A view of Menerbes from below, with the Dora Maar House on the left (photo by Laurie Fendrich)
Je suis ici. For those worried my French wasn’t passable enough to get me to my destination, rest assured. I managed to get from the plane that arrived in Paris to the TGV that took me to Avignon, and from there to Menerbes. (OK, admittedly, the latter part was easy since I was picked up and driven by car.) And I’ve now settled into my room and studio at the Dora Maar House, where I’m doing a residency for the month of May.
I’ve been here four days now and have completed three drawings — the result of some pretty long days of concentrated work in my studio. Earlier this morning I started the fourth drawing. This is the first time I’ve worked in a studio with windows on two sides — and clear windows, at that. (I keep them open most of the time, since the air is so clear and fresh.) In fact, most of my studios have had pretty grimy windows that I never once opened. Here my studio has an absolutely perfect cool light that lasts from early morning until evening. Today I made the decision that when the time comes for me to depart I’ll lock the doors and refuse to leave.
Ménerbes is shockingly gorgeous — particularly now, in the late spring. Today it’s very windy, and every day so far has been full of sun. (And yes, in response to an earlier commentator, I read Peter Mayle’s account of the charm of this village long before I arrived.) Ménerbes is perched on a cliff that sits astride a cultivated valley (vineyards and fruit, olive and nut trees), with successive rows of mountains drifting off in the distance. In the “downtown” there are several cafés, a bar, a post office, a small grocery store, a couple of repair shops and some tourist shops. There are also two ancient churches in the town, each with a set of bells that chime every hour and half hour. They’re completely out of sync with one another. Midnight, in particular, seems to be a time when the gonging goes on forever.
I’ve emailed pictures of my new digs to my friends, and they’ve all written back to ask how I’m managing to work surrounded by such beauty. It’s true that every moment of the day beckons any normal person to run outside and be done with all this work stuff, but I tell everyone not to worry. I’m stepping outside every now and again to sit in the garden or go for a walk. But I possess the artist’s deep impulse to consider the principle of carpe diem as one that applies mostly to the studio.
It’s not that I’m blocking out the beauty that surrounds me. Au contraire, when I’m at work on my drawings, inside my lovely new studio, I’m acutely aware of the sweet sounds of my environment — the gurgling fountain in the garden below one window, the buzzing bees drifting in and out of all the windows, the chirping of the birds, and the soft-speaking pedestrians climbing the steep street below. I’m aware of the lovely light, and the wind, which seems to always be blowing. I look up from my work every so often to gaze out a window at the mountains in the distance, or to fix on a spot on the pine tree where one of the nimble Ménerbian lizards has stopped for a rest. It’s easy, in these moments, to get a little giddy about my good luck in being here.
Years ago, my husband was in a taxi on the FDR with the art critic Dave Hickey. It was a hot and smoggy New York afternoon, in the dead of August, and they were stuck in traffic. Dave looked out the window and said, “Now you know why they make color field paintings.” Artists often yearn for color precisely during those moments when real life denies it to them.
Here I have all the color in the world, and yet Ive chosen to stick with black and white drawings. I understand full well why many artists come to a place like Ménerbes eager to tackle the landscape in full-blast color, and I’m hardly oblivious to the alluring contrast of light and shadow that marks the landscape. Nor am I missing nature’s gift, to all of the south of France, of a delicate palette of light browns, greens, reds and greens, and the bluest sky in the world.
Capturing, interpreting and even conquering nature has been the locus of the artistic drive in the West for centuries. The early modernists said to heck with all of that, we’ll aim strictly for the color. But as modernism progressed, it opened up new sensibilities and possibilities for artists. Truly, here in Ménerbes, I’m one of those who is content to leave nature to do its wondrous thing while I pursue my black and white drawings.
Mind you, I do plenty of paintings (abstract paintings, that is) that are all about color when I’m at home. But with only a month to work here, it seemed nearly impossible to set up a painting studio and paint my slowly-drying oil paintings. Instead, I settled on making my black and white conté crayon drawings, and I have no regrets.
When nature is as beautiful as this, I feel the deep chasm that separates it from art. Without exception, nature always wins out over art. Yet as the great art critic Clement Greenberg once said, “Still, art must be given its due.” Yes, it’s easy for me to go into my studio, in the south of France, and make my black and white drawings.
