d’If (View of L’Estaque and the Château d’If)
For almost 30 years this quietly beautiful painting has adorned the walls of the Fitzwilliam Museum where it has been enjoyed by countless visitors
I hope that the temporary export bar I have put in place will result in a UK buyer coming forward and that the painting will soon be back on the walls of one of our great public collections
This painting is a vibrant treatment of one of Cézanne’s favourite subjects
the Bay of L’Estaque on the Mediterranean at Marseilles
and is the only example of a view of L’Estaque executed in vertical format
Cézanne painted at L’Estaque from the 1870s and the landscapes he executed in the early ’80s from high vantage points overlooking the bay are among his calmest and most magisterial evocations of the Mediterranean
Whilst there are 35 paintings by Cézanne in British museums and galleries
there are no paintings of the Bay of L’Estaque among them
and consequently a vital aspect of Cézanne’s achievement is missing from our great public collections
The painting was acquired in 1936 by Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947) and descended in his family until its sale in February of this year
Courtauld assembled the greatest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art formed in this country and was instrumental in bringing these movements to the wider attention of the British public
Vue sur L’Estaque et le Château d’If was the last of twelve Cézanne canvases Courtauld acquired and has subsequently become well-known to the British public during the twenty nine years (1985 to 2014) it hung on long-term loan at the Fitzwilliam Museum
Culture Minister Ed Vaizey took the decision to defer granting an export licence for the painting following a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA)
The RCEWA made their recommendation on the grounds that it is of outstanding aesthetic importance
it has a close association with our history and national life
and it is significant for the study of Cézanne’s painting
Cézanne was a painter whose art was forged out of prolonged meditation on familiar motifs
the village of L’Estaque and the Bay of Marseilles beyond was a view he returned to repeatedly during the 1870s and 1880s
and it inspired some of his most ground-breaking pictures of these decades
This is a rare opportunity to fill a significant gap in the UK’s otherwise impressive holdings of Cézanne’s work
The decision on the export licence application for the painting will be deferred for a period ending on 21 December 2015 inclusive
This period may be extended until 21 June 2016 inclusive if a serious intention to raise funds to purchase the painting is made at the recommended price of £13,522,500 (plus VAT which could be reclaimed by an eligible institution)
Organisations or individuals interested in purchasing the painting should contact RCEWA on 0845 300 6200
The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest is an independent body
which advises the Secretary of State for Culture
Media and Sport on whether a cultural object
is of national importance under specified criteria
develops and invests in artistic and cultural experiences that enrich people’s lives
We support a range of activities across the arts
museums and libraries – from theatre to digital art
brings us together and teaches us about ourselves and the world around us
we plan to invest £1.1 billion of public money from government and an estimated £700 million from the National Lottery to help create these experiences for as many people as possible across the country.www.artscouncil.org.uk
Don’t include personal or financial information like your National Insurance number or credit card details
as if draped in his own colours: Braque-brown
It was said of his hero Cézanne that he did not paint "Look at me" but "Here it is"
who thought nothing of meditating on a painting for 10 years or more
His boldness was as deceptive as his slowness
At the official opening of the exhibition Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism at the Museum of Modern Art in New York
members of the Picasso family could be heard asking: "But where is Braque?"
He is resistant to the stock assimilations
This is partly a matter of the company he kept and partly the distance he travelled
Late in 1907 Braque embarked on a serial treatment of a little place called L'Estaque in the south of France (its houses
which evolved over the next few months into a style of painting that had no name
no code and no precedent - painting that left his peers breathless and his critics stunned
The L'Estaque landscapes were not so much traditionally conceived landscapes as variations on the idea of landscape
Each element nested in context; but the sense of place was increasingly evanescent
Instead of receding tidily into the background
the forms in Braque's paintings advanced disconcertingly towards the viewer
as though bearing witness to some underground volcanic activity or process of erosion
Matisse observed that Braque's houses (or the signs representing them) were employed formally
"to let them stand out in the ensemble of the landscape"
In the beginning there was still a vestige of sky
The following summer the sky disappeared altogether
in favour of an "all-over" background with pictorial protrusions
Traditional landscape space met the same fate as traditional perspective
Keen to make the strongest possible showing at the 1908 Salon d'Automne in Paris
Braque submitted six of his L'Estaque landscapes
the rules of the Salon allowed each member of the jury to "retrieve" one rejected work; Guérin and Marquet alone elected to do so
who withdrew them all and laid the blame at Matisse's door
The critic Louis Vauxcelles later recounted how Matisse told him: "Braque has just sent in a painting made of little cubes." The painting in question was almost certainly Houses at L'Estaque (1908)
as yet unexhibited but neither unseen nor unheard
Matisse remembered it as "really the first picture constituting the origin of cubism..
