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Arts et sciences

Art and Science

redactrice en chef. editor-in-chief

Marie-Christine MAUREL

Sorbonne Universite, MNHN, Paris

2025 - Volume 9 - Numero 3

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La revue Arts et sciences présente les travaux, réalisations, réflexions, techniques et prospectives qui concernent

toute activité créatrice en rapport avec les arts et les sciences. La peinture, la poésie, la musique, la littérature, la

fiction, le cinéma, la photo, la vidéo, le graphisme, l’archéologie, l’architecture, le design, la muséologie etc. sont

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que la chimie des pigments, les mathématiques, l’informatique ou la musique pour ne citer que ces exemples.

Rédactrice en chef

Marie-Christine MAUREL

Sorbonne Université, MNHN, Paris

marie-christine.maurel@sorbonne-universite.fr

Membres du comité

Jean AUDOUZE

Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris

audouze@iap.fr

Georges CHAPOUTHIER

Sorbonne Université

georgeschapouthier@gmail.com

Ernesto DI MAURO

Università Sapienza, Italie

dimauroernesto8@gmail.com

Jean-Charles HAMEAU

Cité de la Céramique Sèvres et

Limoges jean-charles.hameau

@sevresciteceramique.fr

Ivan MAGRIN-CHAGNOLLEAU

Chapman University, États-Unis

magrinchagnolleau@chapman.edu

Joëlle PIJAUDIER-CABOT

Musées de Strasbourg

joelle.pijaudier@wanadoo.fr

Nicolas REEVES

Université du Québec à Montréal

reeves.nicolas@uqam.ca

Bruno SALGUES

APIEMO et SIANA

bruno.salgues@gmail.com

Ruth SCHEPS

The Weizmann Insitute

of Science, Israël

rscheps@hotmail.com

Hugues VINET

IRCAM, Paris

hugues.vinet@ircam.fr

Philippe WALTER

Laboratoire d’archéologie

moléculaire et structurale

Sorbonne Université Paris

philippe.walter@upmc.fr

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Arts et Sciences, une longue alliance source de

réciprocité créatrice

Marie-Christine Maurel

Depuis l'Antiquité, Arts et Sciences sont congénialement liés. Aristote, déclarait l’art comme

esthétique dont : “Les formes les plus hautes du beau sont l'ordre, la symétrie, le défini, et c'est

là surtout ce que font apparaître les sciences mathématiques. » (Métaphysique, 1078b).

A la Renaissance, le lien épistémique de tout art se renforce encore, avec des figures telles

que Piero della Francesca, grand scientifique, mathématicien éminent, et artiste exceptionnel.

Pensons aussi au Perugino, à son penchant naturaliste et à son élève le génial Raphael. Les arts

visuels ont ainsi particulièrement servi de "passerelles" entre les différentes formes artistiques

et les disciplines scientifiques. Léonard de Vinci polymathe incarne parfaitement cet

universalisme en tant que peintre, sculpteur, mathématicien et poète. Bernard Palissy,

céramiste, sculpteur et savant, a tenté de fusionner l’art et les sciences de la nature à travers ses

représentations de « natures mortes », still life. Diderot a plus tard affirmé dans l’Encyclopédie,

combien l'histoire de la nature est incomplète sans celle des arts. Les exemples sont

nombreux… Malgré une certaine distanciation entre arts et sciences au XXe siècle, en partie

due à la ferveur industrielle, cette séparation s'estompe progressivement aujourd’hui, en

particulier avec l'émergence des arts numériques mais aussi par des lectures qui re-pensent la

modernité de textes dits « classiques ».

Il est essentiel de comprendre comment un scientifique peut aider un artiste, mais aussi

comment un artiste peut apporter sa contribution à un scientifique. Les méthodes, l'imagination

et l'invention sont au cœur des processus scientifiques et artistiques. Cette convergence est

évidente dans la création et dans la scénographie théâtrale, rappelant par exemple le visuel des

mises en scène extraordinaires de Jérôme Bosch, véritable retour à un paradis perdu ou à un

enfer selon les perspectives.

Au-delà des sujets abordés, la créativité commune entre l'art et la science est le fil

conducteur. Les écrits de Diderot Le Rêve de d’Alembert et La Lettre sur les Aveugles à l’usage

de ceux qui voient, les œuvres de Molière traitant de considérations politico-religieuses (voir le

Tartuffe ou l’imposteur) annonciateur de l’imposture créationniste, sont autant d'exemples de

l’actualité et de la convergence entre arts et sciences.

Enfin rappelons que pour Einstein la véritable source de tout art et science réside dans le

mystère et dans l’engagement commun envers l'inconnu : « La plus belle chose dont nous

puissions faire l’expérience est le mystère – la source de tout vrai art, de toute vraie science ».

Aristote Métaphysique, traduction (éd. de 1953) de J. Tricot (1893-1963) Éditions Les Échos du Maquis (ePub, PDF), v.:

1,0, janvier 2014

Diderot Denis. 1769. Le rêve de D’Alembert. GF – Philosophie. Poche, 2002.

Diderot Denis. 1749. Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient. Folio-Poche.

Molière. Le Tartuffe ou l’Imposteur. 1669. Librio-Poche.

Einstein, Albert. Textes écrits entre 1930-1935. Comment je vois le monde. Flammarion-Champs Sciences

© 2024 ISTE OpenScience – Published by ISTE Ltd. London, UK – openscience.fr

Raphael ou l’innovation artistique et scientifique dans : L’Ecole d’Athènes (1509-1511).

Fresque 550x770 cm(18x25ft) Salles Raphael, Musée-Cité du Vatican.

Les personnages représentés ont été identifiés comme suit : Au centre, Platon tenant le

Timée pointe le ciel, illustrant sa théorie des formes idéales et immuables qui existent au-delà

du monde physique. La connaissance, la transcendance va de la réalité à la vérité. A ses

côtés, Aristote, qui tient l’Ethique à Nicomaque, étend sa main vers le sol, symbolisant

l’immanence, la réalité concrète et les phénomènes naturels. La vérité ne peut résider qu’icibas,

dans la réalité.

Le visage de Platon est représenté par Raphael sous les traits de Léonard de Vinci.

A gauche au 1er plan et au bas de la fresque Pythagore et le groupe des géomètres.

Hypathie (philosophe, mathématicienne et astronome d’Alexandrie en Égypte

du IVe au Ve siècle), vêtue de blanc au centre est à proximité de Pythagore.

À l’opposé du côté d’Aristote, la géométrie représentée par la figure d'Euclide et son compas

est entouré d'étudiants. On reconnaît également l'architecte Bramante.

Au-dessus d’Euclide, les astronomes Ptolémée, et Zoroastre soutiennent chacun une

sphère céleste en hommage à leurs contributions en astronomie.


Arts et sciences

2025 - Volume 9

Numéro 3

‣ Exhibitions of the Artistic and Scientific Exploitation of Baartman (ca. 1775-1815),

the "Hottentot Venus" .......................................................................................................................1

John R. Dolan

DOI : 10.21494/ISTE.OP.2025.1350

‣ Mineral and/or living ..........................................................................................................................24

Ruth Scheps

DOI : 10.21494/ISTE.OP.2025.1364

‣ Découverte de la vie abyssale : de nouvelles perspectives scientifiques et artistiques ....................48

Christophe Migon

DOI : 10.21494/ISTE.OP.2025.1389


Arts et sciences

2025, vol. 9, n° 3, 1-23 pages, DOI : 10.21494/ISTE.OP.2025.1350 ISTE OpenScience

Exhibitions of the Artistic and Scientific Exploitation of

Baartman (ca. 1775-1815), the "Hottentot Venus"

Expositions de l'exploitation artistique et scientifique de Baartman (ca.

1775-1815), la « Vénus hottentote »

John R. Dolan 1

1

Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche-sur-Mer, Station Zoologique, 06230

Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, john.dolan@imev-mer.fr

ABSTRACT. Baartman was a woman of the indigenous Khoisan people of South Africa. In 1810, when working as a

housemaid in Cape Town, she was coaxed to travel to England to be shown as a savage African, the "Hottentot Venus".

She was exhibited as an ethno-erotic freak in Britain and Paris. After her death in late 1815, her body was dissected and

George Cuvier published lurid details of her anatomy in an 1817 report. Her remains were kept, and periodically

displayed, in the Museum of Natural History (Paris) until finally being repatriated to South Africa in 2002. The tragic story

of Baartman's exploitation has been the subject of many books, films, and articles. Here the focus is on two relatively

poorly documented aspects of her exploitation by both artists and scientists. First shown is the artistic exploitation through

an exhibition of the depictions of her by the artists of satirical prints, a very popular medium in Baartman's time. The

depictions of her, always in profile with greatly exaggerated buttocks, became in satirical prints, a generic portrayal of

African women. In line with the orthodox racism of the early 1800's, the depictions emphasized the differences between

and Europeans and African peoples, the "otherness" of Africans. Secondly, in an exhibition tracing the use of images and

characteristics of her, especially (but not only) her skull and brain, the scientific exploitation of Baartman will be shown.

The features of her morphology were used to support the divisive view of the inferiority of African peoples. This began

with an 1816 report on her visit to the Professors of the Natural History Museum and Cuvier's 1817 report on the

dissection of her corpse, and continued on well into 1970's.

RÉSUMÉ. Baartman était une femme du peuple indigène Khoisan d'Afrique du Sud. En 1810, alors qu'elle travaillait

comme domestique au Cape Town, elle fut persuadée de se rendre en Angleterre pour y être représentée comme une

Africaine sauvage, la « Vénus hottentote ». Elle fut exposée comme une créature "ethno-érotique" en Grande-Bretagne

et à Paris. Après sa mort fin 1815, son corps fut disséqué et George Cuvier publia des détails sordides sur son anatomie

dans un rapport de 1817. Sa dépouille fut conservée et exposée périodiquement au Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris

jusqu'à son rapatriement en Afrique du Sud en 2002. L'histoire tragique de l'exploitation de Baartman a fait l'objet de

nombreux livres, films et articles. Nous nous concentrons ici sur deux aspects relativement peu documentés de son

exploitation par les artistes et les scientifiques. Le premier est l'exploitation artistique, à travers une exposition de ses

représentations par les artistes d'estampes satiriques, un médium très populaire à l'époque de Baartman. Ses

représentations, toujours de profil, les fesses fortement exagérées, sont devenues, dans les estampes satiriques, une

représentation générique des femmes africaines. Fidèles au racisme orthodoxe du début du XIXe siècle, ces

représentations soulignaient les différences entre Européens et Africains, l'« altérité » des Africains. Deuxièmement, une

exposition retraçant l'utilisation de ses images et de ses caractéristiques, notamment (mais pas seulement) son crâne et

son cerveau, montrera l'exploitation scientifique de Baartman. Ses caractéristiques morphologiques ont servi à étayer la

thèse de l'infériorité des peuples africains. Cela a commencé avec un rapport de 1816 sur sa visite aux professeurs du

Musée d'histoire naturelle et le rapport de Cuvier de 1817 sur la dissection de son cadavre, et s'est poursuivi jusqu'aux

années 1970.

KEYWORDS. Racism, Caricatures, African Women, Scientific Racism, Scientific Illustration, Eugenics.

MOTS-CLÉS. Racisme, Caricatures, Femmes Africaines, Racisme Ccientifique, Illustration Scientifique, Eugénisme.

