aixcentric

Chateau La Coste continues its engagement with challenging modern art, currently showing work by the late US artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as 31 years of pictures by Japanese painter Yoshitomo Nara.  It opened back in August and I was sorry to miss the vernissage.  Which was attended by Bono, Bradley Cooper, and Basquiat’s two sisters – darn! (more on summer celebs in vineyards at the end of the post….)

But we had a peaceful visit last week.  Basquiat, who died aged just 27 in NY, started as a graffiti artist (SAMO) in lower Manhattan but switched to producing large, colourful canvases for various galleries;  he was successful in life but this success has grown enormously since his death.  ‘Untitled 1982’ recently achieved a record-shattering $110.5 million. The price is the highest paid at auction for a work by an American artist and for any artwork created after 1980. Some achievement for this talented boy from Brooklyn.

The exhibition at Chateau La Coste comprises 150 small sketches and collages which draw on his visual vocabulary of skulls and bones, trucks, traffic signs and cops, ads, super-heroes and weapons….mixed with lettering and gnomic messages. There are many thematic links to his oil-paintings, especially his crown, which he painted so often that it became almost a logo.

There’s nothing much to help interpret all this, making me wish I’d read a bit more about him before visiting. The same applied to the show of work by Yoshitomo Nara.  His pictures are much simpler with plain backgrounds and one figure, head and shoulders, sometimes incorporating an animal’s body.  Some of the children look chillingly cross, disturbing – difficult to know what to make of it.

The exhibition room, in one of the old wine stores is beautiful – standing back, all the colourful pictures against the whitewashed walls under a beam and brick ceiling, look quite stunning.

Entry to both galleries are free – they are located just next to ‘La Terrasse’ the outdoor café, itself a nice spot for lunch under the shady trees.  The whole complex opens every day at 10, but the galleries don’t open until 12.

Chateau La Coste details on https://chateau-la-coste.com/expo/.  Basquiat ends 13th Oct, Nara 22nd Nov.

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And those other celebs in Provence this summer?  Look who popped up at La Commaderie de Peyrassol in August!

Link to my post from when we last visited if you would like more details on this art centre/vineyard: https://aixcentric.com/2018/05/22/art-in-a-vineyard-peyrassol/