Editorial [Antae, Vol.3(1)] 

Abstract

The cover of this issue features La Neva dans le brouillard, a 1913 painting by influential Swiss-French woodcutter and painter Felix Vallotton. In an issue about places to which we turn, return and re-return, it might be interesting to start off by contrasting one of Vallotton’s post-impressionist viewpoints with another, highlighting both the richness and deficiencies of “place”, as well as our own inability to be content with just one view. His painting Coucher de soleil à Grâce, ciel orangé et violet (1918), unlike Le Neva, offers us a vivid landscape on which to gaze. We as viewers are positioned in the dark, quite literally speaking, but, as if emerging from the Platonic cave, we behold only sunshine. There is nothing to hinder us from seeing where we are not; the clouds do not obstruct the sun, but rather become themselves objects of playing light. Look, the painting offers, looking is easy; and so is knowing where you are not.