Winter is well and truly here, with its short, cold days and snow… But that’s no reason to hibernate or stay under the covers! It’s the perfect season for making discoveries, as there are often fewer tourists around. Winter is also a great time to visit exhibitions and museums far from home, under slightly milder skies…
So, taking advantage of a little break from Mademoiselle Bon Plan, I will first take you on a tour in the North, to the Musverre in Sars-Poteries, to meet the British artist Sally Fawkes. Then, we will head to the Central region of Portugal, where the Vista Alegre Museum will reveal its exceptional porcelain collection, not far from the truly incredible Aliança Underground Museum.
Finally, we will take a giant leap across the Atlantic to Havana (Cuba), where we will discover the Rafael Villares exhibition at La Factoria, and then, in Jamanaitas in the near suburbs, the astonishing folk art creation of Fusterlandia. The Cuban capital is celebrating its 500th anniversary this year, and its major International Biennial of Contemporary Art will be held there in May.
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Sally Fawkes at the Musverre in Sars-Poteries
This British artist was invited for a residency in this splendid temple of glass to forge links between her work and the Avesnois region, a theme dear to the museum’s curators. She came to stay in the region several times, taking long bicycle rides along the paths and through the villages.
Camera and sketchbook in hand, she observed the landscapes, architecture, inhabitants, history, and local activities. She soaked it all in, gradually imbuing her works with a multitude of details that no one here pays attention to anymore.
From ordinary life, Sally has captured the wonderful, in tune with her poetic and blissful temperament. Here, it is the networks of paths, hedges, spherical trees, or the yellow markers for hikers that her glass paintings preserve as memories. There, the church steeple bulbs or sculpted facade anchors which, as if by magic, transform into translucent pebbles meant for children’s hopscotch.
A sober and poetic body of work that you must hurry to discover before it returns across the Channel. You can also admire the permanent collection, filled with glass masterpieces, each more surprising than the last.
“Vice Versa” by Sally Hawkes, until February 17, 2019
Musverre
76 avenue du Général-de-Gaulle, 59216 Sars-Poteries
Tel: +33 3 59 73 16 16
Open every day from 11 am to 6 pm except Monday
Rates: €6 / group rate (at least 10 people) €4
Free for under 26s and on the 1st Sunday of the month
The Tip: individual guided tour and free demonstrations (2 euros for those entering for free)
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The Porcelain Museum at Vista Alegre
This museum, of exceptional richness (30,000 pieces) and recently renovated, magnificently bears witness to the history of porcelain in Portugal and more specifically at Vista Alegre. The first factory dedicated to this art opened here in 1824.
It belonged to José Ferreira Pinto Basto, a wealthy merchant who owned a fleet of ships and held the monopoly on tobacco and soap. He led this business with complete independence and dynamism. At the time, the factory included ten kilns and employed about a hundred workers.
Through the rooms, we first discover the glass and powdered stone pieces that preceded porcelain, a Chinese specialty whose recipe was only discovered in Europe in 1709. Following are pieces from all eras and styles, sometimes classic, sometimes French-style, sometimes humorous… With a special section for animals, lithophanes, chinoiserie, grand prizes, sculptures, and ceremonial porcelain.
At the end of the tour, we can take a look at the hand-painting workshop, which still exists and showcases the patience and talent of the current “skilled hands.”
We won’t leave the premises without taking a walk around the estate, which is occupied by a beautiful collection of yellow and white buildings. They bear witness to the way worker life was conceived at the time, on a paternalistic model: everyone lived there and could enjoy various services with their family, such as a nursery, infirmary, cafeteria, sports club, theater, or mass in the chapel…
The latter, a little baroque jewel, is an absolute must-see with its painted earthenware tiles, frescoes, and sculpted altarpiece. And if you had to stay, the very beautiful Montebelo Vista Alegre Ilhavo hotel is housed within these historic walls. It’s worth a visit just like a museum!
Museu Vista Alegre
Lugar de Vista Alegre, 3830-292 Ilhavo, Portugal
Tel. +351 234 320 628
Open from Monday to Sunday, 10 am to 7:30 pm (from May to September). From 10 am to 7 pm (from October to April)
Adult rate €6 / 6-17 years and students rate €3 / family rate (2 adults and at least 2 children under 18) €16
Free admission for children under 6 years old
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The Aliança Underground Museum in Sangalhos
This museum is a truly unusual place, the folly of a slightly “megalomaniacal” billionaire: Jor Berardo. A compulsive art collector and wine lover, he bought the Aliança vineyards and cellars in 2007, and in the latter, which offer several hundred meters of underground corridors, he presents his incredible collection.
