French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Le Brun, Un espace inobjectif. Entre les mots et les images
Art and Visual Culture
ANNIE LE BRUN
Un espace inobjectif. Entre les mots et les images
Art and Artists Collection, Gallimard
Published: 21-11-2019
320 p. — ISBN: 9782072843433 -
"I must have been six or seven years old when someone brought me a pop-up edition of Sleeping Beauty from England. Opening the book, I suddenly saw a world blossom between my hands. A light, profound world, a deep blue world. All I wanted was to step inside it. I have never truly returned.
Ever since, I have remained certain that thought has at least three dimensions, unfolding that space where words and images endlessly encounter one another. In hindsight, I realized that I have never sought anything other than this intermediary space, where everything that matters to us takes shape.
A space neither subjective nor objective, but unobjective. Our good fortune is that it falls to certain artists to risk their lives in this game and thus reveal to us the distant horizon that dwells within us. I have watched for every approach to it, singular or plural.
This collection stands at the crossroads of their strange movements. At stake is the unfolding of all thought, finding its form in the space it suddenly brings to life. Today, nothing is more threatened than this paradoxical space.
For how much longer will fairy tales guarantee for us—as Sleeping Beauty did for me—that the grand master of the game continues to be desire in search of itself?" — Annie Le Brun.
View the book on the publisher's website…
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An article about this work can be read on en-attendant-nadeau.fr:
"The Secret of Images", by Alain Joubert (online April 22, 2020)
"A space neither subjective nor objective, but unobjective [...] This refers to the extraordinary sensory revolution that preceded, accompanied, and followed the revolution of 1789. Nothing compares to this immense groundswell that upended Western sensibility, opening up the critical space of the night within the depths of time," announces Annie Le Brun in her introduction to this collection of prefaces and lectures from the past twenty-five years.
Published by Gallimard in their Art and Artists collection, this volume gathers prefaces and lectures written over a twenty-five-year period. Annie Le Brun investigates what she terms an unobjective space—an intermediary realm existing beyond traditional subjective and objective boundaries where thought takes visual and linguistic form. Drawing on a profound engagement with Western sensibility, she examines the ways in which specific artists navigate this terrain, tracing an intellectual tradition deeply informed by the revolutionary currents and sensory transformations that emerged around the late eighteenth century.
This collection will particularly appeal to readers interested in the intersections of art history, literary criticism, and aesthetics, especially those exploring Surrealism and the broader history of modern imagination. By examining how visual and textual expression challenge contemporary utilitarianism, Le Brun defends a space where desire and thought continue to unfold. The book serves as a vital resource for scholars and enthusiasts seeking to understand the enduring power of images and the critical importance of maintaining a poetic relation to the world.