A conference by Agnès Ghenassia

Associate Professor of Fine Arts and Lecturer of Modern and Contemporary Art

Among the proliferation of postures and contemporary artistic practices, painters revisit the tradition of landscape and the gaze on the garden, sculptors imagine hybrid poetic man / nature and ecologically engaged artists try to mobilize the public or react to our collective concerns.

© Philippe Echaroux 2016
Philippe Echaroux went in 2016 to meet a tribe of Indians from the Amazon. By mixing street art and photography, he captured portraits of members of this tribe and projected their faces onto the trees of their forest.

Tuesday December 3rd 2019 at 10h30am

MEMBERS ENTRY FEE : 5€
NON MEMBERS : 7€

Fondation Vasarely
Jas de Bouffan
1 avenue Marcel Pagnol
13090 Aix-en-Provence

A conference by Agnès Ghenassia

Associate Professor of Fine Arts and Lecturer of Modern and Contemporary Art

Long present in Western art in the form of landscape painting, nature had been somewhat absent from the preoccupations of the “avant-gardes”. It made a spectacular comeback in the 1970’s in different forms: Land Art is manifested in the landscape and many artistic interventions take nature both as support and as material. Painting also confronts nature, earth, forest, rocks, garden …
As the history of art is intimately linked to the history of ideas, our relationship to nature has been transformed into a century of romantic contemplation and vigilant anxiety. The new awareness of the fragility of the natural beauties that surround us and their possible disappearance finds an echo in the most recent artistic practices.

Tuesday November 5th 2019 at 10h30am

MEMBERS ENTRY FEE : 5€
NON MEMBERS : 7€

Fondation Vasarely
Jas de Bouffan
1 avenue Marcel Pagnol
13090 Aix-en-Provence

In the twentieth century, being modern meant chasing ornament. So the exclamation “it’s decorative!” Described with contempt a superficial painting, without a real artistic dimension.
How, after having dreamed of a fusion between major and minor arts, have painters managed to deny the decorative dimension of painting? Who resisted this separation and played “on both counts”?
From this conflictual relationship, contemporary artists have often taken with humor putting the decorative, ornamental, even kitsch in the heart of their practice.

Tuesday June 25th 2019 at 10:30 am

Salle Armand Lunel, Bibliothèque Méjanes,
Aix-en-Provence

Nothing is more disturbing to an uninitiated than a monochrome painting, a painting of the absence of representation.
However, the monochrome adventure started in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, then embodied by Yves Klein, has continued to develop, between nihilism and sense of the absolute, to the point of becoming a genre in its own right that is surprisingly rich in plastic and conceptual possibilities.

Tuesday May 28th 2019 at 10:30 am

Salle Armand Lunel, Bibliothèque Méjanes,
Aix-en-Provence

Whether they have themselves first benefited from a scientific background or they need to collaborate with biologists, mathematicians, architects, computer scientists, to implement their projects, some contemporary artists produce works at the crossroads of art and science.
The recent exhibition of Tomas Saraceno at the Palais de Tokyo, for example, is the result of a collaboration between biologists, cosmonauts and philosophers.

Tuseday 19th of March 2019 at 10:30 am

Vasarely Foundation
Aix-en-Provence

Many installations today involve all the senses. While some are technologically complex, others are at the crossroads of DIY and poetry. All aim to enrich the field of our perceptions, taking us away from those that the contemporary world offers us daily.

Tuesday 26th of february at 10:30 am

Vasarely Foundation
Aix-en-Provence