1. Introduction

In the early 19th century a young woman from South Africa was exhibited in Britain and in Paris as

an exotic African savage under the name the "Hottentot Venus". The exhibitions marked the beginning

in Europe as a way to actually see 'the other', a living specimen of another race, rather than only read

© 2025 ISTE OpenScience – Published by ISTE Ltd. London, UK – openscience.fr Page | 1

accounts in books or through museum objects (Boëtsch & Blanchard 2003). She arrived in England in

1810 and died in 1815 in Paris. Shortly after death, her body was dissected by George Cuvier, and her

skeleton and various organs were added to the collections and exhibits of the Natural History Museum

(Paris). She was quite famous in her time, as attested to by press reports of exhibitions and events in

her life and her death in both the British press (Anon. 1810, 1811, 1814a, 1816a) and the French press

(1814b, 1815, 1816b,c). Her story subsequently received little attention throughout the 19th century

and most of the 20th century except for a series of articles by Percival Kirby (Kirby 1949, 1953,

1954a,b), a musicologist with wide-ranging interests (Maccrone 1971). However, the end of Apartheid

in South Africa permitted calls for the repatriation of her remains from France to South Africa. The

calls began in the 1990's bringing new attention to the story of the Hottentot Venus (Fauvelle-Aymar

2006) and since 2000, the literature on the Hottentot Venus has grown tremendously, representing a

veritable industry (Gjerden et al. 2016), and is showing few signs of abating. There are five booklength

scholarly treatments of her life (Badou 2000; Holmes 2007; Crais & Scully 2009; Sandrel 2010;

Blanckaert ed. 2013), two fictionalized accounts of her life (Chase-Riboud 2003; Clarke 2023). A

feature length film, Vénus Noire by Adellatif Kechiche appeared in 2009, focused on her time in Paris.

There is a notable lack of consensus concerning many aspects of the woman who came to be known

as the Hottentot Venus, as basic as her name. For example, in the titles of the biographies, her first

name is given as Saartjie (Clarke 2023), Sara (Crais & Scully 2009) or Sarah (Holmes 2007; Sandrel

2010) and her last name as Baartman (Holmes 2007; Crais & Scully 2009; Clarke 2023) or Bartman

(Sandrel 2010). Neither her first nor last name variants were those given to her by her parents, names

which remain unknown (Crais & Scully 2009). For the sake of simplicity, here only the family name

Baartman, most commonly used, is employed without a first name.

Despite the abundance of the literature, there are two aspects of the Hottentot Venus that have not

been specifically addressed and are the focus of this essay, pairing the artistic and scientific

exploitation of the Venus Hottentot. First, there is the exploitation of her image by the artists of

caricatures, greatly exaggerating features of her morphology, especially her buttocks, thereby

transforming her into a fantastic creature, and subsequently the use of the caricatured morphology of

the Hottentot Venus to represent generic African females. The second neglected aspect is the long

history of the scientific use of features of her anatomy as evidence of her 'otherness', especially as

evidence of her intellectual inferiority, and by extension, the inferiority of most indigenous peoples

relative to Europeans. A brief summary of the life of the Venus Hottentot, underlining the lacuna of

our knowledge, is given below. This is followed by an "exhibition" of the caricatures of the Hottentot

Venus beginning in 1810 and ending in 1913. The scientific exploitation of the Hottentot Venus is then

traced ", in a second "exhibition", beginning with her paid visit to the Professors of the Natural History

Museum in 1815, to the use of her image, dating from that visit, in John Baker's controversial 1974

book, "Race".

2. A Brief Biography of Baartman

The following highly abridged account of Baartman's life is based on that of Crais and Scully (2009)

as the best (but insufficiently) documented biography of Baartman, unless otherwise noted. She was

born sometime in 1770's among the Khoekhoe people who were nomadic cattle herders. However, her

family lived on the farm of a Dutch colonist who named his land Baartman's Fonteyn, Dutch for

"bearded man's (or savage's) spring". Native peoples, working on a colonist's farm adopted the name of

the farm as the family name. Her first name was Saartje, Sara in Dutch, thus on the farm, her name was

Saartje Baartman. Her Khoekhoe name is unknown. When the owner of Baartman's Fonteyn died, The

Baartmans moved to another farm, owned by another farmer but retained their family name. Baartman

grew up on the farm as a servant, as was her mother, while her father tended the livestock and was

occasionally charged with herding cattle to Cape Town.


By the time she was a young adult, both her father and mother had died. She was a slave on the farm

in all but name. When the farmer faced financial troubles, he sold Baartman to a passing trader, Pieter

Cesars, as there was strong demand for servants in Cape Town, and he delivered her to his employer, a

wealthy Cape Town butcher in whose home she became a house servant. In about 1800, the wealthy

butcher died, ending the employment of both Pieter Cesars and Baartman. She moved first into the

home of Pieter Cesars, as a servant and wet nurse, and a few years later to the house of Pieter Cesar's

brother, Hendrik Cesars, again as a servant and wet nurse.

In a very unclear sequence of events, Hendrik Cesars (Baartman's master of sorts), and Alexander

Dunlop, a former Ship's Surgeon, hatched a plan to solve their common financial problems by

exhibiting Baartman in England as the exotic Hottentot Venus, with promises to her of returning to

Cape town in a few years as a wealthy woman. The trio of Baartman, Cesars, and Dunlop left Cape

Town in April and arrived in England in July of 1810. To maximize interest, Dunlop had Baartman

exhibited in what Crais and Scully termed an "ethnopornographic freak show". Dunlop had handbills

made announcing the exhibition and posters made showing a caricature of her, nude, with very large

buttocks (fig. 1). The show began in late September of 1810. On the stage, Baartman was first in a

suspended cage, dressed in a tight skin-colored costume, and then lead out by Cesars, as a trained

animal. Members of the audience were allowed to approach Baartman and touch her body, with her

buttocks drawing the most attention. By October, the show had drawn the attention of an anti-slavery

group who publically questioned its legality and morality. Coincidently or not, Hendrik Cesars parted

company with Dunlop and Baartment. The status of Baartman as a free agent, as Dunlop argued, or

under coercion, was brought before the court. Baartman was interviewed and stated that she was a free

agent. The exhibition of Baartman, albeit with deletions of the animalistic behavior, and revealing

costume, continued in London until April of 1811. In July of 1812 Dunlop passed away. Subsequently,

there appears to be no information concerning Baartmans whereabouts or activities until

announcements in the French press report her exhibition in Paris in late September of 1814 (Anon.

1814b).

In Paris, she was apparently first in the company with one Henry Taylor, about which nothing is

known. In late January, a report appeared in the press stating that the Hottentot Venus had "changed

owners" (Anon 1815). The new owner/manager was a man named Reaux, a dealer and exhibitor of

wild animals in Paris, and a personality known to the Professors of the Natural History Museum (Patin

2013a). He exhibited Baartman in Paris during most of the year of 1815 and arranged for her to be

viewed and interviewed by the Professors of the Natural History Museum in March of 1815. Baartman

contracted an unknown illness in late December 1815, and died on December 30th. Reaux aided in the

arrangements made by the Professors of the Natural History Museum to obtain her corpse that was

dissected by George Cuvier in early January 1816.


Figure 1. The 1810 advertisement of the exhibition of Baartman in Chester, England (left panel), actual size

29 cm tall, and, as mentioned at the bottom of the advertisement, the "Elegant Engraving of the Venus" by

William Lewis (right panel), cm, available for purchase at the exhibition. The print was published by Baartman's

exhibitor, Hendrik Cesars who brought Baartman to England in 1810. Actual print is size 35.7 x 22.1 cm. The

1810 print was the basis for most of the depictions of Baartman in satirical prints. The morphology depicted

bears little resemblance to her actual morphology (for comparison see fig. 9 in section 4). Advertisement

source: Wellcome Collection. Source: British Museum.

3. Baartman in satirical prints

Not well known today, satirical prints, also known as "drolls", were a British peculiarity, said to

have reached their peak in quality and quantity of production in the late 18th and early 19th centuries

(O'Connell 2004). The prints were very popular, modestly priced (for middle class incomes), and sold

in print shops, many of which specialized in satirical prints (McCreey 2004). They often featured wellknown

personalities of the day, such as politicians or society figures, with exaggerated features and in

embarrassing or compromising scenes. The prints served as decorations in homes and businesses, and

were collected in albums. Notable collectors of satirical prints included Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820),

longtime president of the Royal Society, and also his sister Sarah (1774-1818). According to Smith

(1984), a copy of the print shown in figure 1 was sent to Joseph Banks by Hendrick Cesars, with an

invitation to a "private viewing" of Baartman. In London alone, there were 71 print shops in the early

1800's and they displayed the latest prints in their windows turning print shops into attractions,

especially for those unable to purchase them (McCreey 2004). Through their prints, some satirical print

publishers, such as Hannah Humphrey, became "influential tastemakers" of their time (Torbert 2004).


In his "An Historical Sketch of the Art of Caricature" Malcolm truthfully stated that "The Hottentot

Venus exhibited for some time in London, has been a fruitful source of profit to the Caricaturist"

(Malcolm 1813). Today, there are 30, more or less distinct, satirical prints concerning Baartman

available online in the collections of the British Museum, the Wellcome Collection, and the

Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The prints fall into three categories with regard to how a caricature

of Baartman was used: The caricature is one of the main subjects, or the caricature appears

prominently in the background, or lastly, a gross exaggeration of Baartman's morphology (as shown in

fig. 1) is used to depict Africans in general. In all three categories, the caricature of Baartman shows

Africans as completely and utterly distinct from Europeans, the canonical "other". A selection of

satirical prints with representatives of all three categories follows showing that caricaturists have

exploited Baartman, greatly exaggerating her morphology, for over one hundred years.

Figure 2. "The Three Graces" by William Heath, published by S.W. Fores (1810). Actual size of print is 24.1 x

32.7 cm. Baartman towers over the midget Miss Ridsale at her left, and the albino Miss Harvey, at her right,

both were exhibited at Whigeley's Rooms in London. In reality, Baartman was only about 140 cm tall. The

Baartman caricature says "Vat Uggerly tings no like a fine voman no grease about dem like I", suggesting that

she spoke English with a Dutch accent. Source: British Museum.


Figure 3. "Neptune's Last Resort or the Fortune Hunter Foiled. a sketch from Heathen Mythology" by Charles

Williams, published by Walker (1811). Actual print size is 25.3 x 35 cm. It shows Neptune proposing marriage

to a Baartman caricature and trying to take her money; it is a parody of the Duke of Clarence's several refused

proposals of marriage. This is one of the few clothed caricatures of Baartman. Source: British Museum.

Figure 4. "The Adventures of Johnny Newcome", (traveling to the West Indies) Plate 1 by William Elmes,

published by Thomas Tegg (1812). Actual print size is 24.9 x 33.9 cm. The top right panel (square added),

"Johnny enamoured of nymphs bathing", shows Johnny viewing with a spyglass a trio of black women with the

exaggerated buttocks attributed to Baartman. Africans in the West Indies of the time were slaves, transported

from West Africa, not from the regions of South Africa of Baartman, to provide the labor for sugar plantations.

Source: British Museum.


Figure 5. "La Vénus Hottentote" by George Loftus (1815). Publisher unknown. Actual print size is 20.5 x 27.7

cm. The caricature of Baartman is clearly based on that in Fig. 1. The three men are focused on Baartman's

greatly exaggerated buttocks. The French print likely appeared when Baartman was being exhibited in Paris.

Source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Figure 6. "The Court at Brighton à la Chinese" by George Cruikshank, published by J. Sidebotham (1816).

Actual print size is 27.3 x 37.6 cm. The caricature of a naked Baartman appears over the inscription "Regency

Taste" at the left of curtain opening, opposite and in contrast to, the figure in a red coat over the inscription

"British Adonis". Several Cruishank caricatures have a 'Hottentot Venus' profile in the background. Source:

British Museum.


Figure 7. "Puzzled which to choose!! Or the King of Tombuctoo offering one of his daughters in marriage to

Capt- } anticipated result of ye African Expedition" by George Cruikshank, after Captain Frederick Marryat,

published by George Humphrey (1818). Actual size of the print is 25.5 x 35 cm. Marryat was supposed to have

traveled to central Africa, not South Africa. The 'three daughters' are shown with the exaggerated buttocks

attributed to Baartman. Note their similarity to the 'nymphs' in Elmes' 1812 print, including the far right of the

trio wearing a necklace, as shown in fig. 4.

