You are a tree! From fascination to representatioN
There are billions of trees on earth. They are said to be part of the solution to the climate crisis. They surround us, protect us. We love them, we venerate them. These vegetal beings that soar, vertical, towards the sky and that hold on to the earth, look like us. There is man in the tree, as there is tree in man.
Is it for this reason that they have fascinated us for thousands of years? The botanist explorers of the 16th century marvelled at them and drew up a truly astonishing list. Since the Middle Ages, scientists have been describing and classifying them. The artists go to meet them, in the XIXth century, as one goes to visit a friend in the forest of Fontainebleau.
Some artists used their own personalities to invent the modern landscape. Others are inspired by the random lines of their branches to move towards abstraction. As if the tree thought in us, by us and with us, its representations. Contemporary artists, some of them associated with scientists, exalt this proximity. The thematic path of the exhibition proposes to follow, from the Middle Ages to the present day, our journey into the trees through the images produced by science and those produced by artists.
Curator of the exhibition: Thierry Grillet
