Paysage 

Curator: This riot of colors immediately gives the impression of something bursting with energy! A visual symphony in impasto. Editor: Indeed. The painting we're looking at, titled "Paysage" by Charles Lapicque, is an intriguing example of mid-century modernism in oil on canvas. Notice how Lapicque uses bold, unnaturalistic colors to depict a landscape. It certainly challenges our traditional notions of the genre, doesn't it? Curator: Absolutely. The brushwork, heavy with paint, speaks volumes. You can almost feel the artist's hand, wrestling with the materiality of the oil. This landscape is less about the visual reality of nature and more about the process, the labor of constructing an image. I am drawn to this sense of 'making'. What can we glean, in this construction, about the artist's process or about the status of landscape in Post-War Europe? Editor: Precisely! The very structure—or rather, the apparent lack thereof—invites a closer inspection. Consider how Lapicque deliberately avoids traditional perspective. Instead, he presents us with overlapping planes of color, creating a dynamic, almost dizzying effect. This rejection of conventional representation, it feels radical. Look how the blue for the trees are not naturally true! What's communicated by this divergence? Curator: Well, from a materialist perspective, this rejection of conventional perspective is vital. It pulls the landscape into abstraction and allows for us to refocus not on a mimetic window onto nature, but an opening to labor. He also questions the division between craft and high art, since his landscapes embrace artifice so readily, as does so-called decorative craftwork! It also makes me think of how the availability and standardization of oil paints, allowed this "impression" or application possible. It would be nearly impossible, without. Editor: That's a wonderful observation! Perhaps this very painting, therefore, reflects Lapicque's interest in breaking free from the constraints of artistic tradition, exploring new visual vocabularies to express, perhaps, a subjective experience of nature... a very exciting prospect to me! Curator: Agreed! It pushes beyond the pastoral tradition to become something visceral. A tactile engagement rather than merely a visual one! Editor: The landscape here really speaks to us in terms of line, color, and shape and forces an investigation beyond what’s simply on the surface!