« Caïn » de Fernand Cormon : aux origines de la conscience humaine ?

Beaux Arts Magazine analyzes Fernand Cormon's monumental 1880 painting "Caïn," currently held at the Musée d'Orsay. The article describes the scene: a prehistoric, weary clan trudges through a desert, led by a haggard patriarch, with a tired mother on a litter and hunters carrying game. Cormon's work is presented as the antithesis of classical triumph, evoking a melancholic, post-traumatic atmosphere. The painting is linked to the biblical story of Cain, who killed his brother Abel and was condemned to exile, and is accompanied by verses from Victor Hugo's poem "Conscience."

Joan Semmel Roars at The Jewish Museum

The article reviews Joan Semmel: In the Flesh, a retrospective exhibition at The Jewish Museum in New York (December 2025 – May 2026). The author describes an initial discomfort with Semmel's graphic nude paintings of aging female bodies, but after researching the artist's significance in feminist art, comes to appreciate her unapologetic honesty. The show is arranged chronologically, tracing Semmel's evolution from works like Erotic Yellow (1973) to later paintings that grow in confidence and freedom, all while maintaining a focus on female embodiment and pleasure from a female perspective.

Ghosts in a Postcard Idyll

Geister im Postkartenidyll

Kôji Fukada's film "Nagi Notes" premieres in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, following Yoriko (Takako Matsu), a sculptor and farmer living a quiet, self-sufficient life in the rural Japanese town of Nagi. Her routine is disrupted when her old friend Yuri (Shizuka Ishibashi), an architect, arrives to model for a sculpture, stirring buried emotions and past conflicts. The film explores the slow, delicate process of creating art and the psychological tensions between the two women, set against the backdrop of Nagi's idyllic but symbolically flat landscape.