Edited and prefaced by Valérie Hayaert
ÉCHO. Carnets d’atelier (2011-2017) features around a hundred plates by Fabienne Verdier: a mixture of collages, drawings and observations. As the second volume of her notebooks, the book covers the years 2011 to 2017, as well as two major projects, one based on the paintings of the Flemish masters, the other taking its cue from the late Alain Rey’s Le Robert analogical dictionary. Verdier regularly updated the journal as she worked and it thus makes us privy to her creative process. Designed as a commentary that integrates the work of other artists, as well as writers and scientists, the journal is intended to be viewed as an open-ended project, offering an alternative reading of art history based on the power of analogy, which influences the way we think about nature.
The text accompanying each plate is transcribed and elucidated by commentary that echoes the remarks of the artist, who describes her approach as follows: “Just like the alternating states of sleep and wakefulness, so at times I paint and at others I read and write. I described what I learned during my time in China in Passenger of Silence, and here in ÉCHO. Carnets d’atelier (2011-2017) I have set down some reflections that have particularly absorbed me. As a child of the air and the earth, I observe the forces at work in nature that give rise to forms. These resonate in my artworks, and in another context, they enable new scientific theories to be developed. The various items in this logbook, designed as a sort of conversation with my contemporaries, are prompted both by images ranging from antiquity to the present day and by writings.”
Throughout her career as a painter Fabienne Verdier has grappled with systems of thought from a wide variety of eras and cultures, providing material for several fascinating books recently published by 5 Continents Editions, including ÉCHO. Carnets d’atelier (2017-2022), Sur les terres de Cézanne, The Song of Stars – Le chant des étoiles and Rainbow Paintings. Fabienne Verdier (the last by Corinna Thierolf).
A graduate of the École Normale Supérieure and holder of an agrégation in the Arts, Valérie Hayaert is an art historian and historian of ideas interested in the interrelationships between image, text and language in modern Europe. Independently of any text, images often incorporate multiple sources: the spoken word, music, gestures, and spiritual or ritual behaviour. She has published several books, in both French and English, on legal humanism, judicial symbolism and allegorical representations of justice. She is currently an honorary researcher at the Centre for Renaissance Studies at Warwick University, in the UK.
Exhibition: Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris, October 22, 2025 — February 16, 2026
