Images of happiness

In 2024, as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition, today's art continues more than ever to honor nature, landscape and, above all, a certain joy of living in today's world, in painting, drawing, printmaking and photography. Agathe May and Frédéric Malette see themselves as guardians of a magical garden that could bring together the work of almost all the artists in this particularly bucolic selection, and where Nijinsky would come to dance "L'après-midi d'un faune" every day. In the work of Maya Inès Touam, Margaux Dehri and Tami Notsani, it is woven from childhood memories, between spring and summer epiphanies and birthday parties. We find the spirit of a Monet, a Renoir or a Matisse in their delicate, sensitive proposals. As in an Alice in Wonderland tale, Cécile Morillon, Marie-Charlotte Urena, Stella Sujin and Sandsky's work is dominated by animals: birds, cats and lambs laze indolently among the most voluptuous flowers. With Siouzie Albiach and Emmanuelle Benjamin, the games are more subtle, between dawn and dusk of a world more fragile than it seems. For this apology for nature in contemporary art is also an apology for a landscape that we must preserve at all costs, at the risk of seeing it disappear before our very eyes. Thank you, artists, for reminding us of this!