The forest has inhabited our imagination since time immemorial. Among men and women, artists have had a singular look at trees and forests, sensing their importance and being among the first to defend them, like Théodore Rousseau who, in 1861, obtained the protection of part of the Fontainebleau forest.
In almost all early traditions, there is a cosmic tree, an intermediary between the underworld, the earth and the sky. A tree of life, and later sacred woods, protected sanctuaries and a kind of 'world centre'. Today, the primordial tree and the sacred wood are back in fiction, like the tree-houses in James Cameron's film Avatar (2009), which, among many other signs, can be read as a renewed interest in the primitive in the face of world rationalisation.
Exhibition at the palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille from May 13th 2022 to September 19th 2022
Written in French.
112 pages / 100 illustrations
Éditions Rmn-Grand Palais in partnership with the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille
