Bordeaux

Stuck in Bordeaux due to the Icelandic volcano! It’s not a bad place to be stranded in, a UNESCO World Heritage Site full of magnificent architecture in honey-coloured stone with carving and wrought iron balconies. You can hardly be depressed in a city where everybody seems to be enjoying themselves, the adults in cafes strung out along the Garonne and children in the bike and skate boarding rinks where you watch acrobatic feats that any circus would be proud to put on.

Naturally I search out the art. It is disappointing that the twentieth century part of the Musée des Beaux Arts is closed. Bordeaux has three modern notables, Redon, Marquet and Lhoté (was he the minor Cubist William Gillies studied under? I can’t quite remember). The grands maîtres section was open. It has works by Titian, Perugino, Rubens and Delacroix as well as a good copy of Brueghel’s Wedding Dance by one of his sons. Scotland is represented by an Allan Ramsay portrait.

The Musée d’Aquitaine is very worthwhile, particularly its Roman section that has impressive pieces of sculpture and mosaics. The latter including a very large piece are geometric rather than representational. They work in the same way as Cezanne paintings. The tiny tesserae of Roman mosaics have minute variations of colour even when they are filling in an area meant to read as a single colour. This gives them infinite subtlety and makes them achingly beautiful.

The museum also has some intriguing English mediaeval sculpture in alabaster as well as two notable portrait sculptures, one by Bernini and the other by Zadkine. The Baroque Age is the great period of portraiture in painting with Velasquez, Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck and others. I would find Renaissance sculpture to prefer to Bernini’s figure pieces, however skilful. Portrait sculpture is another matter. Bernini’s portraits are the best sculpted portraits since Roman times. Having missed the Musée Zadkine in Paris, I was please to see his striking bust of François Mauriac.

Having picked up probably my last Canard enchainé before I leave France, I was interested to see that even the French are turning against the POFTS (pointlessly obscure French thinkers). In the Lettres ou Pas Lettres section there is a review of Longévité d’une imposture, Michel Foucault by Jean-Marc Mandosio who apparently takes a chainsaw to the theories of the one-time celebrity.Vive la clarté!