Figure 8. "Love and Beauty - Sartjee the Hottentot Venus" by Charles Williams, publisher unknown (1822).

The cupid figure is saying "Take care of your Hearts!". The caricature of Baartman is clearly based on that

shown in fig. 1. Actual size of print is 28.8 x 21.8 cm. Source: British Museum.


Figure 9. "Mission Parasitologique" by Munro Orr, publisher unknown (1913). A parody of "Puzzled Which to

Choose" shown in fig. 7 with a cupid added as in Fig. 8, "Love and Beauty - Sartjee the Hottentot Venus". The

Wellcome Collection catalogue describes the print as showing an Italian bandit offering a French gentleman

one of three 'hottentot' (steatopygous) women with the faces shown representing professors and students of

tropical medicine at an international medical conference. Actual size of print is 25 x 17.2 cm.

Source: Wellcome Collection.

4. Baartman in scientific publications

The first stage of the "scientific examination" of Baartman was in March 1815, six months before

her death at the end of December. She was brought to the Natural History Museum by S. Réaux,

Baartman's manage/employer/owner (his status relative to Baartman remains unclear), to be examined

by Professors of Anatomy and Physiology, at the request of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and there was

drawn by artists of the Museum, unclothed, and questioned by George Cuvier, Henri-Marie Ducrotay

de Blainville, and Saint Hilaire over three days, and paid the sum of 100 Francs (Patin 2013a,b).

Blainville read an account of the morphology of Baartman at meeting of the Société Philomatique de

Paris on March 18th 1815, remarking that her jaws resembled those of an orangutan. His report also

mentioned that she did not smoke tobacco, but chewed it. Thus, Baartman frequently depicted in

caricatures smoking a pipe (see Figs. 1, 2, 5, 8), appears to be an invention. No illustrations

accompanied the account of Blainville's report, published in December of 1816 (Blainville 1816).

When Baartman died at the end of December of 1815 (exact date and cause of death still unclear),

her body was transported to the Museum at the request of Saint-Hilaire, to be dissected by George

Cuvier, in the interest of science (Patin 2013a). A press report, dated January 2, 1816 stated that at the

Natural History Museum, Baartman's body was being used to make a complete plaster cast of her

corpse before proceeding to a dissection of the body (Anon. 1816b).

Cuvier's report on the dissection of Baartman's body, "Extrait d'observations faites sur le cadavre

d'une femme connue à Paris et à Londres sous le nom de Vénus Hottentote" was published in the

Mémoires du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in 1817 and is today infamous. It was translated into


English with Cuvier's actions described as an obscenity, "...particularly his rendering of her as a

specimen - both during her life and after her death - as well as the most reprehensible act of autopsy"

(Johnson & Rolls 2023). Quite recently, 29 experts on marine mammals published a call, repeatedly

citing the Johnson & Rolls paper, to remove the name Cuvier from the common name "Cuvier's beaked

whale" because "Cuvier considered Baartman and other people of African descent as inhuman,

inferior, and unworthy of the same respect as white Europeans" (Rogers et al. 2024).

Cuvier's belief in the intellectual superiority of Europeans was nearly universally held in the 18th

and early 19th century, especially in regard to the Hottentots. For example, in 1874, Edward Long

stated that "Ludicrous as the opinion may seem, I do not think that an oran-outang husband would be

any dishonour to an Hottentot female; for what are these Hottentots? They are, say the most credible

writer, a people certainly very stupid, and very brutal. In many respects they are more like beasts than

men...." (Long 1774, pg. 364). Such extreme negative stereotyping was quite common in the 19th

century (see Guenther 1980; Favelle 1999). A newspaper report on Cuvier's dissection, while

lamenting the death of the Hottentot Venus, described her as an animal and a monstrosity (Anon.

1816c). However, Cuvier in his report on the dissection of Baartman's cadaver, appears to have the

first to have argued scientifically that the "Hottentot" was animal-like, remarking, for example, that "he

had never seen a human head more resembling that of the apes".

What follows is a chronology and exhibition of the "scientific" use of Baartman, the exploitation, to

show the inferiority to the white race.

Figure 10. The beginnings of Baartman's exploitation by scientists. The left panel shows one of the only two

"scientific illustrations" published of Baartman from life. It was based on drawings of her made in March 1815

for George Cuvier, and published, along a copy of his 1817 report on the dissection of Baartman, by Saint-

Hiliare & Cuvier (Charles) in 1824 in the first volume of their "Histoire Naturelle des Mammiferes...". The

middle panel shows a photograph of the plaster cast Cuvier had made of Baartman's corpse, shortly before

dissection of the body in early January 1816. The right panel is a photograph of her mounted skeleton.


Beginning in 1817, both the plaster cast and the skeleton were periodically on display in the French National

Museum of Natural History, first in the Jardin des Plantes, and later in the Muséum de l'Homme, until the late

1970's. According to Verneau (1916) Baartman's contract with Dunlop and her baptismal certificate were also

displayed. For a complete history of the dissection, including a list of the body parts retained for the Museum

collections (and the disposing of her other remains), as well a history of the display of the cast and skeleton

see Patin (2013a,b). Photographs are from the 1873 "Vues Stéréoscopiques" of Jules and Alfred Molteneni.

Note that the 1824 illustration from life in 1815, compared to the plaster cast of her corpse, exaggerates her

morphology considerably. She is shown with thicker legs, a larger head, breasts, buttocks, and marked

curvature of the spine. A contemporary newspaper report of Cuvier's production of the plaster cast (dated

January 2, 1816), stated, without mentioning the source, that death had not affected her morphology

(Anon. 1816b).

Figure 11. In 1821, the first depiction of one of Baartman's body parts was her skull shown in the first volume

of Cloquet's "Anatomie de l'Homme...". In plate 28 four skulls are shown, all the same scale, 'half natural size':

a Caucasian male represented by the skull of the anatomist Xavier Bichat (top right), Vénus Hottentote (top

left), an orangutan (bottom right) and a wolf (bottom left). The lines show the "facial angle" of each skull,

thought by Cuvier to be metric of primitivism (Gould 1981). Note that Baartman's skull is considerably smaller

that that of Bichat. However, the fact that Baartman was very likely considerably smaller in stature than Bichet

(she was only about 140 cm tall) was not mentioned in Cloquet's text, he merely stated that that Baartman's

skull resembled that of the organatan more than the Caucasian (Cloquet 1821, p. 97). Jules Cloquet (1790-

1883) was a well known anatomist, scientific illustrator, and surgeon in his time; his Anatomie de l'Homme

(Cloquet 1821-1836) is classic of medical illustration (Loukas et al. 2007).


Figure 12. In early January of 1816, Cuvier removed Baartman's brain from her skull, preserved it, using

unknown reagents, likely a solution of alcohol, and added it to the collections of the Natural History Museum. It

appears to have been first characterized and illustrated (left panel) by Friedrich Tiedemann (1781-1861), head

of the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Heidelburg and the author of classic anatomical studies

(Wysiadecki et al. 2024). His study compared the brains of the "Negro", the "European", and the "Orangoutang".

Baartman's brain was one of three "Negro" brains he examined and compared with those of 7 male

and 6 female "Europeans". He concluded that there existed no substantial differences between "Negro" and

"European" Brains. However, he did note that Baartman's brain showed surface morphologies of the

hemispheres to be remarkably symmetric in contrast to European brains. He published his findings in both

English and German (Tiedmann 1836, 1837). The second to study and illustrate Baartmann's brain was Pierre

Gratiolet (1815-1865), an anatomist of the Natural History Museum, in his major work (Parent 2014), Mémoire

sur les plis cérébraux de l’homme et des primates (Gratiolet 1854). Gratiolet compared the surface

morphology of Baartman's brain (shown in the middle panel) with that of a European male, and stated that the

surface morphology of Baartman's brain was much less convoluted, clearly inferior, resembling the brain of an

idiot, or of a child. Gratiolet's conclusions concerning the inferiority of Baartman's brain, and his illustration of it

(right panel), were very widely disseminated by Carl Vogt (1817-1895) in his "Lectures on Man: His place in

Creation, and in the History of the Earth" as it was first published in German (Vogt 1863), then in English (Vogt

1864), and also in French (Vogt 1865). Vogt, first a professor of Geology and later Professor of Zoology, at the

University of Geneva was very influential naturalist who energetically defended the view that humans had

evolved from primates (Blanckaert 1998). In Vogt's description of Baartman's brain, based solely on

Gratioltet's illustrations, and he concludes that the brain " ... comparing it to the brain of a German, I find a

remarkable resemblance between the ape and lower human type" (Vogt 1864 pg. 183). The German brain

was supposedly that of the mathematician Gauss, illustrated by Rudolph Wagner (1860). Actually, in recent

years, it was discovered that Gauss's brain and that of the physician Conrad Heinrich Fuchs (1803– 1855),

who died in the same year as Gauss, were mislabeled and Wagner studied the brain of Fuchs (Schweizer et

al. 2014). Gratiolet's illustration was also used by John Marshall in his 1864 article "On the brain of a

bushwoman; and on the brains of two idiots of European descent" in which he stated that both the new

bushwoman brain and Baartman's "...showed common inferiority to the European brain" (pg. 520).


Figure 13. In 1850, anyone who wished could purchase a model of Baartman's skull. Above is shown part of

page 26 of Guy's 1850 catalogue of anatomical models (Guy 1850) which offered 25 plaster models of the

skulls of "different human races", including both an Orangutan (5) and the Hottentot Venus (9), for 5 Francs.

On the cover of his catalogue, Guy described himself as "Naturaliste, Préparateur d'Anatomie Artificielle de la

Faculté de Médicine de Paris et du Val-de-Grace; Modeleur de l'Académie de Médecine." No information was

provided as to how he gained access to the specimens he modeled. Note that the Hotttentot Venus was the

only skull model of a named individual. It may have been a popular model. An 1837 guide to the Natural

History Museum mentioned that Baartman's skull had, at some point been stolen, and returned to the Museum

in 1827 (Rousseau & Lemnnier, 1837, pg. 86).


Figure 14. In 1869 Paul Broca first presented images of Baartman's brain and that of a 'new complex'

chimpanzee brain, scaled to the same length, in facing pages of an article in the Bulletins de la Sociéte

d'Anthropologie de Paris "L'Ordre des Primates : Parallèle Anatomique de l'Homme et des Singes" to show

that a chimpanzee brain could be as complex as that of a primitive race of man, i.e., Baartman. According to

the figure legends, he used Gratiolet's image of Baartman's brain and a new image of a 'new complex

chimpanzee' brain, not previously described (Broca 1869). The article was reprinted in 1870 in book form

(Broca 1970) and again, in facing pages, with same legends in the third volume of his monographic series,

"Mémoires d'Anthropologie" (Broca 1877a). It is interesting to note that Broca's comparison of the brains of

Baartman and a "new" chimpanzee, involved comparing a relatively fresh chimpanzee brain with Gratiolet's

illustration of Bartman's brain that had been in a preservative for nearly 40 years. Broca was well aware of the

difficulties involved in preserving and conserving brains to avoid changes in morphology (e.g. Broca 1877b)

but made no mention of the fact that Gratiolet had examined and illustrated a literally 'old' brain. Broca was a

powerful figure in his time. He was the founder of the Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, and a pioneer

neurologist (Finger 2004). He is also known today for his overtly racist views concerning the superiority of the

white races due to the size and morphological characteristics of their brains, in direct opposition to the views of

Friedrich Tiedemann (Gould 1981).


Figure 15. In 1882, an illustration of the skull of Baartman was shown in plate 28 of Crania Ethnica, by

Quatrefages & Hamy 1882, Atlas). In their text comparing the skull to others, Quatrafages and Hamy stated

that the Hottentot skull morphology indicates an inferior intellectual state (Quatrefages & Hamy 1882, text vol.,

pg 400). Armand de Quatrefages (1810-1892), and his assistant and eventual successor in the Paris Natural

History Museum, Ernest Hamy (1842-1908), were both followers of Broca's views with regard to the superiority

of the European (Cartailhac 1892).


