Landscape at Monaco 1953

Bernard Buffet’s Landscape at Monaco, on paper, reveals an intricate world, built with thousands of thin strokes of ink. Imagine Buffet, hunched over this piece, his hand moving with a determined rhythm. The sky is a dense network of lines, a brooding presence over the serene landscape below. It’s kind of oppressive, and contrasts with the more orderly fields and architecture. There is a very particular kind of light created here. The fields are neatly divided, like the segments of an eye, leading us to a cluster of buildings nestled against the horizon. Notice how those trees, stark and bare, punctuate the scene. Their spindly forms create a kind of visual echo of the stark linearity of the scene. I’m interested in how artists transform space, and Buffet certainly does that here. In his body of work, you can see how he strips away the excess, leaving only the essential lines. Perhaps he's in dialogue with artists like Mondrian, who sought a similar kind of visual purity. Artists are always inspiring each other, remixing ideas. Painting is a way to embrace ambiguity, there is never one way of doing things.