L’Atelier sur la terrasse de Mirmande 1957

André Lhote painted ‘L’Atelier sur la terrasse de Mirmande’ in France sometime in the first half of the twentieth century, using oil on canvas. Lhote was at the forefront of the Cubist movement and, as a teacher and writer, dedicated himself to theorizing its practices. Here we see some of those theories put into practice as he flattens the landscape to explore different forms. Notice the interplay of abstract shapes and recognizable forms. The painting becomes a negotiation between the natural world and the artist's studio, raising questions about the artist’s role in mediating nature through visual language. It invites us to consider the social conditions that shape artistic vision and the institutions, like art schools, that perpetuate those visions. To understand Lhote better, we might look at his writings, and the writings of his contemporaries who were grappling with similar questions about art’s relationship to social and material reality.