LOVE FRANCE ❘ JOIE DE VIVRE FILMS LIBRARY MONET / ROTHKO
Edited by Cyrille Sciama with contributions from Marie Delbarre, Géraldine Lefebvre, Pierre Wat, Valérie Reis £35 Flammarion
LA DÉCISION In an ultra-secure wing
of the courthouse, Judge Alma Revel must rule on the fate of a young man suspected of joining the Islamic State in Syria. To
this professional dilemma is added another, more
intimate one: married for more than 20 years to a
successful writer, Alma is also having an affair with the lawyer representing the accused. She must
make a choice: one which could destroy her life, or one which could destroy the lives of others.
Karine Tuil’s novel takes us into the darkest parts of the human soul, yet
finds hope or beauty still battle to survive there.
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BERTHE MORISOT Jean-Dominique Rey £22.50 Flammarion
Berthe Morisot won over the Impressionists with her talent and became the fi rst woman of the group alongside Monet, Degas, and Renoir. She was the foremost female painter of the Impressionist movement and, to quote Apollinaire, “one of the most complete artists of her day”. Underestimated for more than a century, today her works demonstrate how visionary she was. Including correspondence with fellow Impressionists, this book focuses on the most important stages of Morisot’s career: her precocious artistic talent as a child, her participation aged 23 in the 1864 Salon de Paris, her marriage in 1874 to Eugène Manet and the birth of their daughter, Julie – a frequent subject in Morisot’s paintings – and the expressive freedom of her later works.
Jun/Jul 2023 FRANCE TODAY ❘ 87
This comparison of the work of Monet and Rothko provides exhilarating new insight on these pioneers of abstraction and masters of colour. Recent research on late Impressionism has highlighted the surprising correspondences between the work of Claude Monet (1840–
1926) and that of abstract painters such as Mark Rothko (1903–1970). This book offers an unprecedented dialogue between the paintings of Monet and Rothko, two artists who explored the frontiers of abstraction. It explores the uncanny similarities between their works, painted almost half a century apart, as well as the significance of the differences between the master artists’ styles. Monet conveyed the immediacy of his impressions of nature, while Rothko plunged the viewer into the depths of colours that he superimposed and interwove. A chronology provides details about the circumstances in which Monet’s and Rothko’s paintings were created.
SEASONS OF COGNAC
Laurence Benaïm, with illustrations by Aurore de la Morinerie £18 Flammarion
This connoisseurs’ tribute to the ultimate French brandy celebrates the Cognac region and the centuries-old techniques that Hennessy uses to craft its celebrated liqueur. Cognac hails from a unique terroir in the Charente department of France, where the elixir’s blend of tradition and voluptuousness has been in rhythm
with the seasons for centuries. This handsome volume, illustrated with evocative watercolours, invites aficionados of fine spirits on a year-long journey into Hennessy’s realm, guided by lifestyle journalist Laurence Benaïm’s impressions on the singularity of the landscape, the temperament of its vineyards, the transformations that take place within its cellars, and the exceptional know-how at the origin of this amber treasure. “The hillsides of Cognac,” she writes, “are cloaked in woodlands and forest canopies. Seasons are condensed into just a few drops of elixir. This immense journey runs its course in a singular, immersive continuum.”
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IMAGE © DREYFUS, FROM BERTHE MORISOT, FLAMMARION, 2023
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