Figure 16. From Charles Brogniart's 1892 book for the general public "Histoire Naturelle Populaire l'Homme et

les Animaux". The figure 154, "The convolutions of the brain" showed the brain morphologies of a Macaque

ape (top left), a chimpanzee (top right), the Hottentot Venus (center), and again, supposedly the

mathematician Gauss (bottom). The images represent then, apes, 'primitive' human, and the modern

mathematician. The origins of the figures were not given. The text (pg. 247) describes the Hottentot and

Boschimans, along with Australian indigenes, as the most degenerate peoples that exist that are, among other

things, miserable and lazy.


Figure 17. In 1895, William Blaxland Benham (1860-1950) published a study on the brain of a chimpanzee,

named "Sally" that appeared to differ considerably from previously studied chimpanzee brains, as it resembled

a human brain (Benham 1895). In plate 7, accompaigning the article, the top part showed brain of a

chimpanzee from the Oxford Museum (left), the unusual chimpanzee brain of "Sally" (center), and Gratiolet's

Hottentot Venus brain (right), all re-scaled to similar lengths. In the text, the "Hottentot" brain is simply referred

to as "a human brain" with no explanation as to the choice of using an illustration of Baartman's brain.

Benham's 1894 publication is unusual as it appears to be the only work he published on the brain. According

to his Royal Society obituary notice (Benson 1951), which included a list of Benhams publications, Benham's

expertise was clearly on earthworms.

Figure 18. In 1907 Edward Anthony Spitzka published his study of the brains of "six eminent scientists and

scholars" in a monograph of 164 pages (Spitzka 1907). It was not his first foray into trying to characterize the

brains of remarkable men. He had a few years before, published an article entitled "A study of the brainweights

of men notable in the professions, arts and sciences" in which he concluded "intellectual status is in

some way reflected in the mass and weight of the brain" (Spitzka 1903a), published a few days before another

article entitled "Brain-weight, cranial capacity and the form of the head, and their relations to the mental

powers of man" appeared in Science (Spitzka 1903b). In his 1907 article he went beyond comparing brains by

weight or volume to include surface morphology through figures showing the "simply constructed brains of

lower forms and the complex thought-apparatus of man". Above, in the left panel, is Spitzka's figure 9. He


placed at the top, the brain of a physicist, Siljeström, the illustration said to be after Retzius, was described by

Spitzka as displaying remarkably complex surface morphology. The middle brain is "Sartjee or Hottentot

Venus" said to be after Gratiolet and Bischoff, the bottom brain is said to be an original illustration of an

orangutan brain. The illustration of Siljeström's brain is faithful reproduction of Retzius' (Retzius 1902, plate 2,

fig. 3) but Retzius made no mention of the size of the brain. The illustration of Braatman's brain by Spitzka,

showing a brain surface morphology less complex than either that of Siljeström or of the orangutan is

deceptive. Labeled 'after Gratiolet and Bischoff ' it only vaguely resembles Gratiolet's figure of the profile of

Baartman's brain (Gratiolet 1856, plate 1, fig. 2), shown above in the top right panel. Spitzka's illustration is

actually a rough line drawing of Bischoff's illustration of her brain, shown above in the bottom right panel,

depicting distinct zones of Baartman's brain (Bischoff 1870, plate 3 fig. 6), not the surface morphology. In

Spitzka's figure legends no scales are mentioned. Spitzka was a renown anatomist in his time. He edited

the 1908, 1910, and 1913 American editions of the key reference work 'Grey's Anatomy' (Clement 1985).

Figure 19. In 1938, a black and white reproduction of the 1824 illustration of Baartman in Saint-Hiliare &

Cuvier, which exaggerated her morphology (see fig. 9), appeared in an article by Guidi Landra, a young

anthropologist, "On Bastards". The article warned of the danger of racial mixing, oddly describing the

"Hottentot Venus" as the result of crossing Boer and Bushman races (Sorgoni 2003). It was in the first issue of


the official publication of the Italian fascist regime on race "La Difesa della Razza". In early 1938, Landra, a

devoted eugenist, was chosen by Mussolini to be the racial propaganda chief and head of the "Racial Office";

that same year, Landra was awarded the "Order of the Knight's Cross, First Class" by Adolph Hitler himself for

"scientific merit" (Gillette 2002).

Fig. 20. John R. Baker's 1974 book "Race", as in Landra's 1938 article, used a black and white reproduction of

the 1824 illustration of Baartman in Saint-Hiliare & Cuvier that exaggerated her morphology (see fig. 9). It

appeared as part of his figure 56, "Khoisand female anatomy" (left panel), as well as in miniature on the dust

cover jacket of the book (right panel, square and arrow added). He remarked on the curvature of the spine

shown in the 1824 illustration, and not evident in the plaster cast made of Baartman's corpse. John R. Baker

(1900-1984) was an Oxford University zoologist, and nearly life-long eugenist, who considered "Race' to be his

major achievement, and it was quite controversial (Kenny 2004). As pointed out in one of the reviews (Ladimeji

1974), bushmen faired particularly poorly in his descriptions on races: "Although mankind as a whole is

paedomorphous (morphologically child-like), those ethnic taxa (the Sanids among them) that are markedly

more paedomorphous than the rest have never achieved the status of civilization, or anything approaching it,

by their own initiative. It would seem that when carried beyond a certain point, paedomorphosis is antagonistic

to purely intellectual advance." (pg. 324). Baker's book was published by a prestigious academic publisher, the

Oxford University Press. Baker's use of the 1824 illustration of Baartman in 1974, based on drawings made of

her in 1815, marked 150 years of the "scientific exploitation" of Baartman.


5. Concluding Remarks

Today, it seems quite improbable that one could consider a woman who was said to speak three

languages, that is her native tongue, Dutch, and English (Anon. 1814c) be considered a piece of

property (Anon. 1815), and be described as an animal, a monster, after her death (Anon. 1816c).

However, that is exactly what happened to Baartman. We like to think that our concepts of humanity,

in all its diversity, has changed for the better, relative to the past. However, wars are still being fought

between ethnicities and nations. To wage war on a nation or a people, the enemy must be categorized

as an "other", unworthy. Let Baartman remain with us to remind us that trivial differences among

peoples such as language, race, religion, politics, diet, sexual orientation, gender identification, or even

clothing, still elicit reactions of an "other" and need to be consciously battled against.

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Arts et sciences


Mineral and/or living 1

Minéral et/ou vivant

Ruth Scheps 1

1

Doctor (Ph.D.) in molecular genetics (The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel); producer at France Culture

and journalist at Radio Suisse Romande until 2009; editor-in-chief of the journal Mikhtav Hadash / La Nouvelle Lettre until

2019. rscheps@hotmail.com

ABSTRACT. The relationship between the mineral and the living has always been a subject of debate, but nowadays it is

of growing interest, probably due to scientific advances that have blurred the classical distinction between living and nonliving.

The first part of this article explores various passages from mineral to living: in ancient stories (Genesis and Greco-

Roman mythology) and contemporary role-playing games on the one hand, and in the emergence of life on the other, as

understood by science over the centuries. The second part focuses on the reverse passages, from the living to the mineral:

several possible mineralizations of organisms, in vivo (biomineralizations) and post-mortem (fossilizations, petrifications),

with their artistic and literary revivals, are thus addressed. The third part evokes the proximities between the mineral and

the living: natural proximities (in particular those involving epiliths such as lichens) or due to humans (from prehistoric cave

paintings to Arte povera). We will finally see how certain writers and artists reach a true intimacy with the mineral world in

which they project themselves and find themselves.

KEYWORDS. Clay, biomineral, origins of life, evolution, fossilization, myths, petrification, stone, science-fiction,

sedimentation, stromatolith, symbiosis.

1. Introduction

All over the world, the cosmogonic stories that have been passed down to us bear witness to a universal

human questioning of the nature of life and its origins. This same questioning has given rise to scientific

theories, philosophical speculations, and various artistic and entertaining creations. Among all the

questions related to this issue, those concerning the relationship between minerals and living beings,

while they have never ceased to fuel intellectual debate, are now experiencing a new wave of interest.

Numerous scientific advances in biology, chemistry and mineralogy over the past few decades, have

blurred the traditional boundaries between living and non-living things (as well as between animals and

plants, or even animals and humans). Without prejudging the future of these controversies, we will

outline the evolution of ideas on all the links (real, supposed, or imagined) between minerals and living

organisms. We will discuss the current state of research and knowledge on the role of the mineral world

in the emergence of life, the mineralization of organisms in vivo (biomineralization) and post-mortem

(fossilization), as well as their associations, whether natural (from coexistence to symbiosis) or inspired

by artists and writers. Finally, we will indicate the conditions for true intimacy between humans and

minerals.

1

A French version of this article was published in January 2022 : « Minéral et/ou vivant », Arts et sciences 6(3)

DOI :10.21494/ISTE.OP.2022.0854 English translation of French quotations: Ruth Scheps.


2. Passages and transformations

2.1. From minerals to living beings

Tout ce que nous appelons histoire est dans une large mesure dépendant de la pierre. Cela

vaut de l’histoire de la Terre, de l’histoire naturelle et de l’histoire mondiale, au sens le plus

vaste du terme 2 . Ernst Jünger

2.1.1. From myths to role-playing games

Humans have always known that they were not the only living beings on Earth: in the myths, legends,

and tales of great civilizations and popular cultures alike, everything in nature is presented as living, or

at least potentially living, including stones.

In the first chapter of Genesis, the divine creator causes the earth to produce plants and animals, and

he creates man “in his own image”; in the second chapter, it is specified how and from what: God does

not charge the earth with producing man as it did for other living beings; it is he himself who shapes man

from the earth (adama in Hebrew, hence Adam), then breathes life into him 3 . In the Mesopotamian epic

of Atrahasis, the goddess Nintu also creates humanity from clay, and in Egyptian mythology, it is the

god Khnum who, like a potter, shapes humans on his wheel with clay. This theme of clay, molded to

give it human form and life, would later be taken up in Jewish mysticism and mythology with the myth

of the Golem (from the Hebrew golem: embryo, formless, unfinished), a humanoid being made of clay,

deprived of speech and free will, created to serve its creator 4 . A popular version has him born from clay

after four sages, who embody the four elements, imparted their attributes to him; on his forehead is

inscribed the word emet (truth), which becomes, when its first letter is erased, met (dead): the living clay

has turned back into dust.

2

Ernst Jünger : “Everything we call history is largely dependent on stone. This applies to the history of the Earth, natural history, and

world history, in the broadest sense of the term.” Graffiti/Frontalières, « Pierres », Christian Bourgois, 1977.

3

Genesis 1:11: God said, “Let the earth bring forth vegetation.”; 1:20: God said, “Let the waters teem with a multitude of living

creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”; 1:24: God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures

according to their kinds: cattle, creeping things, and wild animals of every kind.”; 2:7: “The Lord God formed man from the dust of the

ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.”

4

Myth of the Golem: The first occurrence of the term golem appears in Psalm 139:16: “Galmi (i.e., my golem) Your eyes have seen”

— the psalmist thus praises God who knows him even before his flesh has taken human form. Commenting on this verse, Rabbi

Yonathan interprets the golem as an embryo that is still unformed; in the Mishnah, a golem is an individual whose gifts remain in a raw

state. Based on the same verse, the Talmud teaches that when God created Adam, he first made him a golem, raising him from the earth

to the firmament before breathing life into him. The legend of the golem became very popular in Central European Jewish folklore and

has inspired many authors of fantasy works (films, series, cartoons, video games), some more faithful to the original versions than

others.


