Digital Impressionism

 

The point of art is to make us look again at the world with new insight. Hardly surprising, then, that the monolithic yet sensuous exhibition at Les Baux de Provence (see previous post) should fracture the real landscape into shards and layers of colour devoid of sharpness. Here, for example, is the main road through the Luberon valley, captured on digital camera from a moving car.

 

The cherry and apple orchards are in full blossom, and it's the time of year when the grass between the trees and vines is bright yellow, thickly speckled with dandelions. I snapped away through the open window out of curiosity to see what would be captured on camera, hoping to get something of the lines and layers of these small regimented fields. 

This morning I've had some fun playing around with the images by cropping them, isolating parts that seemed interesting. Now, I'm well aware that to most reasonable people, these are simply blurred photographs, but if you relax and don't try to focus too hard, you can see that they have elements in common with paintings, the suggestion of what is there in life and the light. After all, this is the way the Impressionists began, by daring to suggest rather than slavishly reproducing.

This last is as far as I want to take it - vines, dandelions and a drift of blossom - but even so, it makes an interesting pattern with naturally complementary colour. I'd quite like it as fabric for a scarf! 

 

Les Baux: "Voyages en Mediterranee"

Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Derain, Signac, Dufy, Chagall, Bonnard: the shores of the Mediterranean drew them all to paint the bright, warm colours of the South. Once again, the extraordinary art space of the old bauxite mine at Les Baux-de-Provence has been transformed into a 21st century multi-media exhibition of the familiar made new and exciting again. The paintings engulf the viewer, sliding and dancing around the vast projection walls, choreographed to music by Ravel and Gershwin and sinuous jazz.

The show begins with the 18th century marine landscapist Joseph Vernet, commissioned in 1753 to record the life of ports in France, including Marseille, Toulon, Bandol and Antibes (above). Monet's waterlilies swirl all around, on the floor and on the ceiling, to Debussy's Clair de Lune, possibly the most atmospheric suite of all.

 

In 1883, Renoir spent time with Monet in the Midi, and was so enchanted by Cagnes and the possibilities for painting that he ended his days there.



 

The Fauvists arrived too, of course: Matisse, Derain, Camoin and Signac were among those who wandered the southern shores with little money but big, explosive visions. You feel that they, in particular, would be thrilled and amazed at the presentation of their work.

 

Raoul Dufy was born on the northern coast of France, at Le Havre. Pulled south to find true colour and working in his distinctive style of Fauvism, he captured St-Tropez and Hyeres, but became best known for his views of Nice and Vence.

Then came Chagall, with his peerless blues and dreamscapes. Here, in Les Carrieres de Lumieres, to music by Khatchaturian evoking the artist's Russian heritage, the atmosphere gradually becomes calm and spiritual.

As in last year's Van Gogh and Gauguin show, the designers Gianfranco Iannuzzi, Renato Gatto and Massimiliano Siccardi have produced an astonishing spectacle in these cavernous spaces - bigger this year by 500 square metres. It's very well worth visiting, and runs all through the year until January 5, 2014.

Van Gogh and Gauguin at Les Baux

Yesterday I stood inside a painting by Vincent Van Gogh: surrounded, taken up and transported by colour and movement. Music by Saint-Saens seemed to push the images around vast spaces. Cornfields rippled and were echoed in different views, the starry night intensified above and below.

At Les Baux de Provence, the old bauxite quarry has metamorphosised into an extraordinary art venue. The current show is Gauguin, Van Gogh: Painters of Colours. The entrance is in a curtain of grey rock and gives little indication of the experience about to unfold.

An ordinary-looking door opens into a vast, dark and chilly space, and then the eye starts to make sense of the light show in progress. We arrived as huge yellow rush chairs appeared amid Arlesien street scenes painted by Van Gogh. On great rectangular pillars 14-metres high were pictures of and by the artist, all projected on different surfaces through the enormous chambers, and all moving languidly to music.

The theme of the exhibition is the different ways these two Northern European painters used colour to express their artistic release in the warmth and light of the South of France in the later part of the nineteenth century - Gauguin then famously travelling on to Tahiti.



It's hard to do justice in words to this astonishing artistic endeavour. We were left dumbstruck by the inventiveness and vision of the designers Gianfranco Iannuzzi, Renato Gatto and Massimiliano Siccardi. In these cavernous spaces, Les Carrieres de Lumieres is a permanent video installation, the largest in France, with 70 video projectors and surfaces that emblazon images on more than 6,000 square metres of wall, ceiling and floor. The result is just magical.

When we talked about it afterwards, what came through so clearly was that these are the kind of events the French do so magnificently. This is high culture: art, history and music all presented in a thrilling way. The music is of the period - Saint-Saens, Brahms, Ravel - and appropriate to the artistic movement of the time. All the images are from the paintings, and show the journey from cold north to Provencal landscapes and on to the South Seas in monumental scope and animation. There's no obligatory dumbing-down to make it "relevant" for young people as so often at home; there are no flashing lights and fast cutting to rap music. It is purely itself, and contains moments of indescribable beauty.

The exhibition will be on all summer and runs through until 6 January 2013.