MICROSTORY OF ART

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Dedicated to Snow in Provence and at the Côte d’Azur

(Picture: Paul Cézanne, L’Estaque, neige fondante, c. 1871)

(Picture: lagriotteanice.files.wordpress.com)

(14.-19.11.2022) Pablo Picasso was a witness of the extreme frost in the winter of 1956. After a mild January, the February of 1956 was a disaster, also and particularly in the South of France, and even today this cold snap serves as a point of reference in weather history. Snow at Antibes, snow at Cannes, and snow at villa La Californie: no electricity, and palm trees covered with snow, looking like snowballs (this was a topic Picasso later spoke about with Brigitte Bardot, in the spring). We recall here Mediterranean winter, but also Mediterranean sun, since, obviously, the extraordinary can also highlight the (new or old) normal. And there is a history of snow in Provence and at the Côte d’Azur, a history that has left its marks also in the history of art.

One) Picasso’s Last Landscape

A landscape that has confused its viewers: is there snow in this one, since it appears to be the case. But could there be snow in this one at all? One would not expect some, in Picasso’s last landscape, a view of Mougins (done 31 March, 1972), as one might suppose, and in a landscape of Mougins one would not necessarily expect some snow. But it seems to me that there is, and that one has at least to relate that to Picasso’s experiences in 1956 (whent he still lived at Cannes, and not yet in Mougins), with the palmtrees of his own garden (some spoke of a partly ragged park) being covered with snow, with electricity suddenly failing, and a biting frost (Picasso in fact fell ill, and as it seems, rather in the wake of this secular frost of February 1956, and as consequence).

And Picasso’s landscapes are not necessarily just views. They might also be constructions of what Picasso saw, of what he knew, of what he remembered and of what he envisioned, putting all of these elements, potentially together in one construct. So a landscape done at Mougins does not necessarily show a view of that village, where Picasso in the end lived, and where he also died. And landscapes in Picasso can also, it is also worth noting that, refer to literature, because one example is definetely linked to a) a trip by car that Picasso did with his second wife, Jacqueline Roque, in the hills nearby Cannes in December of 1962 – and there was also snow –, and b) the association of what the two of them saw and experienced on that trip with the novel Le Grand Meaulnes.

(Picture: Romainbehar)

(Picture: Civodule)

Two) Hardly Unseen: An Art History of Snow in Provence and at the Côte d’Azur

One of two snowscapes by Paul Cézanne. And this one is atypical in more than just one way. If one would not know the author, one art historian has written, one would suppose that this is rather a Fauvist or an Expressionist landscape (and it was painted at L’Estaque, decades before Cubism was developed by Braque and Picasso). Not displaying stability – the stability that was to become Cézanne’s trademark –, at least not stability alone, but instability, this landscape is not particularly soothing. And who would want to be at that particular place at all to be a viewer? Instability in more than just one way, not just a snowy hillside, a diagonal, not just the instability of thaw, but also the sea (or a dark and stormy heaven?), surging like one restrained threat, and a path, cut, winding on the right side of the picture. Is everything gliding here, suggesting irregular movements, one should be warned of? Not everything, because there is also the antithesis of stability with poles, with trees, with green, with houses, indicating human presence, indicating resistance (to wind and weather, as the picture, in its mere existence, hence itself does), but this ambiguity might exactly be the reason to paint this and to paint like this: to expose oneself to something that might not be called something out of the order, but still to be a passing phase, an instable moment, inbetween some states of more stability and more inviting views.
The picture, not in need of a biographical explanation, still functions as the exact equivalent of Cézanne hiding at this place at the time of the French-Prussian war of 1870/71 (below the ›melting snow at Fontainebleau‹ of 1880).

(Picture: wikiart.com)

»When van Gogh arrived in Arles on Monday 20 February [1888]«, Ronald Pickvance (Van Gogh in Arles, p. 43) sums up, »he had expected to find the color and limpidity of Japan; instead he found the town and its surrounding landscape covered in snow.« It is this curious expectation to find ›a Japan‹ in the South of France, combined with the surprise to find the South covered in snow that – we find in the – at least two – snowscapes of Van Gogh of February 1888. In other words: The reality he found was not the one envisioned, and one might say that the reality of Arles found itself confronted with the expectations of a painter, obsessed with Japanese prints, and the phenomena of snow, for once, having fallen on it. »Van Gogh estimates 24 inches, a local reporter 15 to 18 inches, the local weatherman 10 to 12 inches – whatever the amount, an unexpectely heavy fall for the ›country of the sun‹.« (Pickvance, p. 41) It seems to have been the coldest February in Arles since 1860. What van Gogh seems to have seen is rather the impact the snow had on the landscape in general and not phenomena of snow on things. One sees, in his pictures, a view of the city in the distance, in a white plane, with, in the foreground what Pickvance supposes to be »a blind for a wildfowler«, and in the other landscape a man walking his dog, on pathway, that diagonally, leads through this snowscape to the horizon. In fact in both cases it is a very similar diagonal, leading us into the snowscape, once guided by a man walking his dog, once by the question of what exactly locals may have prepared in the foreground.

(Picture: INA; youtube.com)

(Picture: lagriotteanice.files.wordpress.com)

Three) The Frost of 1956, and Picasso’s Last Landscape, again

What makes the last landscape by Picasso special and perhaps unique in a way, are the palmtrees – the symbols of the South – being covered with snow. And this, in 1956 was a reality in Cannes (see picture above or see here; and see here for Nice; and here for Saint Tropez). Picasso did see this in his own garden of villa La Californie, and when Brigitte Bardot, in April or early May of the same year, paid him a visit there, Picasso seems to have spoken of the treetops of the palmtrees having looked like snowballs. This is not exactly what we see in the photo, nor in his painting, but in both cases the treetops are definitely covered with snow, and in Picasso’s picture this is, compared to the photo, rather accurately rendered.
What Picasso shows in his picture might also be called a spectacle. There seems to be a joy of observing the effects snow has – on gates, fences, rooftops, trees and so on, and the picture, a vital and accurately balanced composition, sums up these elements that make such spectacle, with the treetops of the palmtrees perhaps crowning the view, and indicating to a viewer how such snowscape might be read.
I doubt that Picasso here, rendered accurately, what, in March of 1972 he might have seen at Mougins, and I don’t know, whether, there, palmtrees could actually be seen. It seems rather that Picasso might have seen something that triggered his reminiscences with snow, and snow in Picasso is actually very rare. One has to go far back to find actual images with snow, and they are only few (with the other exeption being the landscape he did after the aforementioned trip with his wife Jacqueline). Still snow might have the effect to recall childhood memories – and my personal experiences with snow are associated – for life – with what was called the ›Schneekatastrophe of 1978/79‹ in the North of Germany. Hence it seems likely to me that Picasso, in a belated way – also – might have come back to the spectacle of and to his impressions and experiences in 1956.
Neither of the snowscapes shown here seem to be gloomy, but gloomyness is still lurking in them, at least the suprise of having found something familiar suddenly having become something completely else. And this might be seen as a spectacle, as something life just has offered for free to anybody willing to accept it, or as something threatening something by means of change. Something – and it is life in the end or the South as a near synonym – that will diappear from view, being replaced by something we don’t know, but in the end have to accept.

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