14th Installment: Henri Matisse, a Reverent and Irreverent Look

With still 3 days to spend in Nice we sprung for the 4 day (yes, I realize it) museum pass. There are 12 museums included in the package, but only a few were important to us. The headliner was Musée Matisse located in Jardin des Arènes de Cimiez, WAY WAY up in the upper suburbs. I mistakenly chose ‘the shortest route’ on the Maps app thinking that would be the easiest. No, it wasn’t, it was the shortest.

It’s about a 12 minute walk to the Tram line 1 stop in the heart of the university neighborhood. A vibrant area, filled with young people, interacting and being animated with each other, stealing each other’s hats and teasing each other while walking down the street. We had a short wait and then boarded the quiet, efficient tram system that took us to the end of the line at Hospital Pasteur. Very little is basic here when it comes to public buildings, like train stations, government offices, and hospitals. Art and creativity are wound into most of the architecture, and Pasteur was no different.

Maps said it was a 20 minute walk after the hospital and we followed it’s lead, like we do everyday. Right at the beginning I pointed up to Carol in the distance how high the homes and apartments were built on the hill. The view must be spectacular. (Right away you know where this is going).

We started with a gentle (by Nice standards) incline winding around outcroppings that obscured each turn that Maps was pointing us to because of the undulations that make up hillside living. There was a symbol on the guide that I had noticed previously but didn’t give my full attention to because it showed up so small on my phone; but it turns out it is the stairs icon and it was showing up in numerous spots on the route. Hmm… we don’t like stairs anymore, especially Carol, who makes a nasty remark whenever we encounter them (I am not a fan either).

Around a turn, cross at the crosswalk, and climb 52 stairs, not 7/10 ratio stairs, steep stairs. At least our backpacks aren’t full yet so it could be worse. Plod along the street another 250 meters and we hit a second winding set, only 47, but steep (there are 13 stairs in a normal set of stairs). Wow, look at the view! Same scenario 3 MORE TIMES. We are reaching the homes that I pointed out when we started and Maps says another 900 meters to go (chin up, you can do it says google). My feet are burning and my shoulder straps are making a permanent impression on my clavicle. We’ve seen 2 buses go past so far, but the shortest route apparently was the tram. LIAR! Foaming at the mouth and swearing back and forth at each other we make it to the museum, way above the houses that I initially had pointed out.

We validate our passes and immediately have to climb a long set of stairs (20′ ceilings in this former villa) and get to the first viewing area where we will snake through multiple rooms with his works in chronological order.

Matisse’s claim to fame is that he created works for more than 50 years and switched styles including Fauvism, Impressionism, Modern Art, and variations of each. He inspiration came from the different regions where he lived around the Mediterranean.  Firstly and lastly in Provence and then Nice (where he died), but also, Italy, Spain, Algiers, and Morocco where he worked with expressive colors (not in vogue at the time) and bucked the trend of realism. His contemporaries were Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Gaugin who all worked in the Impressionism field also. Just like the others, he was not always appreciated and his nickname with his students was ‘Henry Hair Mattress’ (a real zinger 100 years ago) and they accused him of artistic murder. But still he’s considered a genius because of the chances that he took with his art beginning in 1898 until his final works in 1949. Okay, condensed history lesson is over.

The musée has 120 of his pieces including paintings, drawings, a few sculptures, and paper collages. His most famous works are in prestigious galleries in the rest of Europe. So these are not his best works. This is the end of the reverent portion with a few samples of his work.

I actually did like some of his work, but you have to stand back and contemplate what the paintings mean to you, and the beautiful colors, and the historical situations that he’s depicting to form your own impression, and that’s not funny enough to fill a blog.

We made it out the door and headed for the nearest bus stop to take us home, but of course today is a special kid’s field trip day and they were swarming us and 20 five and six year olds, plus their brave teachers, clambered on ahead of us and we were forced to stand the entire way (18 stops). They were grabbing each other’s hats and whispering into their teacher’s ears, and one playfully did a pirouette on my bare, sandaled toes. Yeow! (le Yow!) But they were a hoot and the time passed quickly. But I’m still not a fan of the under 20 crowd.