aixcentric

Fabienne Verdier likes to paint en plein air, which as you know is a big challenge in Provence: swirling winds, rain in deluges, Mistral, baking sun – she’s battled through it all, standing in the middle of massive canvases or balancing up step-ladders.

Clearly conventional brushes and palettes are out of the question – she attacks with feet-wide brushes, or massive clumps  of rope mounted on bicycle-handle-bars, or even a huge forcing bag full of acrylic.

For the Sainte-Victoire, she draws an outline, then swish, splatter, splash!  There’s a film of her in action which is quite mesmerising. And the monumental paintings, stark on the gallery’s white walls, are beautiful in their abstraction.

But my sense of humour got the better of me in the section where she paints trance-like in tune with musicians, supported from behind by someone who is trying to keep her upright or maybe trying to keep her shirt out of the flying paint.  And it all gets terribly philosophical.  See what you think.  But good for her: the only woman I can remember to have had a solo exhibition at the Musée Granet plus two others in Aix at the same time.

F M Granet

Moving on to ‘Sainte(s) Victoire(s), which links to the work of Francoise Verdier, there are three room of paintings:

The Provencal school, including Granet himself.  Conventional landscapes with foregrounds of sheep, gardens, a local convent school.  Charming and evocative of peaceful rural Provence.

Cézanne, THREE Mont-Sainte-Victoires, on various loans; they show him moving in stages to cubism, almost abstraction.  A fascinating room.

Modern treatments.  Here it disappointed.  There are two Picasso views of Vauvenargues (not MSV), and a couple of others.  I would have liked to see André Masson/Leo Marchutz versions plus lots of contemporary artists to see how people tackle the motif.

Anyway, it’s a very enjoyable double bill (+Harry Callahan’s photos still on show) – and just 8 euros!