MONDAY, DECEMBER 3
Even though Chloe wasn’t feeling well we ventured out together to the Museum of European and Mediterranean civilization and Fort Saint Jean for a day full of history, art and architecture.
LE PANIER
The oldest part of the oldest city in France, Le Panier, is a warren of narrow cobbled streets, five-story buildings with clothes drying on lines from all the floors, tiny craftsman shops and intimate restaurants. A general sense of decomposition and poverty is colored by a sense of playfulness… lots of expressive murals and art galleries. We ducked into a little restaurant; the cook was on the phone in the doorway when we entered. It was the most outstanding lunch… an omelette for me, a salad for Chloe– all cooked in front of us by the chef/owner.
FORT ST. JEAN
The Fort and nearby Museum are beautifully integrated even though they couldn’t be more distinctive in architectural style: a Roman fort and a museum constructed in 2013 by French architect Rudy Ricciotti. The light salmon-colored Fort functions as a public park with open interior courtyards, walkways along exterior walls, upstairs lookouts, and gardens. People scatter themselves on wooden seats and benches to watch the light pass over the sea and city.
THE MUSEUM OF EUROPEAN AND MEDITERRANEAN CIVILIZATION
A concrete suspension bridge crosses the ocean to connect to the Fort area to the MUCEM. The MUCEM’s exterior is made of cut metal; inside the metal shell are glass walkways, and a huge terrace for lounging on the roof. In fact, there are many spots for lounging, on each floor, where the cut metal openings offer framed views of the ocean. A glass railing along the walkways breaks the wind but otherwise the spaces are open air. People scatter everywhere, working on their computers, reading, resting or just staring out at the sea. Others walk the building’s periphery.
ART OF MOHAMMED KACIMI
Before the bridge, on the Fort side, a cavernous, open, two-story, room in a contemporary building, had an exhibition by a Moroccan artist, Mohammed Kacimi. His massive oil and charcoal paintings with a limited palette of ochers, blacks, blues and careful touches of red depicted African peoples, tensions between north and south Africa, between Africans and the French, and relationships of people to land.
In addition to oils on canvas, his work included sculptures, painting on old film boxes, and painting on paper used to cover material imported from France. One canvas spread across an entire wall, maybe 30 feet long, and rising 8 to 10 feet high. We loved his work, particularly his earlier, 1990s works. Though they seemed slightly dated– like NYC 80s and 90s expressionist art – Kacimi’s point of view and color choices, were so evocative. A highlight of our day.
GALLERIES OF MUCEM
The first galleries at MUCEM offered a chronology of the life of an artist famous in France for changing the way archaeology/ethnographic work is exhibited. Beginning with images from the early 1900s, it included a Josephine Baker performance and art from Africa. It put us off. The lack of contextualizing made it feel almost overtly racist.
Two other exhibitions occupied the ground floor: cities of the Mediterranean, which was fascinating, but we didn’t have enough time for it; and a very ambitious exhibit about the history of man. We hated the use of the word man and rushed through this show. In the cities’ exhibit, we learned a little bit about Marseille, the capital of Provence, the third largest city in France, and a city with a reputation as rough, poor, but also laid-back. Marseille has not received its due attention in France, partially because of its location, historically difficult to access by land and thus not as important to French as international traders. It is the busiest port in France.
SMOKE AND PROTEST
At about 5PM, we had coffee at a café near the Christmas Market. An older man and an older couple sat near us; the ground littered with sugar wrappers and discarded receipts. The setting sun lit the sky with brilliant orange and pink.
Marseille is an unruly city, litter strewn, dog shit on sidewalks, graffiti covering many walls, buildings old, ill-kempt and crumbling. The city’s poorest live in the nearby hills in simple apartment buildings, color bleached by the strong southern sun. But in the city itself, a city of immigrants, many Muslim and African, the people mix together with less neighborhood division and no one “look” representing the people of Marseille.
GAS TAX
On this day, President Macron announced the suspension of the gas tax for at least six months. The gas tax, he claimed, helped combat climate change; higher gas prices equalling less gas consumption. But people were angry because the tax negatively impacted the poor not the rich; the rural not the urban. The French don’t like inequality and in Marseille, a city with high unemployment and economic stress, any increased tax on essentials strains on an already vulnerable population. The protests, at first just about the gas tax, expanded to include quality of education and high cost of electricity. To add to people’s frustration and anger, a 20-year-old woman in Marseille died when a rubber bullet hit her in the head, an accidental injury that occurred when she was shutting her window to keep out tear gas. People responded by taking to the streets.
POLICE
While at the café, we watched as a stream of about 30 police vans passed, sirens on, red lights spinning. Other police passed on motorcycles. Ambulances raced up a nearby street. The air smelled of smoke. I checked Twitter and saw photos from very near of students overturning cars and starting fires. People around us didn’t seem the least bit concerned, though a few young people anxiously passed on bikes obviously in route to the protest.
It didn’t take long for a line of police motorcycles to block the street near the Christmas market; police vans parked nose to nose. Police stood outside their vans talking to curious pedestrians. It must be odd to stop a protest when those protesting may be your children or friends and what they’re fighting for might be what you believe in. But it’s hard for us to judge from the outside. We are the “blowins” after all and this is a part of France that supported Le Pen.
The Christmas market lights came on. Holiday music played. The sun set. An old man near us slowly paid his bill and left. And life along the Port seemed normal.
