Rondes

The Rondes in France are “rounds”  – song-games that children play in a circle.  Some of these, I imagine, have origins in the Middle Ages.  In South Africa, I had the privilege of being told “Wolf and Jakkal” stories by my granny who was a teenager in 1900 and had grown up with stories handed down over generations and probably had European origins.  So it has been a pleasure to read (and perform – by myself) these rondes in my on-going effort to learn French.  I share some of them.

Un petit bonhomme –  A little fellow  –  In this lyric the little fellow goes to the wood and when he returns he sneezes three times (“Atchoum! Atchoum! Atchoum!”)  and as a result becomes three little fellows.  Again, one sees the love of the absurd in the folk tradition.

Then, Le pied, la main – the foot, the hand  –  “The foot, the foot, the foot, /  the hand, the hand, the hand, /  and ’round the corner /  I want to embrace you”.  The French get started at an early age.

With each of these rondes there are steps and gestures in the circle.  In Les Pigeons  –  the pigeons –  the lyric urges one to look at the colours of the pigeons, a distraction, to keep the baking of the pancake a secret  (“Is the fire warm?  Have you forgotten the sugar?”)  and when the galette is ready, you can turn back and forget about the pigeons.

Pimpé might well be a plea to accept crippled children.  Pimpé breaks his leg, Pimpé breaks his foot, but Pimpé, the song celebrates, can still dance as well with one leg, with one foot.

©  Will

http://www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

January, 2021

 

Source

Gallimand Jeunnesse:  Mon magier des rondes.

 

Images

Illustrator:  Olivier Tallec

 

Reliefs

Second in a series of two 

 

Again, relief work in Deco.  One can feel the artist embracing the modern era.  Gone are Dolle’s chubby cheeked angels.  This is a world of determined people and their technology.

Relief work honouring the Infanterie at the Monument des Morts in Nice, the monument for World War One.

At the same memorial, honouring the Cavalerie.  I particularly like the way the horse has been done.

I struggled to get a clear picture in the blazing sun.  This relief work is the highest point of the facade of Palais de Mediterrainée, a prestigious hotel in Nice.   The figures are probably from mythology, together with their horses in the middle, if you can see that well.

 

This is relief work in the space around the largest Presbytarian cathedral in Seoul.  The details are laiden with symbols.

This relief, an abstract design in cement, is one of several that line a sidestreet at the apartment block where we live.

©  Will

http://www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

January, 2021

 

Images

Deco profiles – Paul Casteli:  Splendeurs de Nice (Editions Giletta, Nice. 1991)

My photographs

Reliefs

First in a series of two 

Reliefs fall somewhere between engraving and sculpture.  Probably that is why we so often miss reliefs – they don’t stand out like sculptures.  Nevertheless, there is something for us.  I share some of the reliefs that I have seen.

I saw this relief on a sarcophagus from the Roman era.  It was in a gallery shop and I couldn’t help wondering what you would have to fork out to possess it.  I find the visage quite intriguing:  was it a portrait?

This is the remnant of an altar piece found by archaeologists in Antibes.  It probably dates from the second or third centuries a.d.  It is clearly Christian with the symbol for Omega (the “W” on the extreme left) together with the symbols of the dove and the vine.

This relief work is the plaque for Septentrion, the child dancer who danced himself to death.  I have written about it elsewhere.  It is probably the most loved remnant of the Roman era in this region.  It dates from the first century a.d.

These Baroque cherubs, below the font in the Cathedral,  are the relief work of Jacques Dolle, a sculptor from the early-18th-century.  He was a man of talent and mystery.

This is detail of pilaster decoration on a Belle Epoque building in Nice from the late-19th-century.

This expressive visage is also part of the pilaster decoration of a Belle Epoque building.

This relief work in Nice is clearly from the Deco period, stripped of detail and angular.

©  Will

http://www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

January, 2021

 

Images

Deco profiles  – Paul Castela:  Splendeurs de Nice (Editions Giletta, Nice. 1991)  

My photographs 

 

See as well

Septentrion, the child who danced to death   www.willwilltravel.com   13.10.2019

Belle Epoque architecture in Nice  http://www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com  31.3.2019    7.4.2019    14.4.2019  

Jacques Dolle –  http://www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com    3.8.2017

 

This is the relief at the door of the tourist office in Nice.  I love the detail:  Notre Dame de Paris in the top lefthand corner;  the sail ship of the Mediterranean top right;  an aeroplane in the bottom left corner and the vines of Provence on the bottom right.  I wish I knew who the two “angels” are.