Figure 1. Auguste Rodin, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1889; plaster, marble cast; H.: 76 cm; W.: 82.4 cm; D.: 73

cm; W.: 23 kg (Work), Musée Rodin. Public Domain

In Greek mythology, several stories tell of stone becoming flesh. The legend of Pygmalion, recounted

by Ovid in Metamorphoses 5 , features the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls madly in love with the ivory

woman he has created: “He doubts whether it is a living body or the work of his chisel. He touches her

and still doubts. He kisses the statue lovingly and believes that his kisses are returned. He talks to her,

listens to her, touches her lightly, believes he feels flesh yielding under his fingers, and trembles, afraid

of hurting her delicate limbs.” (247); he then prays to the gods to grant him a wife similar to his statue,

and Aphrodite grants his wish; he then marries his sculpture and calls her Galatea because she is as white

as milk (gala, galactos: Greek for “milk”): “It is no longer an illusion: it is a body that breathes, and

whose veins swell softly under his fingers.” (280); “His kisses are felt. The animated statue blushes,

opens her eyes, and sees both the sky and her lover.” (290).

Over the centuries, the story of Pygmalion and Galatea has enjoyed remarkable artistic posterity:

painting and sculpture, notably Rodin (fig.1), music, literature, cinema and video, and comic books have

all taken it up in various ways, not to mention pedagogy with its “Pygmalion effect” 6 . Also in Greek

mythology, as recounted by Ovid, Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha are the only survivors of the flood

caused by Zeus. Taking refuge on Mount Parnassus, they receive orders from the oracle of Themis to

throw the bones of their Great Mother behind them, in order to repopulate the earth. After some

hesitation, “they walk, throwing stones behind them. These stones, losing their original roughness and

5

Ovid, Metamorphoses - Pygmalion X, 243-297.

6

Pygmalion effect: an effect that causes an improvement in a subject's performance, depending on the degree of belief in their success

coming from an authority figure or their environment. The opposite effect, called the Golem effect, results in lower performance and

less ambitious goals when an authority figure judges a subject's potential to be limited.


hardness, gradually soften and take on a new form. [...] The moist and earthy elements of these stones

became flesh; the strongest and hardest ones turned into bones; what was vein retained its form and

name. Thus, in a short space of time, the power of the gods changed the stones thrown by Deucalion into

men and gave life back to the lost women through the hand of a woman.” 7

From the Renaissance onwards, Deucalion and Pyrrha provided the subject matter for several

mythological paintings. Among the best known are those by two Italian Baroque painters: Giovanni

Maria Bottalla around 1635 (fig. 2) and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione in 1655.

Figure 2. Giovanni Maria Botalla, Deucalion and Pyrrha, circa 1635. National Museum of Fine Arts of Brazil.

Public Domain

In our time, several role-playing games feature this transition from stone to flesh: in Pathfinder 8 , for

example, there is a spell that performs this transformation. If the affected material was once alive, its life

is restored, and it returns to its previous state. Ordinary stone will also be changed into flesh. However,

this flesh is inert unless a life force or magical energy is available (for example, a stone golem would be

transformed into a flesh golem, but a normal statue would become a corpse). For this spell, the material

components are a pinch of earth and a drop of blood.

7

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 1. Translation by multiple authors. Text established by D. Nisard, Firmin-Didot, 1850 (p. 251–268).

8

Pathfinder: tabletop role-playing game published in French by Black Book Editions, under an open gaming license (OGL). It is a

translation of Pathfinder Roleplaying Game (Pathfinder RPG), published in English by Paizo Publishing. This role-playing game is

based on the rules of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition, which it enriches and improves upon.


In all the legends we have just mentioned, the transition from mineral to living being occurs through

collaboration between humans and superhumans. Indeed, in mythical logic (biblical or Greco-Roman

antiquity, contemporary fantasy reinterpretations), the decisive transformation of mineral matter into

living flesh can only be accomplished with the help of a superpower: divine for the Ancients, magical in

role-playing games. (The reverse transformation, from flesh to stone, will be discussed in section 2.2.5,

Petrification).

2.1.2. State of knowledge

The first classification of the natural world according to the degree of complexity of beings (“scale of

nature”) is attributed to Aristotle 9 : “Thus nature passes gradually from inanimate beings to living beings,

so that this continuity prevents us from perceiving the boundary that separates them [...].” 10 For him,

“[...] life as I understand it consists of nourishing oneself, growing, and decaying,” 11 which implies a

dynamic orientation — vitalist before the term existed — that is absent from the “inanimate” world that

is nevertheless its origin. This so-called inanimate world would be largely neglected in subsequent

scientific debates on the complexity of living beings. In the 18th century, however, two great naturalists

were exceptions in this regard: Linnaeus 12 , with his division of nature into three kingdoms (mineral,

plant, and animal 13 , but he would later discard the mineral kingdom to focus solely on living beings), and

Buffon 14 , who declared that “one can descend through almost imperceptible degrees from the most

perfect creature to the most formless matter, from the best-organized animal to the crudest mineral.” 15

9

Aristotle (384-322 BC): Ancient Greek philosopher and one of the most influential thinkers in the Western world. Certain elements of

his classification of living beings were used until the 19th century. He divided science into three main areas: theoretical science, practical

science, and applied science (poietic); Nature (Physis) occupies an important place in his philosophy. According to Aristotle, natural

materials possess a principle of movement within themselves, and all living beings have a “soul,” but one that has various functions:

solely vegetative for plants, vegetative and sensitive for animals, and also intellectual for humans. In general, Aristotle sees living beings

as organized wholes from which no part can be detached without difficulty, rather than formless entities such as stones.

10

Aristotle, History of Animals, VIII, 1, 588 b4-b23.

11

Aristotle, Treatise on the Soul, II, 1.

12

Carl von Linné (1707-1778): Swedish naturalist who laid the foundations for the modern system of binomial nomenclature. He

systematically catalogued, named, and classified most of the living species known at the time. However, as the concept of evolution did

not yet exist, Linné's classification remains fixist.

13

Carl von Linné: “Stones are aggregate bodies, without life or feeling. Plants are organized bodies, with life, but without feeling.

Animals are organized bodies, with life and feeling, and which move spontaneously.” Systema Naturæ, 1st ed. 1735; Système de la

nature, Hachette BnF, 2016, p. 4. (A General System of Nature).

14

Georges Louis-Leclerc de Buffon (1707-1788): French naturalist, mathematician, biologist, cosmologist, philosopher, and writer. A

member of the French Academy of Sciences and the French Academy, he was part of the Enlightenment movement. He can be

considered the first naturalist to protest against the supposed immutability or fixity of species. His theories influenced two generations

of naturalists, notably Lamarck and Darwin.

15

Buffon, De la manière d’étudier l’Histoire naturelle (On the Method of Studying Natural History), vol. I, p. 6.


In the last decades of the 18th century, Lamarck 16 replaced Linnaeus' three kingdoms with a division

into two orders: “organized, living bodies” (organic matter 17 ) and “raw, lifeless bodies” (inorganic

matter 18 ). He considered that an “immense gap” separated them, whereas in the living world itself, life

forms succeeded one another and transformed continuously or gradually, which he interpreted in terms

of the evolution of species. Fifty years later, Darwin 19 , in his famous work On the Origin of Species, also

proposed a continuous evolution of living species 20 , but he also ignored the transition from mineral to

living matter.

Even in the 20th century, evolutionary theorists 21 were only interested in living organisms themselves.

The role of minerals in evolution was really taken into account only by researchers who were concerned

with the origins of life.

But first we need to agree on what exactly a mineral is (from the Latin minera, meaning “mine” or

“mining”), a question to which non-specialists will respond, like Saint Augustine on the subject of time,

that they know... as long as they are not asked! In fact, this question can be answered in several ways

today, depending on the field in question (geology, chemistry, anthropology, etc.) and the degree of

precision required.

As a first approximation, we could say that a mineral is essentially a crystalline chemical substance

formed by a geological process 22 , and that this term refers to all the inorganic bodies that make up the

Earth's crust. However, there are a few exceptions to this definition: for example, mercury, which is

liquid at room temperature (it only crystallizes below -39°C), is still considered a mineral, and some

non-crystallized and amorphous solids, such as opal and amber (derived from fossilized sap), are also

classified as minerals. Another definitional ambiguity: minerals are inorganic chemicals and therefore

lack the carbon present in the organic chemistry that characterizes life. However, certain minerals

(oxalates, (bi)carbonates, carbonic acid, ferrocyanides) are considered inorganic even though they

contain carbon.

16

Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de La Marck, known as Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck: French naturalist (1744-1829)

who first devoted himself to botany, then to the zoology of insects and worms. He was one of the first to name biology as the science

that studies living beings. He also proposed the first solidly supported theory on the evolution of living beings (published in 1809 in his

book Zoological Philosophy). His transformist theory is based on two principles: the increasing complexity of the organization of living

beings under the effect of internal dynamics; and their diversification into species following the adaptation of their behavior or organs

to their environment.

17

Lamarck's conception of organic matter as necessarily linked to life was discredited by the advent of synthetic chemistry: in 1828,

Wöhler's synthesis of urea showed that non-living organic matter exists, and by the mid-19th century, new carbon-based molecules

were being synthesized that existed neither in living beings nor in so-called inert matter.

18

Lamarck, Opening speech delivered on 21 Floréal, Year VIII, in Lamarck, Year IX (1801a), p. 3–5.

19

Charles Darwin (1809-1882): English naturalist and paleontologist. His book on the evolution of living species, On the Origin of

Species (1859), revolutionized biology. Famous among the scientists of his time for his fieldwork and research in geology, he took up

Lamarck's hypothesis that all living species evolved from one or more common ancestors. Both opposed the then widely accepted theory

of creationism, and Darwin argued with Alfred Wallace that this evolution was due to the process of natural selection.

20

However, the process of this evolution — natural selection — differs radically from the mechanisms postulated by Lamarck, known

by the somewhat reductive name of the transmission of acquired characteristics.

21

Among these evolutionary theorists, we can mention the continuist Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) with his synthetic theory, and the

discontinuists Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) and Niles Eldredge (born in 1943) with their theory of punctuated equilibrium.

22

More specifically: in the vast majority of cases, a mineral can be described as a crystallized material characterized by its chemical

composition and the arrangement of its atoms according to a precise periodicity and symmetry, which are reflected in the mineral's

crystal system and space group. In principle, a mineral must be macroscopically homogeneous.


The first classification of minerals, based on their chemical composition, dates back to the early 19th

century 23 . Advances in analytical chemistry and crystallography have since improved this classification 24 ,

and there are now ten classes of minerals 25 .

Let us now turn our attention to the geochemical processes that enabled life to emerge on our planet

some 4 billion years ago, i.e. 500 million years after its formation, when it had cooled sufficiently and

was less impacted by asteroids. The only resources available at the time were water, air, and a few

hundred rock minerals. But natural geological processes (the formation of oceans and mountains,

volcanism) are so slow that for a very long time, minerals were seen as “inanimate” (see our

Introduction).

However, even if the details of these processes still elude us, we now know that minerals played an

essential role. As Antoine Danchin aptly put it, life experienced “a dawn of stones.” 26 This theory, known

as the “genetic takeover” hypothesis, was proposed by Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith 27 . It replaced

the “primordial soup” hypothesis 28 , which postulated that the first living organisms emerged from a

simple chemical broth, and posits that the current mechanisms of heredity were preceded by a primitive

form of inheritance. This primitive inheritance would have consisted of the replication of a mineral

template, perhaps between layers of clay 29 , which would have facilitated the polymerization of simple

molecules into the complex macromolecules characteristic of life 30 . This initial self-replication would

have been gradually replaced by that of nucleic acids (RNA and then DNA), the carriers of genetic

information. Being negatively charged like clay, these nucleic acids would have entered into a symbiotic

relationship with it until they eventually achieved autonomy. And to prevent microorganisms from being

diluted and destroyed, the clay layers would have closed in on themselves, thus forming protective

compartments (like the membranes that protect living cells) within which small molecules could

accumulate, grow, and eventually assemble. However, as stimulating and promising as it may be, Cairns-

23

See J.J. Berzelius, Nouveau système de minéralogie (New System of Mineralogy), Paris, 1819.

