Farewell, Montpellier

On one of our last days in the south of France, we headed to a church we’d seen from afar several times but never gone in.

Surprise! It’s now a place to worship art, not God. A tree with hand cutouts as leaves filled the space, while fans blew gently to make continually changing shadows on the walls. The walls had additional art, all featuring trees with hand leaves. Very cool!

Another church chosen at random as we strolled the alleys of the historic center was still a church, but not what we were expecting.

Outside was another one of those ‘grotto’ fountains. Still not seeing the appeal…

Also seen around town:

We haven’t eaten out much here, but we indulged on Thursday at Le Bistro Urbain. Yum! The presentation is always so amazing, even at a pretty inexpensive restaurant:

From top left, clockwise: shrimp ‘log’, meat pie with mushroom cream, veal with a squash side, skipjack tuna with roasted leeks.

After that tasty lunch, we finally made it to the Musée Fabre, which M definitely wanted to see. A special exhibition of a contemporary painter, Pierre Soulages, covered his whole artistic life, including paintings from those he influenced or who influenced him. It was really interesting to see how his art changed over time, from ink and homemade-walnut-stain abstracts in the 1940s (the only things available during and just after WWII) to larger works, some even with a litlle color (!).

Here’s one that could be a Rorschach test. I see the side of a tropical fish, M sees curtains blowing in the wind…

The permanent collection had many artists we’d never heard of, many of them local. And this guy kept popping up:

We saw at least nine portraits of M. Bruyas. He was an art collector in Montpellier who apparently also liked to sit still for a long time.

And here are M’s favorites:

As we loaded up the car to head north to Tours, we were treated to another beautiful sunrise. So much easier to enjoy when the sun doesn’t come up until 8 am!

And we were trerated to a rainbow on the way out of town. The first one we’ve seen since we saw so many in Norway!