“La Joie de Vivre” – a painting

In the spacious studio, with its tall windows overlooking the bay of Antibes,  Picasso would strip to the waist and paint through the Provencal summer, still producing what he was known for, if in lesser quantity.  The darkness of the war in Europe was receding and despite the hardships, people felt the universal happiness.  The artist painted La Joie de Vivre in 1946.  For many today it is the chief attraction of the Picasso Museum in Chateau Grimaldi.

It is a landscape with Pan, the god of shepherds, with his horns and cloven hoofs, a prancing dancer with generous breasts and two flautists.  Two capering deer radiate with round childlike faces.

An easy choice for the subject of the painting would have been primary colours.  But Picasso surprises us with turquoise, black, grey and dark red. The yellow plains form a glowing earth.  It is a scene of timeless joy, wrapped in mythology, celebrating a pastoral scene.

On the right and on the left, black buttresses the scene, adding something formal and warding off sentimentality.  And the dancer’s hair (or is it her scarf?) adds sensuality with its dark red.

If Europe had come through dark times, one tends to forget the Spanish Civil War in the late-1930s from which Picasso had escaped, but which probably haunted him until his death.  The sombre even horrifying Guernica (1937)  is relived in Korea Massacre (1951) and the war part of War and Peace (1953) which one can see in Vallauris.  La Joie de Vivre defies this darkness at the edge of the Mediterranean.

© Will

http://www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes,

January, 2021

 

Image

F. Elgar and R. Millard: Picasso (Thames and Hudson, London. 1956-72)

See too

Picasso’s “War and Peace”, Vallauris  –  http://www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com  27.12.2012

 

Antibes – the writers and the artists

Ptolomeus, in the first century a.d., wrote about the geographical setting of Antibes, known to him as Antipolis.  Before his time, Plinius described the indigenous people of the region as “people of the sea”.  Antibes was a Greek colony centuries before Plinius and a modern-day historian calls the indigenous tribes Déceates, descendents of the Celtic-Ligurian civilization before the Phonecians, as the first colonists, arrived there.

Picasso, who established himself in the South after the war, said, “At Antibes, I feel myself taken in by the ancient world.”  And this town took in more artists and writers over the years.  Le Remparts, the iconic part of Antibes, has been painted by many artists.  The town planners, proud of this fact, have mounted framed prints of their work along the way.  So it is that I came across the painting by Claude Monet in 1888.  Only the trees, after 130 years, have changed.

 

The list of artists includes Cross, Chagall, Boudin and Camion, to mention a few.  Chagall plaits the almost childlike feel of his images with mystery:  the woman, with her feet in flowers, is almost mythological:  is she a nymph?  a siren?  a mere mortal.  Shadow and light play in this dancing landscape.

 

Henri-Edmund Cross plies his brush in a mix of neo-impressionism and pointilism  –  a mosaic like impression with a felucca in the foreground.  Paintings like this were a significant influence on Matisse, amongst others.

Henri-Edmund Cross, Antibes, 1905

Amongst the writers, there was Guy de Maupassant in the 19th-century, now considered as the father of the modern short story.  There is Graham Greene, the British novelist and Victor Hugo, the writer of Les Miserables, to mention one work.

De Maupassant writes:  “I have not yet come across anything so unusual, so beautiful … this small town that confronts the open sea in the middle of the Great Bay of Nice.  A giant wave breaks over the foot of the fort and splinters into the froth of flowers;  and we could see the houses clambering on each other, towards the two towers, like horns on an ancient helmet.”

Eugene Boudin – Vue des remparts d’Antibes, 1893.

And Graham Greene:  “I have lived more than twenty years in Antibes and have known it for more than forty years.  Of all the town in the Côte d’Azur, it is the only one that has preserved its character and the only one where I feel at home.”

Charles Camoin:  Mer demontée à Antibes, 1920.

Thirty years after Victor Hugo visited Antibes, he wrote:  “Here all is radiant, the flowers shine, everything sings  –  the sun, the woman, the love.  I still carry the brightness in my eyes and in my soul.”

Guy de Maupassant

Graham Greene

Victor Hugo

 

©  Will

http://www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

January, 2021

 

Sources

Quotation from writers:  “Antibes, Juan-Les-Pins” by Charles Drossant and Renaud Dumeni [Editions; A.R.T. 1991]

E. Tisserand:  Histoir d’Antibes, 1876

 

Images

Monet, Chagall, Cross, Boudin, Camoins from Jean-Paul Potron:  Paysages de Cagnes, Antibes, Juan-Les-Pins [Editions Giletta. Nice-Matin, 2002]

Guy de Maupassant – babelia.com

Graham Greene – corjesussacratissim.org

Victor Hugo – stars-celebrities.com  

 

Antibes, painting by Winston Churchill