Végétal

Végétal – Published for the exhibition Végétal: l’école de la beauté, presented by Chaumet at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in June 2022.

Végétal is an intimate stroll through botany, fine art, jewelry and photography, a plunge into the infinity of forms and the beauty of plants as reflected in art.

Végétal offers an upheaval in the way we look at things, a reading of the living world nourished by essential conversations between genres and eras. Over one hundred artists, scientists and jewellers embody this dialogue, including Nobuyoshi Araki, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Anna Atkins, Patrick Blanc, Sarah Bernhardt, Joseph Chaumet, Otto Dix, Joan Fontcuberta, Émile Gallé, Ernst Haeckel, Eva Jospin, André Kertesz, Le Corbusier, Robert Mapplethorpe, Carl von Linné, Claude Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe, Odilon Redon, Yves Saint-Laurent, Séraphine de Senlis…

Under the direction of botanist Marc Jeanson, this extraordinary project initiated by Chaumet unfolds like a herbarium. Guided by the senses, the reader travels through forests, foreshore, reed beds, wheat fields… all worlds that celebrate the inexhaustible power of plants.

This sensitive journey is punctuated by exceptional contributions from Filipa Ramos, Emanuele Coccia, Estelle Zhong Mengual and Alice Thomine-Berrada, and features a previously unpublished work by Etel Adnan, specially created for this book.