Between tenebrous light and vibrant touches
One is always very impressed when discovering the caves of Prehistory: one wonders how these first humans dared to go so far in these dark underground spaces, how they lit themselves to move and realize their works? One wonders who of these Magdalenians, men or women, or perhaps both, is at the origin of the painted silhouettes of the bison, horses or ibexes of Niaux, or the animal engravings of the Mas d'Azil? Who left the traces of positive or negative hands in the caves of Gargas or Bédeilhac, and why? One dares not put forward the term spirituality, so firmly affirmed in the painted decorations of the numerous churches of the region.
If the caves attest to an exceptional universal heritage, the same is true for the religious buildings of the 11th to 17th centuries. With the aim of literacy, the walls were covered with frescoes. Even if they remain rare in the Romanesque buildings of the region, in a traditional way, one represents the Church in the form of apostolic college (in Saint-Lizier). On the apse, scenes from the life of Christ are depicted, from his childhood (Saint-Lizier cathedral or Vals) to his Passion (Montgauch). These sets are very influenced by nearby Spain and the activity of the Master of Pedret. Outside the Pyrenean areas, notable Romanesque paintings are preserved in Saint-Sernin in Toulouse or in small churches such as those of Nogaro or Volpillon (Gers), or in the former abbey house of Moissac where the vault dates from the end of the 12th century
The portals and capitals of the cloisters are covered with biblical sculptures. Moissac, St-Sernin de Toulouse, Valcabrère or St-Bertrand-de-Comminges are among the most famous. The workshops known as "de la Daurade" worked during the 11th and 12th centuries in Toulouse, Moissac or St-Lizier, following the paths of Compostela.
Later, the 16th century saw a creative explosion in the central Pyrenees, linked to a period of prosperity, reconstruction and repair of the many buildings ruined during the Hundred Years War. In the valleys of Luchon (Haute-Garonne) and Barousse (Hautes-Pyrénées), the same workshop worked in the churches of Ourde, Génos and Saint-Pé d'Ardet. Melchior Rodigis, coming from Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges. He made the decoration of the church of Mont (Hautes-Pyrénées), identifiable by the borders made of numerous bands each decorated with a different motif, his signature. In Quercy, the "French style" is found in the small church of Saux, in Montpezat-de-Quercy or in the chapel of Bioule (Tarn-et-Garonne). Elegant figures, with sinuous lines and draperies falling softly on the feet, recall the sculptures of the master of Rieux (Musée des Augustins - Toulouse)
At the end of the 15th century, the recurring iconographic themes are those of the Last Judgment - the most famous is that of the cathedral of Albi (Tarn) which served as a model for Lézat-sur-Lèze (Ariège) - and the procession of the Deadly Sins, which can be seen in Montbrun-Bocage and St-Aventin (Haute-Garonne), Ourde and Ilhan (Hautes-Pyrénées) or in Puycelci, in the church of Saint-Julien-le-Vieux (Tarn). Churches and chapels are adorned with Mises au tombeau, a set of life-size sculptures which reconstitute the burial or the descent from the cross of Jesus (Monestiés -Tarn or cathedral of Auch-Gers). The 16th century displays its Italianate (Ste-Cécile-Albi) or Baroque (Chapelle des Carmélites-Toulouse) taste. Nicolas Bachelier's workshop responded to orders for portals, facades and altarpieces in the Renaissance style when, in turn, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Ferrère dynasty dressed the churches of Bigorre with sumptuous altarpieces (Beaudéan, Campan, Pouzac, Antist, Orignac...). To be discovered also at the Maison des Ferrère and the Pyrenean Baroque in Asté (Hautes-Pyrénées)
Art stars
Whether it is the neo-classical Ingres (Montauban museum), the troublemaker of the Parisian cabarets Toulouse-Lautrec (Albi museum), the landscape artists Henri Martin (Capitole de Toulouse) and Marcel Lenoir (Montricoux museum), the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle or the more contemporary Monique Frydman and Jean-Paul Chambas... many artists originating from the region have left their name in art history. Others settled there to respond to commissions, such as the Franc-Comtois Nicolas Tournier - a leading 17th century Caravaggio artist (Musée des Augustins - Toulouse), or the Nice-born Raymond Moretti (Arcades du Capitole and Croix du Languedoc - Toulouse - 1997); some to escape the war, such as the Parisian Yves Brayer in Cordes-sur-ciel (Tarn) - one of the masters of the School of Paris: a term that designates artists often of foreign origin gathered in the capital between 1900 and 1960 -, or Nicolaï Greschny, born in Estonia, frescoist and icon painter fleeing Nazism and settled until his death near Albi; others still to be inspired by the beauty of the landscapes like the watercolorist Blanche Odin in Bagnères-de-Bigorre.
If Spanish painting is admirably represented at the Goya Museum in Castres (Tarn) - about 170 paintings from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries with canvases by Murillo, Ribera, Zurbaran ... and three works by Goya in addition to engravings of the latter (series of Caprices, La Tauromaquia, The Disasters of War, Disparates) - modern art is not left behind. Modern art is not to be outdone. It is widely featured at Beaulieu Abbey (Tarn-et-Garonne) with its collection of abstract art, begun in the 1940s by the Bonnefoi-Brache couple, and the works of artists from the "New School of Paris" (Hans Hartung, Jean Dubuffet, Simon Hantaï, Jean Fautrier, Henri Michaux..); or in the collection of Michael Simonov, a British man who fell in love with the abbey of Flaran (Gers) and who gathered in this place 200 works of European art, from the 15th to the 20th centuries, among which numerous impressionist and fauvist paintings.
