Calvados at Toulouse

Both paintings belong to the same cycle as « Chambre à Collioure » and were painted in Montreal after our 1993 holidays which led us to Toulouse, Albi, Collioure and the Perigord. While in Toulouse, Michèle and I visited Toulouse cathedral and Milos had decided to wait for us in a bistro. He loved to observe the people sitting around him and relaxing a moment from their daily activities as well as the passers-by, and he could stay there for hours with a calvados or a glass of wine or three. The « Calvados à Toulouse » painting is a rare scene in which he painted himself in a concrete social environment, sitting on a classical French bistro table and feeling the time pass by in a kind of observation mood. Please admire also the preliminary sketches to this painting (Sketchbook no 4) on page 102.

The « Calvados at Collioure » painting is another look at himself, quite similar at first sight to the «Toulouse» painting , but much more frank in his deep introspection, his dealing with alcohol and the eternal question of the human condition in particular (see his right hand painted like the hand of a skeleton !). We are in 1993, two years after the outbreak of the war in Yugoslavia which had affected Milos deeply since it was the first war in a European country after WWII – a fact that bore an important symbol (and fear) in the eyes of Milos.

In both paintings, Milos is in his typical outfit consisting of a navy blue Blazer and a blue captains’ cap which he wore all day long throughout the year. As in many other paintings of Milos, in both of them we can sense a more pessimistic look at life, at the world, at the human being, and, last but not least, at himself.

– WN