TRAVELING IN STYLE : THE GHOST WHO SHIMMERS IN THE VALLEY OF GOLD

‘Picasso dead! Listen to me--here in Vallauris, Pablo Picasso is dead like Sharespeare is dead at Stratford. He walks in every street, he winks at our young women, he drinks our wine, he honors the clay of our region. I know people who whisper they’ve seen him as recently as yesterday . . .’

He died 14 years ago, on a Sunday morning--April 8, 1973--in his unpretentious hillside house above the French Mediterranean, four miles inland from Cannes. It was (as I so well remember) on a typical Riviera springtime Sunday of wild bright wind and cobalt skies that our cook raced breathlessly upstairs to tell us her radio had intoned, “Pablo Picasso died in the night.” Nobody could accept or quite believe it. I got the car out and Margaret, my wife, and Gina, our Italian cook, and I drove down to early Mass at Mougins village. We then walked along the narrow roadway to the locked gate of Picasso’s property to peer up the slope of garden toward the ivy-covered walls of the house the way you might look at a religious painting in a country chapel.

Nothing stirred at the house--nothing that you could see. The great good genius of a man had died only hours ago, but all the hillside lay tranquil in the sun. A few birds chirped; nothing more. Picasso’s chauffeur did not appear; no automobile either came or went. So after a while we walked back to our car and headed home to Plascassier, a 15-minute drive inland toward the high mountains; and there Gina, looking stunned, saying little, served a simple lunch on the sheltered terrace.

They took him to be buried a few days later near Aix-en-Provence, 100 miles to the west. But if today his ghost walks anywhere--as I am convinced it does--it walks not at Aix, not at Mougins, maybe sometimes on the slope of Montmartre in Paris, but most often (this is my personal opinion) in little Vallauris (population 21,200 or so). It was the place that Pablo Picasso loved so much because he’d worked so tranquilly there, because he had been so happy in the eminently civilized, sunlit village that paid him respectful, understanding homage but mostly let him alone.

Picasso ! At Vallauris you sense his presence in the air, in each narrow street, in every pottery shop. A few weeks ago Margaret and I went back to Vallauris, as a sentimental journey--first time in 10 years or so--to see what had changed; and though nothing had changed very much, everything had changed somewhat. More people, more automobiles, fewer horses, more cafes, far less parking space along the Avenue de Grasse, potters’ shops overflowing onto main-street walkways, with wares that were more or less lurid imitations of the Picasso ceramic styles, the designs he called to life at the pottery called Madoura when he lived in the town during the ‘40s and ‘50s. Still very much a heaving crush of humanity and dogs is the open-air market in the central square, fronting on the Picasso Museum and surrounding the master’s bronze statue of Man and Sheep. (Since there are more people these days, of course there are more dogs.) If I were urgently determined to see the ghost walking, it’s here in the marketplace on a Saturday morning that I would look for him.

Longtime friends in Mougins had told us that a new and quite good little restaurant had opened its doors recently not far from town center. So we hailed a gendarme on duty at the market and said, “We’ve been away a dozen years or so, officer, and now it’s lunchtime and we’re hungry. Tell us, please, where do we find the restaurant Gousse d’Ail , and what’s your opinion of it?”

“It’s good,” the policeman said. “Best in town. Just turn up the avenue here; it’s not far. Ask the chef about his rognons de veau sauce Madere , if you like kidneys. By no means miss his babas au rhum ; he has a special genius with babas , that fellow. Bon appetit .”

Perhaps not quite everybody is familiar with babas au rhum, named ages ago to honor Ali Baba of “A Thousand and One Nights.” They’re unleavened-dough cakes soaked in a heavenly rum-flavored sugar syrup--not for the very young. Well, at the Gousse d’Ail (which translates to clove of garlic), the kidneys were available and savory; we backed them up with a modest bottle of Bandol rouge , exactly right. The chef’s touted babas were as flavorful as an Oriental bazaar. Then Margaret said, “Let’s go see the ‘War and Peace’ again.”

Two blocks down the hill we spotted our gendarme. “We had the babas ,” we said, and he grinned. (He was a very nice policeman.) “And now we’re off to the museum; we haven’t been there since Picasso died.”

It was the wrong thing to say. “You call Picasso dead?” the gendarme blurted. “Listen to me--here in Vallauris, Picasso is dead like Shakespeare is dead at Stratford. He walks our streets, he winks at our young women, he drinks our wine, he honors the clay of this region. He brought our potters the inspiration that drives them even now. I know people who whisper they’ve seen him as recently as yesterday.”

I caught my breath. “ Monsieur le gendarme ,” I said, “I agree, and if the world knew what your people know, the whole world would say the same. Picasso lives in Vallauris.”

Actually, the town has profited from three invasions in recorded history the Romans, the Moors and Pablo Picasso. The Romans brought Christianity; the Moors introduced buckwheat and the date palm; Picasso’s gifts were artistic design and prosperity. By creating and decorating clay plates, pitchers, and exotic figures in fashions (and forms) most unorthodox, he sparked a great upsurge of tourist interest--and money cascaded into the town’s pockets.

Roman soldiers, history says, long ago found golden pebbles in a nearby stream, thereupon dubbing the region Vallis Aurea --the Valley of Gold. Wishful thinking. When nugget-hunting ran dry, people planted grapes, which of course made wine, better than gold for local drinking but not worth much in the export market. Some centuries later, Vallauris turned to the rich red clay of the valley in hope of at least a meager living. Potteries multiplied; tall chimneys grew. The smoke of wood-burning kilns clouded the sky--no good for grapes, but who cared? Soaring sales of terra-cotta kitchenware to all corners of France enabled enterprising townsfolk to drink vintage Bordeaux. But for a while only. Technical advances everywhere--the development of cheap aluminum and other metals--ended the Vallauris boom. Potteries closed, the nasty smoke blew away, the golden sunlight of Provence returned.

