With all of the cultural activites shut down because of Covid, there was lots of time to draw. People were very excited to get out of the house and pretend everything was ok.
Way back in the Jurassic age we went to Bordeaux. It was a funny time — June 2020. Covid had been raging for three months but news started to leak out that the end of the pandemic was nigh.
If only!
We had been chewing our knuckles for a while and we thought we might venture out to see how the world was doing, while it was legal. France had a pretty rigid movement restriction which had been temporarily lifted. Driving down to Bordeaux seemed like a good idea. There were many Covid rules, but lots of people —particularly the young — were brazenly walking around without masks. You wore masks in stores, and restaurants had tables a meter apart. The hotel manager was over the moon to see us. “This must be the turning point!” he chirruped.
If only.
Bordeaux is a beautiful town and is one of the central hubs of the French wine industry. In normal times you can visit wineries and go to tasting classes. All of this was closed down along with the theaters and museums. We did the best we could under the circumstances – spending our time wandering the streets and hanging out in cafés, which was not so bad. I managed to do a watercolor of a splendid North African market over in front of the Basilique Saint Michel (see page 6). You can see that mask wearing was not comprehensive.
When you visit French cities on the western coast of the country you start to recognize the lasting impact of the early trade routes, including the slave trade. Bordeaux is a port on an estuary that leads out on to the Atlantic. Ships from Africa would stop off on their way to the Americas. There are beautiful old administrative buildings, wide squares, and elegant town houses, all dating suspiciously back to those times when human trafficking was a lucrative concern for a number of European countries.
In commemeration of this very dubious time, Haiti donated a bust of Toussaint Louverture, the great rebel slave leader. A statue of the slave Modeste Testas was also commissioned, among other public art displays.
Some streets are named after ship owners and traders who were involved in the trade. Instead of changing the names of the streets, explanatory plaques were put up to place these creatures in their
creepy historical context. Perhaps we can learn a thing or two from history, though honestly they could maybe add some adjectives, like “horrendous” or “atrocity”.
This is a very touchy subject. I’m glad Bordeaux is being more open about acknowledging it’s history. This is a good article with more details.
We enjoyed our trip. The plan is to go back soon and do a wine tour with wine tastings and wine baths — a sort of real thing! Read about it here.
In retrospect it was a miracle that neither of us got Covid, though maybe we did and we avoided a full blown case.
Covid times were pretty grim. It’s no fun to revisit them. But we can’t forget what happened, and maybe we could learn a thing or two for the next time there is an international pandemic?
If only. Lmc
This article appears in the June 2023 issue of Living & Painting in France. To get your subscription click here. It’s free!