Representations of fog in arts and sciences

Becker, Karin ; Leplatre, Olivier. La brume et le brouillard dans la science, la littérature et les arts, Paris, Hermann Éditeurs, 2014.

This collection brings together a series of articles on the representations of fog in arts and sciences, from the antiquity to the 21^st century. While the first part is entirely dedicated to the contemporary scientific definition of this phenomenon, and to the evolution of previous theories, the second one centres on the literary representations of fog within Francophone and Anglo-American literature. In the third part, these depictions are studied through their musical, pictorial and cinematographic manifestations. Though the book mainly focuses on Western scientific and artistic productions, the last part contains a comparative study of fog in landscape painting between the West and China. If the variety of genres and aesthetics explored in the book underlines the different ways in which this phenomenon has been perceived, sometimes underlining its treacherous nature or its protective one, this study also argues that it is the notion of representation itself that fog tends to call into question, as its opacity blurs the contours of the real.