Then one day in 1946, Pablo Picasso drove uphill from the beach. Exploring. Poking around.

It was Picasso’s first visit to the town, to the pottery called Madoura and his first meeting with Madame and Monsieur Ramie, the proprietors, whose work in pottery impressed and delighted him. Slapdash, the master himself decorated a few plates of fired clay and appeared to like the feel of them. Then he shook hands all around and went back to his beach at Golfe-Jaun. But the next year, 1947, he returned, moved by who knows what whim, to learn the art of ceramics, to test his genius in this --for him--new medium.

The rest is history. Beginning with the Picasso apprenticeship at Madoura, the eyes of artistic France focused on Vallauris, potters arrived en masse. “Town of a Hundred Potters,” the Office of Tourism called it; today, that’s probably a short count.

The outsized bronze, “Man and Sheep,” arrived from Paris one day as Picasso’s gift to the community. It was first installed in the ancient, unused chapel off the market square where it fitted not at all: too big. So it was shifted into the square and in August, 1950, was blessed with bunting, music and windy speeches. Picasso presumably approved, because he was quoted as saying that the village dogs could now water it at will.

But that left the little vaulted chapel empty, and Picasso hated an empty wall. Late in 1952 he devoted two months of driving concentration to accomplish his painting “War and Peace,” a huge composition on wood panels expressing the artist’s vivid abhorrence of war and his partiality to peace. The windowless barrel vault is a stunning tunnel of Picasso, walls and ceiling enveloping the spectator. Nobody goes away unmoved.

Picasso originals--ceramics in limited editions, everything numbered--can be seen (and for a price acquired) at Madoura Pottery, in the town center just off the main street, closed on Saturdays. It’s more museum than shop. For the rest, the many potters of Vallauris, a few first-class, include Capron Carambe, Carenne, Le Dauphin, Girelli and Jean-Louis Depetris. Something of Picasso’s influence is visible at almost every turn, by no means always felicitous but each in its way a touching tribute to the master--the flattery of imitation. It’s here, in these swarming shops, that you might say his ghost most visibly walks.

( Krauss travels extensively from his home in Ojai. )

--SIDEBAR --

IN AND ABOUT VALLAURIS

Alert travelers discover early on that the bustling village of Vallauris possesses no hotel of much merit and only a single restaurant of charm, the aforementioned Gousse d’Ail. But this historic region of Provence, east and west of Vallauris, is indeed singularly rich in lotus-land hotels, plus a bevy of restaurants serving up exceptional delights renowned throughout France. All are expensive. All give money’s worth. Reservations are always de rigueur in both hotels and restaurants.

The hotels:

HOTEL DU CAP D’ANTIBES, five miles from Vallauris, with 100 rooms and 10 impeccable apartments, flowering gardens on a magic seaside. A proud chateau with a history of lofty patronage. Telephone: 61.39.01.

HOTEL CARLTON, at Cannes on the Mediterranean promenade, four miles from Vallauris, 300 rooms and 30 apartments, headquarters for the fun-loving cinema aristocrats who patronize the annual Cannes Film Festival, but calm and prideful in other seasons. Telephone: 68.91.68.

HOTEL NEGRESCO, on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais overlooking the usually blue Bay of Angels, grandest resort hotel along the pearl-necklace shore. Decorations are variously 18th Century, Empire, Napoleon III, the atmosphere richly tranquil. Somebody is always at attention to open the door for you. Telephone 88.39.51.

HOTEL DE PARIS, Monte Carlo’s wonderful (and mannered) palace, where the luxury is so subdued you hardly notice it. Here milords meet for a nip before crossing the avenue for a toss at the casino. Telephone: 50.80.80.

MAS D’ARTIGNY, deluxe resort hotel in the countryside, 10 miles uphill from Antibes, a formula of flowers and instant service inducing restfulness. Fifty-two very nice rooms; 29 suites, of which 25 (at last count) have private pools. Telephone: 32.84.54.

CHATEAU DU DOMAINE ST.-MARTIN at Vence, in the scented hills 12 miles above Antibes, very much at the heart of Matisse country. Fifteen rooms and 10 villas, with superb views of the coast, and, of course, easy access to the Matisse Chapel. Telephone: 58.02.02.

And of restaurants, (our favorite six these many years):

MOULIN DE MOUGINS at Mougins, Monsieur Verge, proprietor and chef. Three well-deserved Michelin stars. M. Verge’s thyme-flavored, small, round cuts of lamb--the noisettes --are worth the whole journey. Reserve. Telephone 75.78.24.

PAVILLON EDEN ROC, at Cap d’Antibes, affiliated with the Hotel du Cap, balances on a platform of rock above a blue pool at edge of blue sea; the napery is princely, as is the food. Memorable. Telephone: 61.39.01.

LA BONNE AUBERGE, in the direction of Nice on the road out of Antibes, is famous for seafood, Provencal wines. Telephone 33.36.65.

L’OASIS at La Napoule-Plage, five miles west of Cannes, M. Outhier, proprietor and chef. Crowned with three Michelin stars. Shaded, patio with flowers for summer visitors. Telephone: 49.95.52.

CHANTECLER, restaurant of the Negresco, on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais, with lovely specialties of fresh salmon in season, fillet of lamb. Two stars. Cassis, rouge or blanc , is the drink to order here. Telephone 88.39.51.

SALLE EMPIRE in the Hotel de Paris at Monte Carlo is a highly mannered restaurant with authentically regal style. Some people tend to whisper here. I forget how many great bottles are housed in the cellar--thousands. Telephone: 50.80.80.