Memory, nature and suggestion · When the image becomes towards

Poetic paintings favor rhythm, suggestion and lasting emotion: a night, a landscape or a figure open an inner story.

Poetry in painting does not depend on a literary subject. It is born from the way in which an image lets resonate what it does not entirely say. Van Gogh transforms Starry Night into cosmic movement where sky, village and cypress trees share the same breath. Caspar David Friedrich places two figures in front of the moon and makes their silence an experience of common contemplation. Corot composes Souvenir de Mortefontaine as a memory more than as a description: trees, water and figures seem to belong to a suspended time. Waterhouse finally connects poetry and literature with the Lady of Shalott, locked among the reflections and threads of her work. In each case, the composition acts like a sentence open whose meaning the viewer pursues. The "Poetic Paintings" selection notably compares Starry Night - Vincent van Gogh and Two Men Contemplating the Moon - Caspar David Friedrich. His reading favors the material.

A painting becomes poetic when it does not close its story, but leaves room for the eye to deposit its own memory.