An authoritative new publication that revisits Munch’s work in its entirety. Edvard Munch occupies a pivotal place in artistic modernity. His work is permeated by a singular vision of the world, with a powerful symbolist dimension that goes beyond the masterpieces he created in the 1890s, and which gives his art a great coherence. For Munch, humanity and nature were united in the cycle of life, death and rebirth, which is reflected in the unending recurrence of certain motifs and colour combinations in his work. He wrote: ‘These paintings, which are, admittedly, relatively difficult to understand, will be […] easier to grasp if they are integrated into a whole.’ Published to accompany the major exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, Edvard Munch: A Poem of Life, Love and Death presents about a hundred works – paintings, drawings, prints and engraved blocks – reflecting the diversity of Munch’s practice. Seven essays explore the artist in his philosophical and scientific milieu and the places that shaped the man and his art, as well as offering a rare glimpse of Munch’s attempts at creative writing. They also examine the historical evolution of his monumental Frieze of Life series and the world-famous Scream. This publication invites readers to revisit the painter’s work in its entirety by following the thread of an ever-inventive pictorial thinking: a vision that is both fundamentally coherent, even obsessive, and at the same time constantly renewed.

By using an older form of technology, French artist Éric Antoine strips away modern-day conceits in the quest for simplicity, solitude, and core truths. The works speak to the passage of time but also to a sense of timelessness. Useful Lies brings together several series among the last he produced. Aside from a single cardboard box in Les Intrus - a series that highlights the human body and the fragility of shelter - nothing in the photographs dates them. And yet, his framing and cropping are entirely modern, subverting any suggestion of nostalgia. These are not attempts to replicate nineteenth-century photographs but rather forays into unchartered territory that use the past to draft new stories. The collodion process also helps visually convey the feeling of being caught between two forces: the drive toward perfection and the desire to embrace flaws. More specifically, Antoine is drawn both to German New Objectivity of the 1920s, with its rejection of Expressionism, and to the movement known as pictorialism. His medium dovetails with his interest in New Objectivity by allowing for great precision and very fine detail. At the same time, the process is highly pictorial in that the artist essentially paints the glass plate with a sensitive coating, which pools and drips and must be controlled. This tension between exactitude and imperfection opens up the works, creating scenes that are both true to nature and evocative of their own realities.

In the 1970s, in the region of the Landes, between Bayonne and Peyrehorade, on the banks of the Adour River, the photographer Jeannette Leroy and the art dealer Paul Haim created a sculpture garden around a modest farm, La Petite Escalere. With the help of the faithful gardener Gilbert Carty, amidst canals, bridges, paths made of railway ties, and many trees and flowers, they installed about 50 works, some of them monumental, by artists such as Rodin, Maillol, Niki de Saint Phalle, Zao Wou-Ki, Francoise Lacampagne, Cardenas, Mark Di Suvero, Leger, Matta, Zigor... Paul positioned the sculptures, and to help them vanish into the natural environment Jeannette would plant a shrub, a rosebush, dahlias, an oak, a maple, a gingko, a Caucasian walnut... "I don't want this garden to become ridiculous!" she said. Paul Haim has evoked the bewitching beauty of La Petite Escalere better than anyone else: "The nonchalant visitor will pass from the shade of Les Barthes to the brightness of the Moura, from the freshness of the fountains to the suffocating heat of the forest. Coming around a bush, he allows himselfto be surprised by an unusual presence. Immutable. ... Far from the agitations of the world, sinking into nothing-ness, watching the clouds go by, contemplating the places of joy." Text in English and French.