You get around a bit and see things and
then you think you have seen it all and cant have your socks blown
off that easily, and then you come across a little gem like La
Piscine.
I had been meaning to go for a decade
and it always seemed a little out of the way and in a part of the
world that you would not normally go to, unless you were in Brugges
and its not far a detour to get there. Its an old industrial town
that the world seems to have forgotten about, it seems to be a bit
smog stained still from its past. Though it has a bit of your usual
French style architecture a lot of it seems heavy and a little
overworked. It seems a little like, well I wouldn't say Bradford,
oops I just did, but I didn’t mean it.
What I meant to say is that
at one time it was a proud place with Civic pride and then the
industry moved out and it fell down the pecking order. What all
places with this past history is trying to do, is re-invent itself.
Bilbao tried it and won. Liverpool copied the idea and failed with
the museum of Liverpool that destroyed some of the cities most
cherished views.
Roubaix has got a more difficult job.
There are no cheap flights there is no tourist industry here and, why
would you want to go there?
Well they have quietly created a gem a
palace of pride in what appears at first drive, a barren wilderness.
And it is wonderful. After the approach
that you take to get there and take in the underwhelming façade of
La Piscine, what is after all a swimming baths, you get inside and it
has everything.
We only had less than two hours but I
wish I had a full day.
I wish I would have been able to eat in the
restaurant with its art Deco wrought iron balustrade that was lit
with the sunlight that flooded in to the structure, through modernist
style sky lights.
Now I have seen a few bits in my time.
Sometimes being at a quality antique fair, I have been able to see
thousands of items of beauty. You can sometimes see better, stuff, than what’s in most museums, especially if you discount how
curators are like pack animals and follow the leader, and buy things
that other curators or art journals say are needed.
There are curators who go out on a
limb, but rather a lot of them fail, and they cant be allowed to fail
because, curators are clever.....aren’t they?
Well this curator who put all this
stuff together was clever. It is one surprise after another. Maybe
its because the theme is Art Deco and French, but maybe its because
they are just bloody good at their job, and have sewn together some
magnificent things that are class, and not too pretentious, but have
an unassuming sense of style, of what the period that I love has to
offer.
We get the term Art Deco as a reworking of the 1925 Exposition Art Decoratif et Industrial in
Paris.
Someone or other, who may have been Bevis Hillier coined it.
This museum is both entertaining
and absorbing.
I sometimes like to think I know a bit but it was a tantalising,
tingling of the senses that ensued that left me amazed. Combined with a sunny day, the sense of
surprise that left me hunting for more. I was so disapointed when I had to leave, as I was
on a work trip and needed to be somewhere else.
I will have to go back. I need to go
back.
Not just for some of the most amazing sculpture in a
beautifully polychrome tiled swimming baths interior that was
designed to be reflective and I don't mean looking back reflective I
mean jewel like.
What it must have been like with water
inside and beautiful French ladies in stylish bathing caps inside and around the pool, in its heyday I can only imagine, and I did.
Here it contains works of art by the
likes of Paul Jouve, and the sculptor PomPom and my favourite,
Rembrandt Bugatti ( the son of the furniture designer and brother of
the car maker). These mix with lesser names that make you question what art
means. There is a Jan Martel.
Can art, by a artist you have never
had pumped up by a writer, be as good as a work by somebody you have
never heard of. I know it can. You cant sell a dud to me.
The ceramics section was encompassing,
not huge.
There were ceramic works designed by the amazing French
furniture designer Emile Jaques Rhulman for Sevres.
Along with works by a
ceramicist whose work I bought new a couple of years back in Lille,
called Amina Roos.
There's the proof that beauty is in
the eye of the beholder.
There are Picasso ceramics and a huge
8ft high pot that defies the art of firing.
Bit it is the way it all melts together
that is the beauty of this place.
I believe they were going to knock
it down one at one time. It is my pleasurethat the did not.
From an age when swimming baths were
palaces designed to be an experience just like cinemas and theatres
were.
There were so many ceramics on show I
have to go back.
I used a whole memory stick photographing nearly
every piece, but I need to go back and have lunch and take my time.
The whole area that houses the
paintings would be worth a trip in itself but the experience of the
whole is remarkable.
There are temporary exhibitions that
are made to be contemporary and to attract people and give the whole
experience a contemporary quality.
Who so ever is running this show has
class and is not afraid to challenge.
Unlike the people running my local
museums they understand that a museum experience should not be
designed to resemble a penny arcade with flashing lights, or a creche
were people can dump the noisy kids on to people who are studious in
their approach to art and may be a little bit more serious than the
“I don't know much about art but I know what I like brigade”
If you ever are within a hundred miles
of this place, La Piscine in Roubaix Belgium, make sure you detour.
I guarantee you.
It will be worth it.
http://www.roubaix-lapiscine.com/