about which there were many discussions." Later still
Picasso had borrowed it to study and to learn
Matisse and Picasso knew well enough that there was a third man in town - a new gun - slower
Braque's rebellion had shattering implications
propelled him into partnership with Picasso
He was the only artist ever to sustain such a relationship with that ravenous genius
They entered into an intense collaboration - at times almost cohabitation - legislating the future
The relationship lasted at least six years (1908 to 1914) on what might be called the conjugal model
and the rest of their lives (another 50 years) in remission
Its nature is not well understood: it was longer
more intimate and more evenly balanced than is often supposed
Picasso's famous riff on Braque as his wife or ex-wife ("the woman who loved me best") has set the tone for much subsequent commentary
But Picasso should not be taken too literally
Many of his most celebrated remarks had a convenient reversibility
On one occasion when Braque was in hospital
"The nurse wouldn't let me into his room," he fumed
She didn't realise that I am Madame Braque."
It was Picasso who pursued Braque - more assiduously than any woman - and not the other way around
"Why doesn't Braque come and join me?" he asked a friend
"I always keep a floor for him." Picasso's needs were visceral and overwhelming
His encounter with Braque was in some measure the most satisfying relationship of his life
Picasso was jealous of the marches Braque had stolen - Fruit Dish and Glass (1912)
the first papier collé (pasted paper or collage)
complete with mock wood wallpaper purchased in a shop in Avignon while Picasso was away in Paris - and of their claim on posterity
He was jealous of the tricks Braque continued to turn
Whenever Picasso visited the connoisseur Douglas Cooper he would go and study Studio VIII (1954-55)
hanging in pride of place above Cooper's bed
he would mutter to himself: "Don't understand
in the first of his variations on the most celebrated of all studios
But he could not match the elemental strangeness
the total envelopment achieved by Braque in those hallucinatory canvases
Late Braque is work of supreme distinction
to rank with the late work of Bach or Rembrandt or Rilke
either to the painter's own career or to the common stock of cultural reference
That Braque could do what he could not was a puzzle and a provocation
That Braque could be what he could not was a regular torment
Braque had a stature that was beyond rivalry
"Few people can say: I am here," he reflected wisely
"They look for themselves in the past and see themselves in the future." He had an almost mystical aura about him
Tales of the mature Braque have a Zen-like ring to them
He was always suspicious of "talent" and insisted he had none
"Painting is an answer to everything," he told Nicolas de Staël
He won for himself the kind of glory beautifully described by Paul Valéry: "To become for someone else an example of the dedicated life
pictured and placed by a stranger in a sanctum of his own thoughts
a hallowed mentor." Picasso would not be Picasso without Georges Braque
He has been cast as the great corroborator
In the end he corroborates no one but himself
"Who is Georges Braque?" at Tate Modern
Malgré les récentes émeutes à Marseille et partout en France
l’incontournable feu d’artifice marseillais sera bel et bien tiré au-dessus du plan d’eau du Vieux-Port
le public pourra admirer ce spectacle pyrotechnique
Un défilé militaire composé en autres du Bataillon des Marins-Pompiers de Marseille
de Terre et d’autres sections viendront marcher dans le centre-ville et sur le Vieux-Port
C’est sur la Place de l’Escalet
à 21h que débutera le feu d’artifice accompagné d’un bal du Comité des Fêtes animé par l’orchestre Bleu Azur Music
Une symphonie et de la pyrotechnie se dispersera dans l’air pour satisfaire petits et grands
La commune d’Istres voit les choses en grand avec plusieurs évènements pour le 14 juillet notamment une prise d’armes à 19h30 et son défilé à 20h au départ du collège Pasteur
