French Literature Reviews - 2026
Stéphane Lambert, Tout est paysage
Art and Visual Culture
Tout est paysage
Stéphane LAMBERT
L'Atelier contemporain, 2021
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112 p.
20 EUR
ISBN : 978-2-85035-013-9
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DESCRIPTION :
"Tout est paysage," asserted Dubuffet, "in the sense that everything is composition, everything is a quest for a lost unity, everything is assembled signs, everything is material to be embraced by the gaze, to interrogate the living beyond oneself. What would the world be worth otherwise if left solely in the hands of devastation, if the poetic essence that binds us to it against all odds did not open it to unexpected understandings that reveal nuances other than sheer darkness within the gloom?"
Battlefields plowed by shells during the First World War; regions blown apart and wiped off the map by the atomic bomb; cities devastated yesterday by nuclear disasters and today by climate change... Our gaze has accumulated enough images of destruction for the anxiety of the post-landscape to impose itself upon art.
A collection of scattered texts united from the outset by this singular question, Tout est paysage examines, one after another—starting with Monet's Water Lilies—the works of Twombly, Klee, Tàpies, Mušič, Mondrian, and Morandi as so many possible responses: how did landscape painting and the all-too-aptly named still life reinvent themselves throughout the 20th century in the face of the unprecedented spectacle of the destruction of their subject?
This volume gathers scattered texts addressing the transformation of landscape painting and still life across the twentieth century. Drawing inspiration from Jean Dubuffet's assertion that everything is composition and a quest for unity, the book considers how artists confronted historical and environmental catastrophes. Stéphane Lambert examines how visual culture reacted to devastation, ranging from the shell-scarred battlefields of the First World War and the atomic bomb to contemporary concerns regarding nuclear disasters and climate change.
The collection engages with the works of several major figures in modern art, beginning with Claude Monet's Water Lilies and extending to Cy Twombly, Paul Klee, Antoni Tàpies, Zoran Mušič, Piet Mondrian, and Giorgio Morandi. Each artist's oeuvre is approached as a potential response to the aesthetic anxiety of the post-landscape, investigating how traditional genres reinvented themselves when faced with the systematic obliteration of their subjects. Readers interested in twentieth-century art history, visual representations of catastrophe, and the evolution of landscape painting may find this volume relevant to their inquiries.