24

Recent revisions of the Dana (1997) and Strunz (2001) classifications are based on crystal chemistry. They consider the groups of

atoms that make up the mineral.

25

Current classification of minerals: Class I: native elements (carbon and diamond, sulfur, native gold, native silver, native copper,

platinum); Class II: sulfides; Class III: halides; Class IV: oxides and hydroxides; Class V: carbonates and nitrates; Class VI: borates;

Class VII: sulfates, chromates, molybdates, tungstates; Class VIII: phosphates, arsenates, vanadates; Class IX: silicates; Class X: organic

minerals (crystallized organic compounds found in nature).

26

Antoine Danchin, Une aurore de pierres. Aux origines de la vie, Seuil, 1990.

27

Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith, “The Origin of Life and the Nature of the Primitive Gene”, Journal of Theoretical Biology, vol.

10, n° 1, 1966; L’énigme de la vie, Paris, Odile Jacob, 1990.

28

The “primordial soup” hypothesis: formulated by Stanley Miller based on the famous laboratory experiment by Miller and Urey

(1953), in which they obtained some of the basic building blocks of life from very simple compounds, by electrically simulating the

effect of lightning on the primordial atmosphere.

29

“Clays are very common on planet Earth, having been present since its formation. And not only on Earth: they are found in meteorites,

asteroids, and even on Mars. For crystallographers, who study matter at the atomic scale, they are considered 'layered minerals,' whose

structure is characterized by alternating layers a few angstroms thick (an angstrom is one ten-thousandth of a micrometer or one-tenth

of a billionth of a meter), which can be negatively charged or electrically neutral.” In Marie-Christine Maurel and Jean-François

Lambert, “The Birth of Life on Clays,” Living Forms, exhibition catalogue, Adrien Dubouché National Museum, October 9, 2019 –

February 10, 2020, co-published with the City of Ceramics – Sèvres & Limoges, 2019, p. 34.

30

In 1973, Aharon Katchalski demonstrated in the laboratory the polymerization effect of a specific type of clay, montmorillonite. “This

clay acts like a mini-reactor; it stores and concentrates organic matter between the layers of its sheet-like structure, thus facilitating the

interaction and condensation of two amino acids to form a precursor of a protein.” Ibid., p. 35.


Smith's theory has not yet been fully verified experimentally, particularly with regard to the mechanism

of nucleic acid synthesis.

2.2. From living organisms to minerals

Over hundreds of millions of years, living organisms gradually gained their independence from

minerals – without, however, completely breaking free from them. In fact, the interdependence between

minerals and living organisms takes many forms: in addition to the necessary presence of minerals during

the evolution that led to the first forms of life, these organisms and all those that descended from them

have remained in close contact with the mineral world. This is evidenced, in particular by the various

processes of mineralization of living organisms: in nature, sedimentary rocks formed by plankton

(organo-sedimentation); stromatolites, the oldest traces of life of both sedimentary and biogenic origin,

as well as all living organisms that produce their own minerals (biomineralization) or mineralize postmortem

(fossilization, petrification). Not to mention the various more or less intimate relationships

between stones and living beings, which will be discussed later.

2.2.1. Organo-sedimentation

First, let us remember that the evolution of each of these two worlds, which we have long thought of

as separate, depends on the other: the first rocks of the Earth's crust provided the molecular resources

that life needed to appear, sustain itself, and become more complex; the various plankton organisms 31 in

turn contributed to the formation of sedimentary rocks over several hundred million years 32 . In fact,

organo-sedimentary rocks were formed in two ways: 1° When the organisms that made up the plankton

died, their shells of limestone, silica, or phosphate were excreted, dissolved, then deposited and

accumulated at the bottom of the water, where they compacted to form sedimentary rocks. Some of the

organisms involved in this process are visible to the naked eye (mollusk and large crustacean larvae,

algae, polyps, etc.), but most are microscopic (unicellular bacteria and algae in phytoplankton, protozoa

in zooplankton) and form the thickest sediments, which can sometimes reach several hundred meters. 2°

Aquatic organisms decomposed after death and were transformed into coal or oil and natural gas by the

compression and heating resulting from their accumulation.

31

Plankton (from the ancient Greek planktós: wandering, unstable): a group of organisms that are generally unicellular, vary greatly in

size (from over 2m for megaplankton to 0.02µm for femtoplankton) and do not all appear to have the same ancestors. Plankton lives in

fresh, brackish, and salt water, most often in suspension, and is the main food source for baleen whales and filter-feeding shellfish. It is

the source of significant biomass as well as necromass, which is very present in certain sediments: chalk, for example, is the fossilized

necromass of marine plankton. Plant plankton (phytoplankton) consists of microscopic, photosynthetic algae; although it represents

less than 1% of the planet's photosynthetic biomass, it fixes about one-third of its atmospheric CO2, which is as much as terrestrial and

aquatic plants combined! It is the basis of all aquatic food chains; its most numerous groups are diatoms, dinoflagellates, and

cyanobacteria. To multiply, it needs sunlight and carbon dioxide, but also minerals and trace elements such as phosphorus and nitrogen.

Among animal plankton organisms (zooplankton), some spend their entire lives as plankton (holoplankton), while others only spend

their larval stage as plankton (meroplankton). Recent studies have shown that a large proportion of marine plankton is actually capable

of behaving simultaneously as phytoplankton (photosynthesis) and zooplankton (phagocytosis): this is referred to as mixotrophic

plankton (https://www.sorbonne-universite.fr/dossiers/sciences-de-la-mer/la-photosynthese-et-le-plancton-mixotrophe). In terms of

their mineral composition, planktonic organisms have very few skeletal structures, and those that do have them have thin, light skeletons.

Discovered between the 18th and 19th centuries, they inspired the naturalist and illustrator Ernst Haeckel, who popularized their beauty

and diversity in his famous work Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature), which had a profound influence on the Art Nouveau

movement in the early 20th century.

32

It should be noted, however, that not all sedimentary rocks are of biotic origin and represent only a small portion of terrestrial rocks,

most of which are exclusively mineral in origin (magmatic rocks and certain metamorphic rocks).


Figure 3. Nicolas Floc'h, CO2 → 02, 2019, 60-micron centric diatom (featured in the exhibition “The Color of

Water”), Frac Grand Large — Hauts-de-France, Dunkirk, France © Courtesy of the artist / ADAGP, Paris 2022

Fascinated by the variety of diatom shapes 33 , artist Nicolas Floc’h 34 used 3D modeling technologies

to create enlargements in Hainaut blue stone, which itself is made up of sedimented diatoms (fig. 3).

Another artist attracted by the exoskeletons of planktonic organisms, Isabelle Rochemars 35 , transforms

them through her paintings. Her exhibition “Microscopic Relics” (2021) featured two series representing

diatoms and coccolithophores, respectively. The diatoms (with their silica exoskeleton called a frustule)

were painted with diatom sediment; the coccolithophores (with their limestone exoskeleton called a

coccolith) were painted with a pigment composed of these coccoliths, filtered from sediment collected

from the ocean floor and mixed with an acrylic binder (fig. 4).

33

Diatoms or Bacillariophyta: a division of unicellular microalgae (from 2 μm to 1 mm) found in all aquatic environments and enclosed

in an external siliceous skeleton called a frustule. They can live freely or attached, alone or in colonies. Diatoms are a major component

of phytoplankton. The accumulation of frustules over millions of years has formed deposits of siliceous peat, oil, or rocks called

diatomites.

34

Nicolas Floc’h: visual artist, scenographer, photographer, and videographer born in 1970 in Rennes, France. Lives and works in Paris.

Teaches at EESAB-Site de Rennes. Numerous performances, participation in group exhibitions, and international solo exhibitions.

Represented in Paris by Galerie Maubert. Latest solo exhibition: Frac Grand Large – Hauts de France, “La couleur de l'eau” (April 2,

2022 – September 4, 2022). This exhibition is the first that Nicolas Floc'h has devoted to his research project La couleur de l'eau. He

photographs underwater landscapes to “make the invisible visible” – in the Baie de Somme, but also in oceans, seas and along rivers –

thereby contributing to the study of fragile ecosystems. https://www.nicolasfloch.net/news

35

Isabelle Rochemars: French visual artist. Lives and works in Cadenet, France. Numerous group exhibitions in France. Latest solo

exhibition: “Microscopic Relics #2,” Musée des Tapisseries d'Aix-en-Provence, with the Natural History Museum, Aix-en-Provence

(September 13 – November 7, 2021).


Figure 4. Isabelle Rochemars, Microscopic Relics Series, Roaesphaera radices, 2019. © Isabelle Rochemars

2.2.2. Stromatolites

Stromatolites (from the Greek stroma, meaning “mat,” and lithos, meaning “stone”) are the result of

a particular form of organo-sedimentation caused by colonies of certain bacteria: for example,

cyanobacteria carry out photosynthesis during the day and precipitate limestone using carbon dioxide;

at night, they produce a jelly that traps limestone and some sediments. When cyanobacteria die, they

give rise to micro-layers of limestone that serve as a substrate for the development of subsequent bacteria,

eventually forming a biomineral mat (consisting of superimposed layers 0.1 to 5 mm thick, alternating

between mineral and fossil-rich cyanobacteria layers). These laminar structures develop in shallow

aquatic environments, both marine and lacustrine. Their growth is very slow (0.3 mm/year) and their

forms are highly varied, ranging from slightly undulating bacterial mats to spectacular domes,

mushrooms, or columns, which are the best known.

The earliest stromatolites, now fossilized, date back approximately 3.5 billion years and bear traces

of the oldest forms of life in fixed colonies. However, as most of the Earth's earliest rocks have

disappeared due to various geological upheavals, stromatolites are now found only in a few lagoons or

saltwater bays 36 , and those that are still active can be described as living fossils 37 . Their history reached

36

Sites hosting active stromatolites (according to Wikipedia, article ‘Stromatolite’): Shark Bay (‘Hamelin Harbour’, west coast of

Australia); Lake Thetis (west coast of Australia); Blue Lake (southern Australia); Lake Salgada (Brazil); Laguna de los Siete Colores

(Mexico); Lake Solar (Egypt); Persian Gulf, Green Lake, Salt Lake; Bahamas; Transvaal (South Africa); Hainan Island (China); three

warm water lakes (27 to 35 °C) in Western Australia: the brackish lakes of Rottnest Island and Clifton, and the freshwater lake of

Richmond; Le Dard, near Baume-les-Messieurs (Jura); numerous sulphurous hot springs, such as those in Yellowstone National Park;

petrifying springs and streams in France: the Dard stream near Lons-le-Saunier (Jura), the petrifying waterfall stream of Saint Pierre-

Livron near Caylus (Tarn-et-Garonne); Lake Dziani Dzaha in Mayotte.

37

What is alive in today's active stromatolites is not their structure, but the bacteria that build it. Inside, they can be either almost full

or contain enough empty space to harbour other microorganisms.


a long peak in the Precambrian era, when the cyanobacterial communities that formed them dominated

marine life, before the oxygenation of the atmosphere allowed more complex organisms to appear. Over

billions of years, they formed imposing reefs or limestone or dolomite massifs (up to 3 km thick in the

Anti-Atlas Mountains in Morocco!).

Being able to contemplate these witnesses to the earliest days of life is a powerful experience. Marian

Mc Guinness, a reporter for the BBC, recounts her amazement at the sight of the stromatolites in Lake

Thetis after a long journey: “There were thousands of pumice-colored stromatolites, almost camouflaged

beneath the ripples, submerged like migrations of ancient turtles holding their breath beneath the slightly

opaque water. I was stunned. This is what life looked like in the beginning of time, not to mention the

orange methane sky caused by volcanic activity.” 38

Figure 5. Lia Giraud, Candidatus Gloeomargarita lithophora; inclusions of calcium, barium, and strontium

carbonates, visible inside the cyanobacteria. © Karim Benzerara & Stefan Borensztajn

Figure 6. Lia Giraud, Techno-aesthetics of the Stone Carpet #4, 2019. Permanent marker drawing, between

two glasses. 20.7 x 8 cm

38

Bbc.com: Marian McGuinness, BBC Travel, 2 March 2021. Lake Thetis is a coastal salt lake in the Mid West region of Western

Australia.


