Provence Travel Note: Artists

Art note on the south of France: as extras beyond Roman ruins (infra), Provence offers trace of Van Gogh (at Arles) and Cézanne (at Aix-en-Provence). Not the art itself: I didn't notice any Van Goghs at all in Arles, though you can see any number of sights that look pretty much as they did when Van Gogh painted them (plus one obviously phony “yellow house”). Though how the locals put up with all that blue-and-yellow in the tourist bric-a-brac is beyond me.

Aix, too, does everything it can to squeeze a few dollars out of the local deceased celebrity. And unlike Arles, Aix actually has a bit of the artist' work. They don't brag about it much, and with good reason: a panel says “we don't want you to think this is just the rejected or the forgotten,” but one suspects that that is exactly what it is. There are lots of “Cézanne did x here” sites. There is even a Cézanne studio which you will like or not, depending on your taste—a sort of a glorified junk shop full of stuff that either was or should have been there when the artist was at work. I thought it was pretty cool myself: did a nice job of conveying a bit of flavor of what it might have been like when the painter himself was in occupancy.

Undocumented extra: it's hardly essential, but I must say it added frisson to leave Provence for Paris and the Musée d'Orsay, where you can see all the Cézannes and Van Goghs that you cannot see at Aix or Arles.