Jeffress Journeys 2017: Une journée spectaculaire

This morning we drove 25 k's to Carrieres De Lumieres in the heart of the Alpilles mountains. Our friend Gayle told us about it and we're certainly pleased we decided to follow up on her suggestion. Set in a former limestone quarry the Carrières can be a little chilly (14° to 16° in the venue) so armed with our jackets and scarves we set off.

The monumental Carrières de Lumières host extraordinary multimedia shows which are unique, it's an extraordinary immersion within art and music. I have posted a promotional video and if you have a look at it, you'll have some idea about the experience. The show we visited was The Fantastic and Wonderful World of Bosch, Brueghel, and Arcimboldo which explores the eclectic world painted by these great artists of the sixteenth century.

When we entered the exhibition I was completely overwhelmed for at least 10 minutes and then calmed down and could soak it all up...we stayed for two viewings! For those interested here is some extra information from the exhibition ...

From Hieronymus Bosch’s most emblematic triptychs, such as The Garden of Earthly Delights, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, and The Hay Wagon, to Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s remarkable compositions of flowers and fruit, and the village festivities depicted by the Bruegel dynasty, the Carrières de Lumières embraces the fascinating worlds of the great masters who represented these animated scenes of life and the duality of a world shifting between good and evil. Their work shares the same excellent facture and incredible inventiveness. Bosch’s hallucinatory imagination and Arcimboldo’s highly creative and improbable faces are complemented by the joyous triviality of Bruegel’s works, whose many figures are inspired by reality.

In this new immersive exhibition, which lasts around thirty minutes and includes more than 2,000 digital images projected on a total surface area of 7,000 m2, the Carrières de Lumières is be filled with innumerable fantastical creatures and allegorical figures. These are depicted spontaneously, and some are frightening and others amusing and caught up in comic situations—all these characters are reflections of the viewers. Man’s vanities, spirituality, pleasures, temptations, and vices are all evident in the landscapes painted with an acute sense of detail by Bosch, Bruegel, and Arcimboldo. The show ends with Bosch’s wonderful Garden of Earthly Delights, inviting visitors to enter a phantasmagorical world. The exhibition's soundtrack oscillates between classical and contemporary music, playing, for example, the famous pieces Carmina Burana, by Carl Orff, The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi, reinterpreted by Max Richter, the works of the Russian composer Modeste Petrovitch Mussorgsky, and music by the British rock group Led Zeppelin.

Some of Andrew's photos...

At times the projections extend to the ceiling.

The projections feature on the floors as well

Part of the space at the end of the show without projections.

From there it's less than a 5 minute drive to the beautiful hilltop village Beux-de-Provence...standing on a spur of rock, the Citadel towers over the surrounding countryside and offers a magnificent view over the Beaux Valley, vineyards and fields of olive trees that extend down to the sea.

Just a few of the hundreds of photos we took...