La Route des Alpes 1937

Editor: Here we have Tristram Hillier's "La Route des Alpes," currently residing in the Tate Collection. The landscape feels so precise, almost unsettlingly still. What's your take on how Hillier portrays this scene? Curator: The stillness, I think, speaks volumes. Hillier’s hyper-realism captures a landscape marked by human intervention – power lines, roads, warning signs. This isn't a romantic vista, but a space where nature is thoroughly mediated and controlled. How does that tension between the natural and the industrial resonate with you? Editor: I see what you mean, that tension is really clear. It's almost like a stage set, waiting for something to happen, but nothing ever does. Curator: Exactly! The potential of progress, yes, but at what cost? This controlled landscape makes us question whose vision of progress is being imposed and how it impacts the very fabric of the natural world. I wonder if that resonated with Hillier and his contemporaries after the war. Editor: I'm definitely going to think about this work differently now. The scene's tension really makes sense in light of postwar anxieties.