<img src="https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/08/0/0/6150/3900/664/0/75/0/b1ad055_1691506104344-borisoff-les-glaciers-rmn-08-544573.jpg" srcset=" https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/08/0/0/6150/3900/556/0/75/0/b1ad055_1691506104344-borisoff-les-glaciers-rmn-08-544573.jpg 556w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/08/0/0/6150/3900/600/0/75/0/b1ad055_1691506104344-borisoff-les-glaciers-rmn-08-544573.jpg 600w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/08/0/0/6150/3900/664/0/75/0/b1ad055_1691506104344-borisoff-les-glaciers-rmn-08-544573.jpg 664w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/08/0/0/6150/3900/700/0/75/0/b1ad055_1691506104344-borisoff-les-glaciers-rmn-08-544573.jpg 700w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/08/0/0/6150/3900/800/0/75/0/b1ad055_1691506104344-borisoff-les-glaciers-rmn-08-544573.jpg 800w" sizes="(min-width: 1024px) 556px, 100vw" alt="" the="" glaciers"="" (1907)="" by="" alexandre="" borissoff."="" width="100%" height="auto">
"L'Univers sans l'Homme" ("The Universe without People"): In the age of predicted climatic and ecological catastrophes, this expression can be understood as a prediction or hope. A prediction because the human species will not survive the disasters it has itself wrought; or hope because after humanity disappears, those species that have been able to adapt will prosper on a planet finally rid of its most harmful predator. This is the sense in which these words should have been understood as the title of art historian Thomas Schlesser's 2016 book (Hazan), which is now the theme of an exhibition at the Musée de Valence, in southeastern France. Originally, "l'Univers sans l'Homme" ("The Universe without People") was the expression used in 1859 by Charles Baudelaire to condemn painters who, in his eyes, sacrificed all imagination to focus solely on depicting nature. In this case, it has been hijacked to reflect the current state of the world.
Exhibitions on the current state of the world have not been rare since 2016 when the Centre Pompidou-Metz presented "Sublime: les Tremblements du Monde" ("Sublime: The World's Quaking"). But, given that the means are not the same from one institution to another, comparing these two exhibitions would make no sense. As the scope cannot be exhaustive in Valence, the art of suggestion is employed, with a multiplication of allusions and comparisons over the course of a hundred works that range from 1755 to the present day, from engraving to painting, video and assembled pieces. There are many discoveries to be made, thanks to the presence of little-known artists and works, starting with the remarkable landscape of icebergs by scientist and painter Alexandre Borisoff, whose 1906 canvas has been brought out of the Musée d'Orsay reserves for the first time.
There are other surprises as well, including "Ombres Grises" ("Gray Shadows"), a large spectral 1906 work by Joseph Sima, which is an almost neo-impressionist version of Courbet's "La Vague" ("The Wave"). From the same decade, there is also a set of cosmic abstractions by Hans Hartung. But, remarkable as they are, these paintings and others (by Constant Troyon, Charles-François Daubigny or Eugène Boudin) that show nature – clean snow, empty space and a shipless ocean – untouched by human presence are not about the end of humanity, which is a subject that has become an obsession over the last two decades. This means that in Valence, there are two related but distinct themes: the world before human defilement and also human defilement and its consequences. The second preoccupation is specific to our times, and it is the artists of today who have foreshadowed it and who continue to assert it most intensely.
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