A Naive Exploration 12-06-25

We’re just bouncing from pillar to post lately. This being Saturday we thought we would go up and see the Roman ruins up in Cimiez, then visit the convent and cemetery where Matisse is buried. Foolish plans as it turns out, the monastery is closed on Saturday. Who ever heard of that?, maybe because it’s winter and low season. That being the case, we pivoted to a visit to the museum we planned for yesterday. It’s the International Museum of Naive Art, Anatole Jakovsky.  The brochure names 18 artists of which I only recognized Karel Appel and Niki de Saint Phalle, then it finishes with the phrase “and anonymous artists’. They’re almost all anonymous artists to me! Once again we were faced with mid-day closing hours so we decided to have lunch first then go over. I made certain that I had my transport pass before we left today.

For lunch we went to the restaurant where we had our first lunch upon arriving in Nice. Maison de Marie which specializes in the cuisine Nicois. It is located down a passageway off of the commercial pedestrian only street with multiple restaurants of every description.  They have a small sign above the passageway and they put out a chalkboard menu listing when they first open. You almost have to know that it’s there if you don’t want to miss it and walk by.  Once you get down the passageway it becomes a medium courtyard.  There they have a foliage covered gazebo with several tables, then a patio with a retractable awning and several more tables. Then the building with an interior dining room and the kitchen. It’s a very nice setup. Today we sat on the awning covered patio. By the time we finished almost every table on the patio was occupied. I think we may have been the only English speakers out there today. One of the charms (or detractions) 

of the patio are the cadre of little sparrows that perform the cleanup duties of anything that hits the floor. And in many cases they will work on an unoccupied table before it has been bused. They are bold and will sit on the back of an unoccupied seat right at your table before you leave. But I’ve never seen them get too brave for their own good. Anyway we shared an appetizer of a house made pate that was outstanding. Then Deb had seared scallops over a bed of roast turnips while I had a plate of linguine in a cream sauce of wild mushrooms and green onions. That was outstanding as well. For dessert I had a ginger flavored soufflé over raspberries with raspberry ice cream served in a small copper pan. Deb had a scoop of coconut ice cream.  

When we finished we walked out to the pedestrian mall and navigated over to where we could catch the bus that parallels the Promenade des Anglais. We rode out to a stop about half way towards the airport before descending near the street leading to the museum.

The museum is a 15 minute uphill walk from the bus stop through a much more bucolic area of the city. Many more trees and lawns, quite a large park, and quite a number of low rise buildings and single villas dotted the neighborhood.  When we arrived for the turnoff leading to the museum it proved to be a 50 meter private drive up to a gate. This was the entrance to the grounds. The museum is located in the building shown at the top of this day’s entry. It belonged to Anatole Jakovsky who was a collector and supporter of artists that fell out of the mainstream art channels. In front of the mansion is a large lawn with several large sculptures adorning the grounds. When we entered the vestibule was chocked full of small

naive paintings done in a salon style presentation. It was so unexpected and charming that we were both smiling at how fun it was.  Once inside there were several exhibition spaces that were works of much greater dimension, but still done in salon style. The rooms had sort of thematic cohesion, but some took more imagination to fit the theme.  As I said before I recognized almost none of the artists, but some were pretty accomplished while others were definitely marching to an internal music known only to them.  The works date from the early to mid-20th century right up to the first part of the 2000’s and included most artistic mediums, though most were paintings.  Many had religious overtones and others were more shamanistic. Still others were completely whimsical and imaginary. Lots of illustrated pageantry with large crowds. There was almost no abstract work shown.

It was after 4:30 when we ended our visit and the last rays of sunshine were high in the trees. We walked back down the hill to the tram line and rode a pretty full train back to the stop nearest our apartment.  Later as I was writing this entry we heard a Saturday night racket outside the window and I happened to look out. There was an evening bicycle parade with bikes decorated in Christmas lights and a boom box blaring. It took them over a minute to pass so I’m betting there were over a hundred riders out having a fun ride. That’s Santa Claus on the right side of the picture.