Botanical: Observing Beauty

Botanical takes readers on an intimate stroll through botany, the fine arts, jewelry, and photography, inviting them to immerse themselves in the infinite forms and beauty of plants as reflected in art. Botanical features a way of observing the living world that has been influenced by essential conversations between genres and periods. More than one hundred artists, scientists, and jewelers have participated in this dialogue, including Nobuyoshi Araki, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Anna Atkins, Sarah Bernhardt, Patrick Blanc, Joseph Chaumet, Otto Dix, Joan Fontcuberta, Émile Gallé, Ernst Haeckel, Eva Jospin, André Kertész, Le Corbusier, Carl Linnaeus, Robert Mapplethorpe, Claude Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe, Odilon Redon, Yves Saint Laurent, and Séraphine de Senlis. Under the supervision of the botanist Marc Jeanson, the extraordinary project initiated by Chaumet is an herbarium of sorts. Guided by the senses, the reader travels through forests, foreshores, reedbeds, and wheat fields—all worlds that celebrate the endless power of plants. This sensorial journey is punctuated by the exceptional contributions of Emanuele Coccia, Filipa Ramos, Alice Thomine-Berrada, and Estelle Zhong Mengual, and features a new work by Etel Adnan, specially created for this book.