Some contemporary artists, also captivated by the visual and symbolic density of stromatolites, which

connect us to primitive life, have dreamed up their forms or development. The “Stromatolite” project

(2013–2017) by visual artist Lia Giraud 39 recounts ongoing research, but also presents itself as a

multifaceted “technical-poetic reverie” around sedimentation resulting from living organisms. The

evaporations show Petri dishes containing a culture of Gloeomargarita lithophora (fig. 5), a strain of

cyanobacteria discovered in 2012, which has the particularity of producing limestone inclusions within

its cell wall. After the liquid has completely evaporated, a mineral residue corresponding to the

petrification of the cells is obtained: the living has given way to the mineral. In the sketches of her

technical utopias, for example Techno-esthétique du tapis de pierre #4 (fig. 6), the same artist interprets

the sedimentary processes linked to stromatolites: time has also mineralized. Finally, in Remake, a 3D

printer fabricates a stromatolite layer by layer at a rate of 1 mm per year: thanks to technology, the living

has inspired the mineral.

In 2017, visual artist Sophie Papiau 40 offered her own interpretation with her sculpture installation

Stromatolites (fig. 7), evoking the organo-sedimentary structure through the juxtaposition of two

materials that could only come together through the artist's will: fabric and ceramics — ruffled fabric

evoking sedimentary folds; white, matte, and grainy ceramics, like a transfiguration of the clay mud

linked to the origins of life.

Figure 7. Sophie Papiau, Stromatolites, 2017, ceramics, milk, fabrics, H + or - 75 cm. Installation composed of

several floor and wall sculptures, each comprising a volume of gathered fabric sewn onto a milk-patinated

ceramic. © Sophie Papiau

39

Lia Giraud (born in 1985): French artist and doctor of visual arts (SACRe/PSL; see L’œuvre processus. Pratiques dialogiques entre

biologique et technique, vers une écologie de l’œuvre. Art et histoire de l’art. PSL Research University, 2017. French. NNT:

2017PSLET037), professor of photography at the Beaux-Arts de Marseille. Her installations explore the evolution of our conceptions

of and relationships with living things in a technoscientific context. For her interdisciplinary research focused on the creation of

ecosystems at the frontier between science and society, she brings together biologists, thinkers, artists and citizen communities. Her

work has been featured in numerous exhibitions (Centre Pompidou, Le 14, Le Cube, Le Bel Ordinaire, Festival Images de Vevey,

Naturpark Our, Dutch Design Week), publications (Artpress, Tracks, Wired, Vice) and educational interventions aimed at the general

public.

40

Sophie Papiau (born in 1967): French visual artist. Studied visual arts at the École des Beaux-Arts in Brest, Quimper and Angers.

Fascinated by science, she uses images from this field as a source for her artistic work. Selected in 2003 for the contemporary art

exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Latest solo exhibition: Pink Forest, textile, ceramic and thread installation

/ evolving installation, Pulchri Studio The Hague NL, 7 to 29 May 2022.


2.2.3. Biomineralization

Another way of making living beings partially mineral is biomineralization, the process by which they

themselves produce minerals capable of hardening some of their tissues. The shells of mollusks, the

bones and teeth of vertebrates, and their nails and claws are structures resulting from biomineralization.

It exists in all plant and animal groups, and more than sixty biomineral molecules have been identified

in the organisms concerned — silicates in algae and diatoms, carbonates in invertebrates, phosphates

and carbonates in certain vertebrates. A distinction is made between induced biomineralization and

controlled biomineralization: in the former, the material simply results from interactions between the

organism's metabolism and its environment, where the biomineral is excreted or precipitated; in this

case, the structure of the biomineral resembles those observed in spontaneous and abiotic crystallizations

or chemical precipitations. The second type of biomineralization, on the other hand, involves two

specialized processes: the production of crystal layers and the control of their arrangement within an

organic matrix. The structure of the biomineral produced is therefore much more complex. A single

organism sometimes contains different specialized tissues, each with its own function: in bivalve

mollusks, for example, an internal tissue produces mother-of-pearl 41 , while an external tissue contributes

to the growth and repair of the shell. Other biominerals that are very common in nature include: raphides,

fine crystals of calcium oxalate or calcium carbonate, found in the leaves and stems of many plant

families; hydroxyapatite (calcium phosphate) crystals, found in various mineralized tissues 42 as well as

in pathological calcifications (kidney stones or Randall's plaques).

2.2.4. Fossilization

Fossilization (from the Latin fossilis, meaning “drawn from the earth”) is the mineralization of a living

organism or its past activity, or simply its imprint, preserved in sedimentary rock. It results in either more

or less well-preserved remains of the organism itself (bones, teeth, leaves, mycelium, biofilms, etc.) or

various imprints left by it (fig. 8). But this mineralization is very different from biomineralization: while

the latter is a synthesis within the organism itself that takes place throughout its life, fossilization is a

gradual replacement of its organic parts by minerals, which takes place in sedimentary rock and postmortem

over thousands or even millions of years, depending on the surrounding conditions. For an

animal carcass, the first condition for fossilization to begin is that it must be immediately covered with

a layer of sand, mud, or other sediments, thus escaping scavengers. Oxygen then decomposes the soft

parts of the carcass, leaving only the hard parts. Gradually, new layers of sediment accumulate, burying

it deeper and deeper, exerting increased weight and pressure on it. If a mineral-rich groundwater table

appears, it seeps into the pores of the hard parts and mineralizes them until the bone turns to stone.

However, it is very rare for fossils formed in this way to be found 43 (fig. 8). For this to happen, geological

movements must not have buried it too deeply — in which case it would eventually be destroyed — and

it must have risen close to the surface, accessible to potential archaeologists. As all these conditions are

41

Mother-of-pearl consists of 5% organic matter and 95% aragonite crystals. It is constructed like a protective wall whose rigid mineral

bricks are arranged in columns according to preferred directions, under the control of their organic cement, which gives them elasticity.

42

For example: bone, enamel and dentine; mineralised tendons in turkeys; the tusks of certain mammals, ivory in elephants, antlers in

deer; the claws of certain crustaceans; the scales of certain fish such as sharks (see Stanislas von Euw, ‘Bone biomineralisation: from

the structural characterisation of the mineral to its 3D organisation’. Chemistry. Pierre and Marie Curie University - Paris VI, 2014.

NNT: 2014PA0

43

According to Wikipedia, only about 300,000 fossil species are currently known, which is 20% of the number of living species and

less than 6% of the estimated total number of species that ever existed. The fossil record spans from 3.5 billion years ago to the present,

but 99% of the fossils date back only to 545 million years. Furthermore, while large fossils (macrofossils) are more frequently unearthed,

studied, and displayed, by far the most numerous are microfossils, which include stromatolites, some of which are among the oldest

fossils, composed of sedimentary rocks formed by bacterial activity.


rarely met, the fossilization process remains exceptional (the proportion of organisms that fossilize is

between 0.01 and 0.1%), and discovering a fossil is always something of a miracle.

Figure 8. Fish fossil, southern France, 1992. Personal collection of Marie-Christine Maurel. Photograph by

Marie-Christine Maurel

Some fossils do not come from parts of organisms that are likely to become petrified: in the case of

ferns, for example, the leaves were covered with mud in which they left their imprint, then over time and

under the pressure of being buried, this mud solidified and eventually rose to the surface in the form of

rock. As for the fossilization of soft organs or organisms such as jellyfish, it is very rare, as it can only

occur in the total absence of oxygen (which would cause decomposition), i.e., under a sedimentary cover

that is particularly airtight (silt, mud, or even volcanic clay).

Etched in stone, fossils also leave an indelible mark on the minds of all who observe them — scientists,

artists, and writers alike, foremost among whom is undoubtedly Roger Caillois, who was literally

captivated by the beauty of the mineral world. For him, fossils are “countless writings [that] add to those

of stones. Images of fish, as if among tufts of moss, evolve among manganese dendrites. A sea lily in

the slate sways on its stem. A ghost shrimp can no longer feel the space around it with its long broken

antennae. Ferns imprint their crosses and lace patterns in coal. Ammonites of all sizes, from lentils to

mill wheels, impose the mark of their cosmic spiral everywhere. The fossilized trunk, turned to opal and

jasper, as if by a motionless fire, is clothed in scarlet, purple, and violet. The bones of dinosaurs are

transformed into ivory tapestry, dotted here and there with touches of pink or azure, the color of sugared

almonds.” 44

Due to their mysterious beauty, fossils have often been considered authentic works of art, with nature

as the artist. They are often displayed in exhibitions and traded for profit. Fossil hunting is also practiced

by amateurs and scientists (fig. 9). As for artists, they are not content with exhibiting real fossils, but

sometimes create them from scratch, as potter Jonathan Keep 45 did in 2013 with his series Petrified Trees

(fig. 10), in which fossilized trees are “embodied” by 3D-printed glazed sandstone sculptures, or Isabelle

44

Roger Caillois, L’écriture des pierres (The writing of stones) (Skira, « Les sentiers de la création »), Paris, Champs / Flammarion,

1981, p. 129-130.

45

Jonathan Keep: artist, ceramicist, and art consultant. Born and raised in South Africa. Graduated with a degree in Fine Arts from the

University of Natal (1979). Moved to England in 1986. Received a Master's degree from the Royal College of Art (2002); winner of

the Lattice Group Awards; recipient of a Woo Foundation fellowship. Has participated in numerous artist residencies and exhibitions

in the UK and abroad, including the British Ceramic Biennial (2013) and the Taipei Ceramic Biennial (2014). Considered a pioneer in

the field of 3D-printed ceramic art. He developed a production method in which the shapes of his ceramics are programmed using

computer code, and the digital data is then transmitted to a 3D printer that he designed and built himself. His website features several

designs for clay 3D printers, which he makes available for free download.


Rochemars — mentioned above for her paintings of coccolithophores based on sedimentary

microfossils.

Figure 9. Fragment of silicified wood. Arizona, 1997. Personal collection of Marie-Christine Maurel.

Photograph by Marie-Christine Maurel

Figure 10. Jonathan Keep, Petrified tree series, ceramic printing 3D, 2013, © Jonathan Keep


2.2.5. Petrification

Long before science took an interest in the phenomenon of petrification (almost synonymous with

fossilization in geology), numerous myths and legends attest to the fascination of ancient civilizations

and popular cultures with rocks, megaliths, and minerals in general, which were considered to have

originated from living beings, real or imagined: in a well-known biblical episode (Genesis 19:26), Lot's

wife is turned into a pillar of salt for defying God's command not to look back at the destroyed cities of

Sodom and Gomorrah. In Greek mythology, the gaze of the Gorgon Medusa had the power to petrify her

enemies, and it was from the blood flowing from her head, severed by Perseus, that the basilisk (a mixture

of snake and rooster) was born, also deadly and often held responsible for certain megaliths 46 . Another

heroine of Greek mythology, Niobe, daughter of Tantalus (himself the son of Zeus) and queen of Thebes,

was petrified when her children were killed by those of Leto (Zeus' mistress), whom she had humiliated.

Zeus then turned her into a rock, from which her tears flowed in the form of a spring. In Scandinavian

mythology, trolls (deformed and malicious creatures, half-human, half-animal, inhabiting mountains or

forests) turn to stone in sunlight.

The theme of petrification has also inspired literature 47 and cinema 48 .

