La Culture, revolver au poing - Jacques Monnier-Raball

Published with the support of the Commune of Lausanne and the Canton of Vaud.

For most people, culture is inherently associated with literature, music, art in general, or the passive enjoyment of works intended to distract us from everyday life. However, many of these works were born in pain: how many authors, how many artists have not taken the floor against social conventions, causing us to call into question their existence, at the cost of their lives sometimes?

A culture worthy of it's name is inseparable from the vagaries of life: it is risky, in that its main function is to vigilantly observe contemporary life, with the legitimate right to exercise a critical eye, which commits the individual in his innermost being, entirely dedicated to the search for a form of truth...

Jacques Monnier-Raball was born in Lausanne in 1932. He graduated from the University of Arts in his hometown. Teacher in upper secondary education, he became director of the School of Art and Design Lausanne (1965-1995). He was a lecturer at the University of Paris-Dauphine.

He has published a dozen books, including "Le Parti pris d’une peinture", "Visées, dix essais consacrés à des artistes contemporains", "Félix Vallotton", "Simuler/Dissimuler, essai sur les simulacres de masse", "Autour de l’électricité, un siècle d’affiches", "Dentelle et dynamite, essais sur le temps tel qu’on le vit", "Un Homme de parole, hommage à René Berger".