MARRAKESH - Morocco (part II)

In 1931 he painted the studio in a cobalt blue, the same hue that tinged windows and doorframes in the unknown Berber villages lost in the mountains. This bold colour, little by little, spread all over the other surfaces of the garden, protected by high earth walls: pergolas, fountains, pools, water canals, steps, garden pots.
Now, he privileged the enclosed and silent space of the studio for his paintings and the smooth, naked skin of local women as subject. His abundant production was exposed and highly requested in Europe as locally. He alternated shouting colours to quiet oils, metallic shades to pencil, often following the fashion of the moment and the demand, rather than an original and personal view.

More job waited him outside, those blue walls had transformed the garden in a picture that required firm strokes, new shapes and infinitive shades of green.

Plants came from all over the world. The virus that changes pacific, prudent gardener beginners in fanatic plant collectors had soon infected Monsieur Majorelle. He contacted nurseries and botanic gardens, exchanged seeds, financed plant expeditions, collected plants in the wild ...“Cacti [were] imported from the American Southwest, palms shipped from the South Pacific, succulents from South Africa, and water lilies and lotus collected in Asia…”(1).
He landscaped a garden following his own project and taste, caring about local traditions, free from any nostalgia of European mixed borders, topiary and kitchen gardens.

Tall palms occupy the sky, fat cactus share spacious beds scattered with pebbles and explode with joyful unexpected flowers, eye-catching plants stand as single specimens in privileged corners. Purple bougainvilleas stretch trustfully, screens of bamboos hide geraniums of exaggerated size with enamelled flowers. Unknown plants, with disquieting foliage, silently thrive nourished by the admired glances of pale tourists.
Water refreshes the air, laps the paths flowing in narrow rills, and explodes in jets in geometric fountains, to slow down in quiet angles.
Its different sounds mingle with the twittering of birds and people stifled voices. Introduced by Monsieur Majorelle, turtles and bullfrogs dwell under the canopy of trees.

In a corner there is a small museum: the Museum of Islamic Arts; Monsieur Yves Saint-Laurent transformed the studio in a place where beautiful domestic objects, locally produced, gleam from the shelves.

After Monsieur Majorelle sudden death in 1962 the garden declined for several years until it was rescued by a famous French couturier Monsieur Yves Saint-Laurent that, with his partner Monsieur Pierre Bergè, purchased it in the early 1980s.

They restored and enriched this garden following the idea of a French painter that, in the dappled shade of slender palms, had consecrated the Blue colour.


-to be continued

Notes:
(1) Majorelle, a Moroccan Oasis, Pierre Bergé and Madison Cox, Thames&Hudson, 1999.

Photos:
Travel in a garden.

MARRAKESH - Morocco (part I)

I knew nothing but its name when I entered the gates of the Jardin de Majorelle in an early morning of the late December.

Winter in Marrakesh means cold downs, early sunsets and heavy snow on the close Atlas Mountains. The muezzin wakes up the town; his solemn prayers flutter over a sky that is never cloudy or rainy for long, over flat roofs in terracotta shades bristled with antennas and fluttering clothes. Trades, markets and traffic begin then in a crescendo. By the time tourists leave their elegant riyad, streets will be crowded with carts and buggies, drawn by donkeys driven by men muffled in sombre, pointed djellabah. White, old taxis miraculously avoid careful pedestrians, smoky motorbikes and rusty bicycles. Vegetables are on offer in scanty heaps on stalls or scattered on mats, scanned by still cats lurking in the shadow. Stray, lean dogs rove around butchers’ windows where bodies of male animals are exposed. Impassive glances cross coloured veils, big air-conditioning buses and pinkish dust. Habit breeds indifference: they never rise to sift the squared minaret of the Koutoubya Mosque, they never stop to turn back the world when its surface dazzled in full moon wrapped in ceramics and stuccos.

This is the life, the energy and the light that fascinated Monsieur Jacques Majorelle when he first visited this country in 1917.

Son of Monsieur Louis Majorelle, a famous French furniture-maker who was involved in the development of the Art Nouveau movement in France, he became a painter, after his first studies as architect and decorator. To complete his education, he travelled diffusely to Spain, Italy and Greece lingering in milder climates, kindling creative sparkles. In 1910 he left his native Nancy, France, the snowy, small north-eastern town where ‘700 left tidy squares with impressive golden railings plunged in a persistent scent of vanilla, for Cairo, Egypt. The simple life of ordinary people, who live in the outskirts of the town, as the majestic temples of the High-Egypt became his endless subjects for four years. Here, he experimented with colours and pictorial techniques, with the shape of people and places and with a relentless and untameable sun.

Then, the family friend and Resident-General of France in Morocco, General Lyautey invited him to Marrakesh. The dry, hot climate revealed itself excellent for his poor health and its light inspired and challenged this painter as many other European and American artists in that period. Trailed by ancient tales, shifting his horizons as he travelled southward in the African continent or he faced the Atlas Mountains with bearers carrying easel and trunks, he settled there.

A few years later, he acquired a plot of land outside the Walled Medina, in the Nouvelle Ville; he built a small house and a studio, and spent the rest of his life painting and creating this garden, open to public for the first time in 1947.

Colours, plants, water and animals feature Le Jardin de Majorelle today as when Monsieur Majorelle created it.

He defined himself a “gardenist”, colours were his language. In 1931 he painted the studio in a cobalt blue.

-to be continued

Photos:

Travel in a garden.
The painting: Le souk aux tapis à Marrakech, huile sur toile, M.B.A. de Nancy
Itineraires marocaines, Maurice Arame