This artistic walk with political echoes works to dust off the work of landscapers, showing their surprising techniques and conceptions of nature of variety.

"The goal is to make it alive, joyful," says Vincent Pomarède, general curator of heritage at the Louvre, who launched the idea a decade ago, when the Louvre-Lens settled in the heart of a wooded space at the foot of the mining slag heaps.

The exhibition itself, imagined by contemporary artist Laurent Pernot, is conceived as a landscape: one wanders between bluish panels in the colors of dawn and others warm as a setting sun.

The exhibition "Landscape: Window on nature" at the Louvre-Lens Museum, March 28, 2023 © DENIS CHARLET / AFP

The route begins with sketches of trees and rocks to monumental panoramic compositions, through series celebrating the passage of hours and seasons, or epic representations of nature in rage.

"I think a lot about children, so that they take as much pleasure in visiting an exhibition as they do in walking in the forest," Pernot told AFP. "In this space, you can hide, cross a partition to take bushy paths, get lost."

The Rocks of Belle-Ile by the impressionist Claude Monet echo other rocks, filmed by the Lumière brothers, Lyon pioneers of cinema.

The exhibition "Landscape: Window on nature" at the Louvre-Lens Museum, March 28, 2023 © DENIS CHARLET / AFP

"The landscaper, more than any other, creates a world, even if his art has long been relegated to the minor forms," says Marie Gord, one of the curators of the exhibition.

For her, these works "raise very political questions about the relationship with nature: sometimes goddess to admire, sometimes slave to dominate", echoing current environmental debates.

It took three years to gather the works borrowed from about fifty museums, mainly French.

The exhibition "Landscape: Window on nature" at the Louvre-Lens Museum, March 28, 2023 © DENIS CHARLET / AFP

Scheduled until July 24, it will be followed by an exhibition on "Fantastic Beasts" at the end of the year, then another on "Underground Worlds" in spring 2024.

"These thematic exhibitions make it possible to reach an audience not accustomed to museums, to enter art through themes that echo their life experience," says Marie Lavandier, director of the Louvre-Lens.

© 2023 AFP