Happy Matisse Day!

 Day Three: Into the Mountains

We woke up the next morning, feeling refreshed and ready to explore. Today we had planned to head up into the hills of Vence and see the chapel that was designed in collaboration with one of Rebecca's favourite artists, Henri Matisse. 

It's here that I want to tell you about our rental car. We were given the option of a Mazda something or other or a Peugeot 208. We opted for the Peugeot. It's a peppy little thing but the layout of the car is not something I was prepared for. It seems the folks at Peugeot like to design all their cars, even their little compacts, like they are race cars. Being a North American born after the 1960s, I never really learned to drive a stick shift (I also do not know how to send a telegram or use a slide-rule) since that technology has largely been left behind, so we made sure to get a car that is an automatic, kinda.

The car is some kind of a hybrid of standard and automatic where I can shift gears myself by using little knobs that stick off the side of the steering wheel (I have't done this and probably won't). To move the car from park to drive/neutral/reverse there is a small lever instead of a stick. Overall, it's not a bad car at all and it has proven to be quite fuel efficient over the first few days of driving it.

The annoying thing about this car is that it seems to think it is a manual shift race car. From the deep, awkward to get into bucket seats, the tiny, tiny steering wheel, and the strange sight-lines, to the fact that it jerks around if you slow down "incorrectly" like it wants to stall and likes to roll backwards on hills when starting from a full stop, driving it has been an interesting wrinkle in our adventure. This proved to be a challenge when driving into the hills of Vence. The biggest thing I’ve noticed driving here is that the vast majority of drivers here are very good at driving. They drive like they’re sure everyone else will see what they’re doing and adjust accordingly. I will always contend that a safe driver is a predictable one. I’m still learning how to be predictable here. 

We learned on this trip that we need to travel to parking, not to venues as we got to the chapel and had to go right past it to keep moving with traffic. This lead to us ending up on some extremely narrow side streets (I’m pretty sure the lanes on the road here are more narrow at home anyway) navigating some blind corners while going up and down in the hills. My fingers hurt a little from white knuckling my way through it. But we found parking and the chapel. Ok. Enough about cars forever.

The chapel, known as Matisse Chapel colloquially is actually the Chapelle du Rosarie de Vence. Matisse was involved in the project because a young nurse turned nun who had helped in his recovery from cancer told him about the monastery’s desire to build it. It was at the age of seventy-seven that Matisse started this work. 

Everything, including the architecture, was influenced by Matisse. The chapel is still used to this day so it is only open to the art nerds/tourists for a few hours a day as the sisters need the space to prepare for mass, etc. It was fascinating to see original works of art from Matisse throughout the building, including the stained glass windows and his interpretation of the stations of the cross. These works are owned by the sisters and photography was not allowed so we went for a little walk afterwards to try to capture the building and stained glass from the outside.

From Matisse, we set off to a nearby art museum that was built by a collaboration of artists called the Fondation Maeght, named for the founders, Marguerite and Amié Maeght, who founded the museum in memory of their son who had passed from leukemia at age eleven. The museum is set into the hillside and embraces the natural landscape around it. Artists like Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Georges Braque, and Ferdinand Léger all found it an inspiring place to create art as the building and nature seem to flow into each other.

The current display was a collection of works in a wide variety of media from an artist called Jean-Paul Riopelle, whom neither of us had heard of. After all, why would we have, we can't know every artist born in...Canada. Turns out, our friend Riopelle was born in Montreal, though he did move to Paris where he created most of his works.

His style was very conceptual and broad. He seemed to jump from medium to medium (sculpting, painting, photography, dance, and on and on...creating a variety of works that could be quite rough looking but somehow beautiful at the same time. I personally liked his sculpture work the most, especially the pieces that I've dubbed the Slenderman series.

Throughout the grounds of the museum there is a sculpture garden, featuring many works by Joan Miró, who I didn't really know until I saw his works here. I enjoyed his sculptures, their odd playfulness and strangely pleasing shapes as we wandered through the grounds taking in the art, nature, and warm sunshine.

After enjoying the museum, we made our way back down to Nice were we wandered the streets once more, finding new passages and art as we did.

It was an enjoyable day on all counts but we returned to the hotel where, after a quick bite to eat and a dip in the pool, we headed for bed to sleep off the remaining bits of jet lag we had from our travels across the Atlantic.

Quick note: This post and future posts will likely be created/edited on my phone since our second hotel does not have a computer and I don’t know if our next ones will either so please excuse any typos or formatting errors!