le bal avec Jerry’s live devant la mairie
et le concert de Clifden sur les allées Jean Jaurès continueront à rythmer la soirée
l’incontournable feu sera tiré sur les rives de l’étang de l’Olivier avec
En raison de forte sécheresse auxquelles sont confrontées plusieurs communes dans la région
Trets et Fuveau ont décidé d’annuler leur feu d’artifice le 13 juillet
En amont des festivités se tiendra une cérémonie commémorative à 11 h
place au feu d’artifice tiré depuis le port de Cassis
mélangeant des musiques à thèmes avec les explosions pyrotechniques
Certaines entreprises proposent de visiter les Calanques de Cassis pour ensuite contempler le feu sur un bateau
C’est devenu un rituel pour les Martégaux de se rejoindre dans le centre-ville de la commune pour profiter ensemble du spectacle pyromélodique qu’offre la ville
À 18h30 débutera le défilé avant la performance de deux groupes musicaux à 21h
Lancé à partir de 22h30 depuis l’Etang de Berre
le feu d’artifice sera visible de la plage de Ferrières jusqu’à Sainte-Anne
la soirée de la fête nationale sera rythmée à 21h30 par un bal dansant avec Patricia Magne et son orchestre
Le public pourra admirer le feu d’artifice au cœur du centre-ville à 22h
le feu d’artifice est maintenu à 22h15 et tiré depuis le stade Savine
un repas-concert sera proposé par le Comité des fêtes ainsi qu’un bal spécial années 80
Un groupe de danse et chants sera également de la partie pour ambiancer le centre-ville
Comment parler de feux d’artifices et de défilés militaires sans parler de celui de Toulon
Au son de la musique des équipages de la flotte
les autorités militaires passeront en revue les troupes à 18h
c’est à partir de 22 heures dans le thème « Kaleïdoscope » polychrome que le spectacle s’ouvrira comme une explosion de couleurs aux fusées multicolores
Une fan zone sera mise en place pour contenir les manifestations
« En raison des risques d’incendies accrus et d’une forte sécheresse
la ville a pris la décision d’annuler son feu d’artifice »
peut-on lire sur les réseaux sociaux de plusieurs communes pour le feu d’artifice du 14 juillet
plusieurs évènements sont organisés et maintenus pendant la soirée dans ces villes
Michel Bourhis est le président de l’association les Compagnons du SAGA
Comme tous les autres membres qui chouchoutent l’engin au quotidien
il est un passionné de l’histoire de l’exploration sous-marine
pas de doutes : « l‘histoire du SAGA est celle de la technologie sous-marine
Par ses innovations technologiques au niveau de l’énergie embarquée
il a permis de développer un nouveau concept de sous-marin à grande autonomie qui peut rester 21 jours sous l’eau ! »
Il en tire d’ailleurs son patronyme : Sous-marin d’Assistance à Grande Autonomie (SAGA)
C’est le plus grand sous-marin civil du monde avec 27 mètres de long
Il pouvait descendre à 600 mètres de profondeur
et permettait des sorties plongeurs à jusqu’à 400 mètres sous la surface (la plus profonde fût réalisée à 317 mètres)
Il fallait un fou des mers pour lancer un tel projet
Jacques-Yves Cousteau a initié en 1966 la conception de cette « maison sous la mer autonome et propulsée » selon les termes de Michel Bourhis
Le célèbre commandant au bonnet rouge l’appelle alors « Argyronète » en référence à cette araignée sous-marine qui forme une bulle d’air pour respirer
Un projet difficile à faire aboutir technologiquement et économiquement malgré le concours de l’Institut Français du Pétrole et Office français de recherches sous-marines
Il est abandonné en 1970 alors qu’un certain nombre d’équipements dont la coque
les régleurs en acier sont achevés
Ils seront récupérés par la Comex qui reprend le projet en 1981 en le renommant SAGA
Mis à l’eau en 1987, le plus grand sous-marin « crache-plongeurs » a réalisé plusieurs plongées en saturation
Mais également une plongée d’observation à 667 mètres avant qu’en 1990 lʼIfremer
partenaire de la Comex arrête sa participation au projet
Il est depuis au repos dans le hangar de l’Estaque qui l’a vu naître, et Les Compagnons du Saga organisent des visites.
