We’ve come back to Maussane-les-Alpilles again. Apart from being a jolly nice part of Provence, this is largely because, when there is an interesting subject being shown, Francine loves to visit the Carrières des Lumières.
T
he carrière is a huge cavern left behind after blocks of bauxite had been mined in years past. The cavern walls are essentially flat and white making them an excellent projection surface. The floor is also used as a projection surface. Dozens of projectors are positioned to cover the entire cavern. I think you’d probably call this a son et lumière show, beloved of the French. Each year a couple of artists are chosen and their works are animated and projected to accompanying music. This year the main man is Claude Monet, whose works Francine is fond of. So am I, come to that. This wall isn’t one of the flattest used in the show but it’ll give you the general idea.
We chose Friday morning, clambered on our electro-steeds and cycled uphill to the val d’enfer at Les Baux de Provence, a modest journey of about 4kms. We arrived quite soon after opening and before the day’s heat had built up too much. We were surprised to note that this was yet another French attraction with an area to leave bikes but without one single bike stand to lock them to. (The other was the National Lily Collection where Monet became enchanted by lilies.) Curious.There was not yet a large audience; the audience grew as we watched, though.
The show cycles round continuously with breaks of just about a minute between. The “supporting” artist this year was Henri Rousseau, whose artworks depicted, apparently, dreams. I wasn’t especially taken by this shorter section.
Personally, entertaining though the Monet section was, I thought they’d gone a bit overboard on the animations this time, not just animating the changes of images but also animating sections within the images themselves, such as making plant fronds wave and making Monet’s water lily blooms open. I’d rather just see what he painted.
Having watched the show through, we collected our bikes and whizzed back downhill to Mausanne itself.
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