Perhaps it’s our historical ties, but we in South Louisiana seem particularly inclined to romanticize France. So it’s nice be reminded by one artist’s project that, for some French visitors at least, the feeling is mutual.
In March the Parisian artist Alexandre de Broca left his home to spend two weeks traveling U.S. Highway 61 through the rural South. But as de Broca explained in an email, he found his eye drawn less to the famous landmarks of America’s Blues Highway and more to the forgotten vignettes and unexpected moments of quiet humility encountered in small towns and along the rural roads of South Louisiana and southwest Mississippi. With little more than sketchbook, brushes, a folding chair, and a knack for meeting strangers, de Boca spent two weeks capturing the lush dishevelment of our rural landscapes and their whimsically disintegrating manmade elements in emotionally arresting detail.
“America is a very strong attractive country to me,” wrote de Broca. “I lived in New York City and L.A. But last year I was searching for a new adventure, new places to paint. At this moment I never stop listening to Seasick Steve, a great white bluesman from Mississippi. In his songs he talks about his life traveling around the South. I made a little search and found Route 61. Never heard about it, and I discover that even some American friends also ignore this road. But this is part of the history of America, from New Orleans, to Chicago, it cross [sic] from south to north, it was one of the most important roads that black slaves used to get freedom. I had to see it by myself.”
So de Broca came to the rural roads and parking lots of Mississippi and Louisiana to paint ‘portraits’ of the gas stations, worn-out trailers, disintegrating shacks, and abandoned cars that are as much a part of our region’s visual identity as are its cypress swamps, grand plantations, and famous juke joints. De Broca’s pencil sketches and acrylic paintings capture a rarely celebrated side of Southern landscapes with an honesty and appreciation that renders them more striking for being seen through his visitor’s eyes. “You can find a hundred books on New Orleans, Memphis,” he wrote. “You can find pictures of famous places, famous bluesmen, tourist attractions. I wanted to stop and paint where nobody looks, to go the opposite way, to stop where there is nothing in a touristic [sic] guide, to paint what is not “nice” and “cute.” I think that old houses, abandoned places and dead cars have something special, like a soul. With time all those dead, manufactured things get special character. For me, painting those things is like painting portraits. I wanted to paint where blues music is really born.”
Back in Paris, Alexandre de Broca has assembled the images from his Route 61 adventure to create a small, beautiful book named Lost Roads of Louisiana. In its pages, the artist’s loose-lined sketches and jauntily asymmetrical acrylics capture scenes from towns like Natchez, Woodville, St. Francisville, St. Martinville, and New Iberia, and the roads around them. At once exotic and comfortingly familiar, this is a visual love story—an homage painted to the places we all take for granted, that reminds us that it’s worth taking a second look, especially when you can look through someone else’s eyes. See more at route61louisiana.blogspot.fr.