What can we say about contemporary art? That it stands out for its originality. For example, the metro and tramway lines of the city of Toulouse are decorated with contemporary works of art by internationally renowned artists (about forty, one in each station); or the castle of Terraube and the universe of fire by Jean-Paul Marcheschi. But also by its specificity: indeed, Toulouse is a pioneer city of Street-art in France, since the 80s. Its history starts with the Truskool and a generation of artists (Tilt, CeeT, Der, Miss Van, Miss Kat or Fafie) who like to invest the urban space and its walls. Today, the Gramat street still serves as a wall of expression. Every year, events are held in harmony with the spray cans of graffiti artists: in Toulouse, the Rose béton festival transforms the city into an open-air gallery, as does Street'Art'Maganc in Éauze (Gers) and its "Mur Éphémère" edition, or Mister Freeze (Toulouse), which invests industrial buildings with disproportionate frescoes! Another place: Le 50cinq with artists' workshops and exhibitions of urban culture.
Finally, even if this region does not have workshops as famous as those of Aubusson, tapestry has known its hour of glory thanks to the work of Dom Robert (Abbey of Sorrèze - Haute-Garonne), a Benedictine monk painter-cartoonist with a universe filled with floral poetry.
The arts of film
The cinema is in the honor in Midi-toulousain. The reason: the modernity of an era that was interested in new technologies of image capture and artistic experimentation. It is the Surrealists who will appropriate this medium. In Toulouse, the group was called the Flying Trapeze (or Mouvement KO). Among them, the poet Gaston Massat (1909-1966), the photographer Jacques Matarasso (1916-2015), the future resistance fighter Élise Lazes (1908-1989), the poet and communist activist Jean Marcenac (1913-1984), as well as the future psychiatrist Lucien Bonnafé (1912-2003) - who founded in 1933 the first cine-club of France. Later, this club gave birth to the Toulouse Cinematheque, founded in 1964 by Raymond Borde, a film critic and essayist (the second in France after the one in Paris). Located in the former Collège catholique de l'Esquile, a magnificent building dating from the 16th century, the Cinémathèque holds some 50,000 film reels of all kinds, nationalities and eras, nearly 90,000 documents dating from 1908 to the present day (posters, photos, publicity documents, archives, etc.) and some 550,000 shots of filming, sets, promotions and film stars! In the summer, movies are shown on the big screen in the open air!
Get out the red carpets! Many festivals honor the 7th Art. In Toulouse: Cinespaña, the Spanish film festival for 25 years; Cinélatino, the Latin American film festival; or the more crazy FIFIGROT, the International Greenlandic Film Festival - with its selection of films (documentaries and fictions, feature films and shorts) accompanied by music and parades. In Luchon (Haute-Garonne), during March, television creations are honored: fictions, documentaries and webseries receive their trophy, the Golden Pyrenees! In Foix (Ariège), in July, the International Festival "Resistances" promotes a cinema that is rarely shown on screens. In Auch (Gers), the Indépendance(s) et Création d'Auch film festival was created thanks to Ciné 32, which brings together professionals, film buffs, the curious and high school students to watch about fifty arthouse films. And it's been going well for more than twenty years! Because happiness is in the meadow, isn't it?
Click-clack! It's in the box!
If Daguerre is at the origin of the concept, many other photographers have brought film into the great art of photography. The Midi-Toulousain region has its masters: the Eyssalet brothers (a family saga that goes back to 1860) criss-crossed the roads, peaks and lakes of the Pyrenees, taking a large number of pictures of traditional local life, developed at the Alix studio - a studio created by their mother in 1907 and active until 1961. A collection of 50,000 pieces was bequeathed to the city of Bagnères-de-Bigorre (it was formerly used for the production of postcards); or Germaine Chaumel (1895-1982), whose uncle Antoine Provost immortalized the terrible floods of 1875. At the same time draughtswoman, musician, opera singer, her destiny led her to the paths of photography (gravitating in a male universe by photographing rugby matches) and then to those of Freedom, since she covered the massive exodus of the Retirada, the Occupation and then the Liberation of Toulouse, always in the right place with a discreet framing, armed with her Rolleiflex, working full time for Paris soir or as a correspondent for various newspapers, including the New York Times. Founder with eleven of her comrades of the Club des Douze, she noticed the young Dieuzaide, a photographer whose international reputation still shines today. At the time of the Liberation of Toulouse, he immortalized General de Gaulle on the balcony of the Capitol, his first official portrait. Under the pseudonym Yan, he continued his career, even photographing stars such as Picasso and Dali. Honored with numerous awards, founding member of the Rencontres internationales d'Arles, he founded in 1974 in Toulouse the Château d'eau gallery, the first exhibition space in France dedicated to photography in all its forms. Photography is always in the spotlight thanks to the Toulouse festivals MAP and Manifesto.