Les champs obligatoires sont indiqués avec *
mon e-mail et mon site dans le navigateur pour mon prochain commentaire
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In a grand announcement, Christie’s, in collaboration with the Foundation Langmatt Sidney and Jenny Brown, recently unveiled a trio of masterpiece paintings by the renowned artist Paul Cezanne
These extraordinary artworks are set to take centre stage at Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale
as part of New York’s Fall Marquee Week
The paintings in question are “Fruits et pot de gingembre,” “Quatre pommes et un couteau,” and “La mer à L’Estaque.”
This exceptional collection finds its origins in the illustrious Museum Langmatt in Baden
home to a treasure trove of Impressionist art passionately curated during the early 20th century by the renowned collectors Sidney and Jenny Brown
At the forefront of this remarkable trio is the exquisite “Fruits et pot de gingembre,” with an estimated value ranging from $35 million to $55 million
This iconic painting belongs to a select group of canvases that Cezanne created in the late 1880s and early 1890s
Cezanne reaches new heights of sophistication in his approach to still life
demonstrating a profound complexity in his treatment of colour and space
This painting is a vital component of Cezanne’s celebrated series of still-life compositions
now recognized as his signature artistic achievements
The subjects within “Fruits et pot de gingembre” seem to engage in a captivating dialogue
It is believed that this work was painted in Cezanne’s studio
located on the outskirts of Aix-en-Provence at his parents’ estate—the very place where he created his renowned “Card Players” series
“Quatre pommes et un couteau,” is valued between $7 million and $10 million
This artwork delves into one of Cezanne’s most beloved and iconic subjects—the apple
While the apple was relatively absent from his earlier work in the 1860s
it gradually became intrinsically linked to the artist’s identity
making frequent appearances in his compositions from the 1870s onwards
In contrast to the spontaneity and broken brushwork of classic Impressionism
here Cezanne adopts a distinct and meticulously “constructed” painting style
embracing a more structured approach to formal rendering
The final masterpiece of this trio is “La mer à l’Estaque,” valued between $3 million and $5 million
this oil on canvas captures the growing boldness of Cezanne’s artistic style during his time gazing upon the picturesque vistas of L’Estaque
a charming fishing village nestled along the Mediterranean coast
It is within this setting that Cezanne crafted some of his most innovative landscape compositions
The Museum Langmatt in Baden, Switzerland
holds a significant place in the world of Impressionist art
originally built in 1900-01 as a family home
was transformed into a public museum and cultural institution
It now proudly houses the invaluable Impressionist art collection of Sidney and Jenny Brown
The collection was privately amassed between 1908 and 1919
with a few additional acquisitions in subsequent decades
the Museum Langmatt regularly hosts contemporary art exhibitions and public programs
the museum has faced the challenge of maintaining its ageing physical facilities
depleting the resources of the Langmatt Foundation
the foundation initiated the “Future Langmatt” campaign—a public capital campaign aimed at finding solutions to secure the museum’s future
along with assistance from the canton and other stakeholders
pledged contributions for the restoration of the property
the foundation committed to ensuring a long-term and financially sustainable basis for the museum’s operations
This ambitious project was officially approved on June 18
by an overwhelming 80% majority vote in Baden
The Museum Langmatt is set to receive substantial funds from the City of Baden and the Canton Aargau for the renovation and restoration
with the foundation Langmatt now tasked with raising CHF 40 million
These funds are crucial to securing the museum’s long-term future and ensuring its continued contribution to the world of art and culture
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