We woke up to ice fog and thick ice crystals covering the trees and roads. Most of France was standing still, we’d heard. But we had a schedule to keep so we heading towards the Musee Matisse in the nearby town of Cateau-Cambrésis to meet with the director, Dominique. We walked into a looming, formidable building in the middle of farmland and a little town of 7,000. This town is famous for its textiles, but mostly for being the birthplace of Matisse. 50 years ago Matisse gifted a quite large number of sketches and paintings to the town and this museum was founded. It started off as a small museum, but over the last 30 years, from what we were told, Dominique has worked tirelessly to move from a small museum to a beautiful and much larger museum that now draws over 65,000 visitors a year. www.tourisme-lecateau.fr/musee-matisse
The exhibitions were wonderful - one was a special exhibition focusing on Matisses sketches of "Eskimo" Inuit men, women and children photographed by Knut Rasmusson in the 1930's and adding another dimension to the sketches were Alaskan and Eskimo masks, (Pinarts collection and a private collectors masks) that artists such as Miro, Matisse, Picasso, Breton, etc., would have been exposed to. Balika saw proof that Matisse and Picasso saw and were inspired by Kodiak/Eskimo masks (from Pinart's collection held in the Chateau Musee) when they were shown in Paris in the 50s (before even people from Kodiak relearned and were inspired as well by the collection!).
Our original intent, besides loving to see Matisse's work, was for Sven to meet with the Director, Dominique, to talk about their current exhibition on Matisse's sketches of "Eskimo" peoples. We were greeted by Dominique and were brought to see the "Les Esquimaux vus par Matisse" exhibition which consisted of a history of Matisse sketches, based from Rasmussen's photographs in the 'Across Arctic America, Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1927'. We spent several hours looking at the exhibition, and not only were Matisses sketches wonderful to see but there were several masks from the private collection of Georges Duthuit, which were on exhibition for the first time in this show, and only to be shown in this exhibition.
After visiting several museums on Matisse, if was inspiring to see how such an amazing artist portrayed "Eskimos" in the mid 1900's.
The staff found out that 3 out of 4 of us were Eskimo, and all of us Alaskan, there were murmers and excitement and we felt a little like a circus sideshow, but it was worth it. The museum had an amazing collection of Matisse sketches, as well as furniture and paintings, not to mention the masks on display were amazing and inspiring. We spent 5 hours in the museum, excluding lunch, and were utterly exhausted when we left.
Dominique looking at Alaska photos
Leaving the Matisse Museum.
Bella forgetting that snow is slippery.
From the ceiling of Matisse's bedroom- his three kids.
Sketching the ceiling.
Sketching.
Matisse's living space recreated.
Out the window of the Matisse Museum
After we left we knew we had a two hour drive ahead of us to our hotel on the southern fringes of Paris (and Sven had to present the next morning) so we were more than ready to get there and get settled. Of course there was the requisitive Friday evening Parisian traffic jam, so about three hours later we arrived at the Holiday Inn in Vezely (the only affordable Parisian hotel I could find with a swimming pool) and we immediately went to the pool and settled in happily for some relaxation.
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