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What Is It About That Place??
At the end of 1831, Eugene Delacroix did something that would change the course of his own art, and to no small degree that of French painting itself…He left Paris and went to Morocco…so wrote Robert Hughes, the eminent Time Magazine art critic. Morocco was real, not the fictions of his earlier work about Turkey and Greece. There, he wrote to a friend in Paris, he was confronted “at every step…with ready made paintings which would make the fame and fortune of 20 generations of painters.” Seventy some years later, Matisse would write after reaching North Africa, “I have found landscapes in Morocco…exactly as they are described in Delacroix’s paintings”. What Delacroix got from the arts of Morocco…woven fabrics, leather, ceramic tiles and pots was the incredibly vibrant sense of color and texture…notably missing from the colorless antiquity of 19th century France. In 1998, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, mounted an exhibition of 100 of Delacroix’s Morocco drawings and paintings, and these would provide a template for Matisse, Kandinsky, and Klee that followed. In 1912, Matisse left Paris and made the relatively effortless journey to Tangier (compared to the dangerous schlep it had been for Delacroix before him.) What can one say about the work of Henri Matisse that hasn’t already been said by art critic’s way more glib than myself??…except that in my mind Matisse is the paragon of French painters, and that a lot of his best work was done in Morocco. His paintings of Moroccans in their bright, textured native dress—especially of the Tangier woman, Zorah are extraordinary studies. The landscapes are phenomenal…(“Les Acanthes” (1912)…”Vue Sur La Baie de Tangier “ (1912) …”Payage Vu D’Une Fenetre “(1912-13) are but a few of the miraculous images of Morocco that he put to the canvas. He described the light in Morocco as soft and intense at the same time…whether at noon or at dawn. Now I don’t know about that…I have been in Marrakech in July, and it was about 115 degrees…you don’t pay much attention to the sun in that heat, (except perhaps to avoid it at all costs). Paul Bowles ran off to Paris in the late 1920s, and there met Gertrude Stein. At her urging, Bowles went to Tangier, and it changed him forever. He later studied under the American composer Aaron Copland, and became a successful composer in his own right…he wrote the score for Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece “A Glass Menagerie”. Bowles, however, became restless…he felt that music tied him to New York…so he left…changed genres and moved to Tangier where he wrote “Sheltering Sky” in 1949. He died quietly in Tangier in 1999 (bio information thanks to Annette Solyst website). William S. Burroughs, a Midwesterner from
St. Louis, was a member of a very successful family who made a fortune
in adding machines and a bona fide member of the Beat Generation. While
Kerouc, Corso, Ginsberg and other beats were producing some timeless
literature; Burroughs was in his fifties and still hadn’t gotten
it done. His finest work, his piece de resistance, was done in the haze
between nods in Tangier. Kerouac and The visual images and people and exotic
charms are abundant. Once you enter the home of a Moroccan you become
“the guest”…and this means so much more than allowing
your cousin to crash on your sofa. Jma Ifna, that huge and magnificent
market in Marrakech where everything from mazhoun (a very tasty candy
guaranteed to make you see god) to jewelry to carpets to leather coats
is for sale…and everything is negotiable. There are snake charmers,
Berbers in native dress selling water, veiled women hawking hand-woven
baskets…it is what commerce is supposed to be. The teeming streets
of Casablanca where donkey carts and Mercedes share the same 6 lane
streets…are sheer madness since most Moroccans, like many other
Arabs, drive with their horns (see Motoring With Mohammed, About Yemenis,
and O’Rourke’s Give War A Chance (about Saudis) It is a
beautiful and exotic and mysterious place whose people are more friendly
and charming than perhaps they ought to be…given that they endured
44 years as a French colony (“c’est la vie” as the
manager of the Marrakech bus station so eloquently put it). They love
food, music, dancing and their families…not necessarily in that
order. There are no retirement homes in Morocco. If grandpa, or an aunt,
or a parent become too old or infirm to take care of themselves…a
family member takes them in. There are no homeless in Morocco…a
lot of grinding poverty to be sure…but nobody is living in the
streets. Is it any wonder that this magic kingdom…this Magreb…has
inspired so much art and beauty over the past 175 years? |
