Picasso in Ivory Coast? A village tells of its brush with the artist

“I’m sure! I tell you, he came. I saw him!” insists Soro Navaghi, keen to extinguish any doubts about Picasso’s visit to a small Ivorian village famed for its painted textiles. Whether in tourist brochures or online, it is not unusual to find references to Picasso’s reputed visit to Fakaha, a remote village in northern Ivory Coast, some 650 kilometres (400 miles) from Abidjan, the economic capital. French travel guide Petit Fute describes Fakaha as “internationally renowned” for its hand-spun cotton cloth which is painted by the Senufo people and that once “charmed a certain Picasso as he paid a discreet visit to the region at the turn of the century.” A whole mythology has grown up around the question of Africa and Picasso, who never spoke of having been to Fakaha. For the artist who once provocatively brushed off the subject

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Merill Comeau: From conception to creation

Merill Comeau creates installations, murals and garments. She uses the concept of disruption and reordering to build stories exploring memory, repair, regeneration and women’s experiences. Merill makes comment on societal expectations for sexual and emotional expression in her work. Her pieced fabric compositions explore historical and contemporary women’s roles such as the toil of the maker, the privilege of the wearer, the job of mothering and how to be a ‘good’ daughter.

Merill has shown her art in over seventy exhibitions including at the Danforth Museum of Art, the Fuller Museum of Craft and the Fitchburg Museum of Art. She has facilitated over thirty collaborative community art projects and has received grant support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Covenant Foundation.

Merill has received residencies three times at the Weir Farm National Historic Site in Connecticut. She has also completed residencies at Hambidge Center for Art and Science in Georgia, Acadia National Park in Maine, Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland and the Vermont Studio Center. In addition, she lectures about fibre art in a post-modern context, creates work in healing groups and social justice communities and provides demonstrations of her techniques.

In this interview, read about how Merill drew upon memories of her childhood and her mother’s influence to create an installation titled ‘Family of Origin’, which explores universal themes including trying to make sense of our lives and the influence of our family. In this work, she stitched together snippets of fabric to represent the re-ordering and retelling of childhood narratives and the mending of wounds.

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Inrap archaeologists discover an Etruscan tomb in a hypogeum in Aleria

A team of Inrap archaeologists is currently excavating an Etruscan tomb in AleriaLamajone (Corsica). This excavation, curated by the State (DRAC Corsica), first uncovered two road sections and an Etruscan and Romain necropolis. The discovery of a hypogeum—an underground burial chamber dug into the rock—led to a prescription for further excavation. This unusual research undertaken by the State contributes to our knowledge of Etruscan funerary practices, the Antique occupation of Corsica, and the diversity of its exchanges with the Mediterranean world. A few hundred meters from the Antique city, the excavation of the necropolis, surrounded by circulation routes, extends across one hectare. The state of preservation of the Antique burials is remarkable despite the acidic soil in Corsica, which usually destroys bones. Several funerary practices are represented: inhumation in pits, masonry coffins, studded wood coffins, funeral pyres,

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15th century painting 'Madonna of the Pomegranate' confirmed as Botticelli

A painting long thought to be a later imitation of Sandro Botticelli’s famous Madonna of the Pomegranate has been revealed to be a rare example by the artist’s own workshop, English Heritage has revealed today. The discovery was made while the painting was being cleaned by the charity’s conservators. The work’s true colours – hidden under more than a century of yellow varnish – will be revealed when it goes on display at Ranger’s House in Greenwich on 1 April. Bought by diamond magnate Julius Wernher in 1897, Madonna of the Pomegranate (Madonna della Melagrana) (c.1487) is the closest version of the famous masterpiece by the Florentine master Botticelli, now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Showing the Madonna and Christ Child flanked by four angels, the title refers to the pomegranate that is held by the Madonna

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