You can find minerals and natural crystals, fossilized wood, and fossilized fish from 350 million years ago (the largest collection in the world), arranged on the walls in a sometimes whimsical fashion.
African art also invites itself into these places, such as these astonishing phallic ceramics of the Bura-Asinda-Sika culture dating back 1500 years. Or the astonishing collection of contemporary sculptures from Zimbabwe. All this glowing in the twilight with an extraordinary effect of accumulation.
Then there are the ancient ceramics, silverware, furniture (a 16-meter-long table), and 18th-century French or Portuguese azulejos that enter the battle, adding a touch of refinement! The path also has its aisles of bottles stacked by the thousands, the highlight of which is the brandy cellar, an underground cathedral where barrels pile up as far as the eye can see.
This rather unusual stroll, where one expects to see Dracula appear around a corner, can be done as part of an event, a banquet, or as a simple visitor. It can finish, of course, with a tasting of wines, including the first blue wine created in the world.
444, rua do Comercio, 3781-908 Sangalhos, Portugal
Tel.: +351 234 732 045 / +351 916 482 226
Email : www.aliança.pt-visitas@alianca.pt
1.5-hour tours (with a guide only) every day at 10 am, 11:30 am, 2:30 pm, and 4 pm
Entrance: €3 per person
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Rafael Villares at La Factoria in Havana
It is in a small street in Old Havana that you will find La Factoria, an institution dedicated to art and design, which is interested in everything from the 50s furniture of Clara Porcet to the most contemporary art.
This sort of small Cuban Beaubourg, installed in a superb metallic architecture on two floors, has nothing to envy the international institutions of the same type. Because while contemporary creation is not necessarily what one comes to see in Cuba, it has a large place in this country which possesses excellent, inventive, and very well-trained artists.
Rafael Villares is one of them and proposes here an ecological reflection on our landscapes, our elements, and our planet. With a very conceptual language and under very scientific guises, the artist muddies the waters a bit. In fact, everyone remains free to interpret the works as they wish, letting themselves be carried by their undeniable beauty.
It is about maritime landscapes, river deltas, hydronymic drawings, geographic maps, but also submarine sonars, topographic surveys of islands destined to disappear…
In Creative Geopolitics, the artist invites everyone to make a ball with a map of the world to recreate it, as if they could change the order of things with a snap of their fingers and reinvent our planetary future. A utopia we would like to believe in…
Exhibition “Divergences: liquid paradigm”, until February 28
La Factoria
308 O’Reilly Street, between Habana and Aguiar Streets
Old Havana, Cuba
Tel.: +53(0)78 610 791
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Fusterlandia in Jamanaitas, near Havana
A very beautiful surprise, this house-museum with its colorful and quite delirious decor, reminiscent of Gaudi’s Park Güell or the Facteur Cheval’s Ideal Palace. It is the creation of José Fuster, an inventive septuagenarian who, for thirty years, has dedicated himself to this grand work with passion, accumulating sculptures and mosaics on every wall within reach.
From the pool to the studio, and from the stairs to the terraces, it is a grand ballet of characters, fish, palm trees, mermaids, Santeria saints, with here and there quotes from Alejo Carpentier or Hemingway. Dubuffet, Brancusi, Picasso, Chagall, or Miró, whom the artist discovered during a trip to Europe, are in turn summoned and associated with elements of local culture and the Cuban sun. To our greatest delight!
The artist says he used the sale of his works of art to carry out this project, and in fact, a small gallery is integrated into the site.
Before leaving, you must tour the village where the family doctor’s house and those of the neighbors have also been decorated, offering the most beautiful echo to the old colorful cars in circulation in the country. Thrilling!
Fusterlandia
Jaimanitas (a quarter of an hour from Old Havana), Cuba
Tel.: +53(0)72 712 932
Open every day from 9:30 am to 4 pm
Information: Cuba Tourist Office
2 passage du Guesclin, 75015 Paris
Tel.: +33 1 45 38 90 10
Photo credits: Valérie Collet