In addition to natural or legendary, literary, cinematic, and playful petrifications, there are also

technical ones, which involve the embalming of human corpses. In February 2012, an article entitled

“Turning bodies to stone: the secrets of petrification revealed” 49 reported on the detailed analysis of eight

human mummies from the 1800s by a team from the Eurac Institute for Mummies and the Iceman

(Bolzano, Northern Italy). The remarkably well-preserved corpses are the work of anatomist Giovan

Battista Rini (1795-1856). To uncover their secrets, researchers scanned the mummies with X-rays,

revealing two major technical phases of petrification: immersion of the bodies in chemical solutions

composed of heavy metals, and injection of mercury into the internal tissues; once saturated with heavy

metals, the corpses were petrified.

3. Proximities

When we examine the links between minerals and living organisms, we see a whole network of

dynamic and intertwined relationships emerge. Minerals that come to life (biologically or

mythologically) are matched by living organisms that return to minerals, either partially or completely,

through synthesis or fossilization. However diverse these interdependencies may be, they do not sum up

46

In particular, it is said that a basilisk is buried beneath the dolmen of Épennes (Vienne).

47

J.R.R. Tolkien, in The Hobbit (1937), where trolls are turned to stone for discussing at length how to cook their prisoners; J.K.

Rowling, in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998), where Slytherin's Basilisk petrifies several Hogwarts students, a cat, and

a ghost, all of whom caught its gaze in a reflection; C.S. Lewis, in The Chronicles of Narnia, Book 2 (2013), where the White Witch's

scepter has the power to petrify living beings; the author Riichiro Inagaki and the artist Boichi, creators of the shōnen manga Dr. Stone

(2018), in which a bright light appearing in the sky transforms all of humanity into stone statues; 3700 years later, only two teenagers

awaken in this Stone World and try to find a “cure” to reverse the petrification and bring humanity back to life; and finally, Alain

Damasio in Les Furtifs (2019), where beings who live in the hidden corners of the world and eat anything they find (including stones)

to fuel their constant metamorphoses, become petrified as soon as they are seen by a human.

48

In The Visitors of the Night (Marcel Carné, 1942), the two lovers are ultimately petrified by the devil, but their hearts continue to beat

in unison; in Pocket-Sized Love (Pierre Kast, 1957), a biologist invents a process that allows him to reduce and preserve matter through

petrification, enabling him to transform the young woman he loves into a statuette; and finally, in The Petrified City / The Monolith

Monsters (John Sherwood, 1957), black, shiny rocks released on Earth by a meteorite impact are actually crystalline forms of

extraterrestrial life that, upon contact with water, feed on the silica of the bodies they touch, including those of human beings, who are

immediately turned to stone. Petrification is also a classic spell in role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, in video games like

Temtem or Lord Odyssey, and it is central to the plot of Pokémon: Mystery Dungeon.

49

https://www.maxisciences.com/momie/changer-les-corps-en-pierre-les-secrets-de-la-petrification-3


all the interactions between minerals and living things, which also include their simple coexistence, in

other words, the sharing of the same space-time — in nature, between stones and the epilithic species

that cover them or the plants that grow in their crevices, or as a result of human intervention (vegetation,

rockeries, works of art).

3.1. Life among stones

It is striking and sometimes even moving to see plant life finding an unlikely path between two stones

that appear to touch. We then realize that the apparent fragility of a blade of grass hides something else

entirely, something that philosophers and scientists throughout history have sought to name: the “life

force” of vitalists, Schopenhauer's “will to live,” Bergson's “élan vital” (vital impulse)... In all of these,

it is at least possible to recognize the genius inherent in living things, which makes them appear as soon

as environmental conditions allow.

Figure 11. Various lichens on a stone (photograph taken at the Dynjandi Falls site, Iceland, in July 2004.

Wikimedia Commons

Epilithic or lithophilic 50 species — animals, fungi, plants, or microbes that live on the surface of rocks

— show even greater proximity to the stones that shelter them. These species are particularly resistant

to stresses such as exposure to wind, dehydration, and ultraviolet rays, as well as variations in

temperature, humidity, and light. Epilithic plants can be terrestrial or aquatic: the best-known terrestrial

epiliths (some of which are also epiphytes) are mosses, lichens 51 (fig. 11), and certain ferns such as

Pyrrosia rupestris, or rock moss, and Asplenium nidus, or bird's nest fern; aquatic epiliths — microalgae

and microbes — form a biofilm that serves as food for many species. Epilithic plants and lichens are

always photosynthetic; they absorb moisture from the air, collect dew, and find the mineral salts they

need either in suspended particles or in humus or dead organic matter accumulated on the rock. Some

species secrete organic acids that allow their roots to penetrate the rock and draw nutrients from it. Their

50

Epilithic: from the Greek epi, meaning “on” and lithos, meaning “stone”; lithophile: from the Greek lithos and philos, meaning

“loving”.

51

Lichens: a symbiotic relationship between an alga and a fungus or cyanobacterium; the alga provides nutrients to the fungus through

photosynthesis, while the fungus protects the alga from sunlight and desiccation. This symbiosis also involves the presence of numerous

bacteria and a recently discovered unicellular fungus. In this complex yet delicate ecosystem, cooperation is essential.


growth is very slow (a few microns per year for some species) and some lichens can live for several

centuries. In tropical areas, many species colonize rocks and form vertical ecosystems of varying

complexity. Some reptiles sometimes spend their entire lives there, over several generations, without

ever coming down to the ground.

Of all epiliths, lichens are the most fascinating, both for biologists and artists: among them are the

painter Antoni Pixtot (1934-2015), a close collaborator of Dali, whose painting Sant Jordi illustrated the

poster for the symposium of the International Association of Lichenology (Barcelona, 2000), and the

contemporary engraver and intaglio artist Thomas Fouque 52 , whose point-by-point engraving on metal

allows him to follow the infinite cycle of the phases of life — germination, blossoming, maturity, and

decay — in order to detail their beauty (fig. 12).

Figure 12. Thomas Fouque, Hanging Garden, drypoint engraving, 8 x 8 cm, 2015

As for writers, it can be said that lichens found their naturalist poet in Camillo Sbarbaro (1888-1967),

who not only described 127 new species, 20 of which bear his name, but also wrote an unforgettable

text, “Lichens,” divided into nine short paragraphs. In it, he marvels at the diversity of colors, shapes,

and substrates of lichen: “Lichen is the most polychromatic of plants. Its range, which extends from

milky white to stygian black, rises to all the high notes, through an orchestration of tones and nuances in

which the most sumptuous repertoire of colors unfolds.” 53 “Lichen is the most multiform of plants.

Koerber was deluding himself when he claimed to be able to classify them under the names of crustose,

foliose, and arborescent. How many meanings must these adjectives take on in order to encompass, as

best they can, the polymorphism of lichens!” 54 “One takes limestone as its home, while another flees

from it to the point of being unable to tolerate its presence in the composition of the rock. One adopts

sandstone or puddingstone, another gypsum, and yet another trachyte and basalt.” 55 But how do they

manage to attach themselves to rocks? The process is both mechanical and chemical: on limestone rocks,

52

Thomas Fouque (born in 1986 in Bastia): printmaker and intaglio engraver. Graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts

Décoratifs (2012). Completed advanced training in intaglio printing at the Moret workshops in Paris (2012-2013). Has printed thousands

of prints, collaborated with numerous artists, created original engravings for others, and developed new printing techniques. His work

as a printmaker is complemented by a more personal artistic practice, primarily focused on printmaking.

53

Camillo Sbarbaro, “Lichens 7”, excerpt from Copeaux, followed by Feux Follets; translated from Italian to French by Jean-Baptiste

Para, Clémence Hiver Publishing, 1992. https://poezibao.typepad.com/files/camillo-sbabaro-lichens.pdf.

54

“Lichens 6”, ibid.

55

“Lichens 4”, ibid.


the oxalic acid in lichens promotes the dissolution of calcium carbonate, and the thalli 56 transform it into

calcium oxalate; on acidic rocks, the lichen physically attacks the rock by dissociating the minerals.

Ubiquitous, lichens grow on the hardest rocks and seem to resist everything: “Lichens thrive from the

cloud region to the spray-splashed shores. They climb peaks where no other plant can take root. The

desert does not discourage it; the glacier cannot expel it; nor can the tropics or the polar circle. It defies

the darkness of the cave and ventures into the crater of the volcano. It fears only the proximity of man.” 57

Two species of lichen, Rhizocarpon geographicum and Xanthoria elegans, collected in the Alps and

Spain, even survived a year and a half on the walls of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2014,

before resuming their growth on Earth! A “resurrection” that writer Pierre Gascar 58 contrasts with the

threat of extinction they face: “So as I bent over the lichens, sometimes picking up these scales scattered

here and there, I kept wondering whether I was witnessing the death of the world or its revival.” 59

The coexistence of stone and vegetation is sometimes a silent struggle, as shown by the remarkable

combination of serpentinite and Firmin's stool: serpentinite is a very ancient rock, scaly in appearance

and green in color with darker or yellowish moiré patterns. It extends several hundred meters into the

ground, and its high magnesium, iron, and other heavy metal content makes it toxic to plants... Except

for Firmin's stool, a plant endemic to Puy de Wolf 60 , shaped like a candelabra and with small white

flowers, which is not only able to tolerate very high concentrations of metallic elements, but also to

extract them from the soil and accumulate them in its leaves, thus opening up real prospects for soil

decontamination. Elsewhere, erosion sculpts shapes into the rock that often resemble living beings, as in

the Mourèze cirque (Hérault) made up of dolomite 61 : “It is easy to imagine monsters here, animals there,

or even walls and castles. In a chaos of rocks, erosion has carved out strange shapes worthy of a fairy

tale, to which humans have given names: the Skull (7 meters high), the Standing Lion, the Sphinx, the

Frées, the Turtle, the Bison...” 62

3.2. When stones speak of life

Attributing life to stones seems to be a recurring temptation for humanity 63 : while it may be risky to

interpret Paleolithic rock paintings (animals and human figures in a hunting context) in this way, we

must nevertheless recognize that, beyond its materiality, this art "designated a relationship in which the

stone was anything but a simple surface for inscription [...] and in a sense, we can say that the painters

56

Thallus: The vegetative structure of lower plants (algae, fungi, lichens); it does not have leaves, stems, or roots.

57

Camillo Sbarbaro, « Lichens 3 », op. cit.

58

Pierre Fournier, better known as Pierre Gascar (1916-1997): French journalist, literary critic, author, essayist, and screenwriter.

After being a prisoner in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II, he became a journalist and writer. In 1953, he won the

Goncourt Prize for his novel Le Temps des morts (The Time of the Dead). In his short story Le Présage (The Omen), first published in

1972, he issued a near-prophetic warning about global environmental crises, focusing on lichens — the first living organisms to

disappear due to air pollution.

59

Pierre Gascar, Le Présage, 1972, rééd. Gallimard, 2015.

60

Puy de Wolf: located in Aveyron (France), this serpentine rock formation is the largest in Europe. Home to rare flora, Puy de Wolf

is a testament to the exceptional biodiversity of this region. It has been part of the Natura 2000 network of protected areas since April

2004.

61

Dolomite: a sedimentary carbonate rock composed of at least 50% dolomite, a double carbonate of calcium and magnesium, which

crystallizes in rhombic prisms.

62

Patrick de Wever, Histoires secrètes de cailloux, Belin, 2021, p. 93.

63

See François Farges, “Mineral Vibrations and Other Vital Crystallizations,” in Being Stone, catalog of the exhibition “Being Stone”

presented at the Zadkine Museum (September 29, 2017 – February 11, 2018), Éditions Paris Musées / Zadkine Museum, 2017, p. 102.


confided in it, the gesture of placing their hands on it being inseparable from an emotion whose vigor

and tremor we can still feel." 64

As for works of art, throughout history many have drawn inspiration from the links between minerals

and living things. Furthermore, certain stones, known as picture stones (or figurative stones, graphic

stones, or dream stones when they come from China), strongly evoke paintings, and there are many

different types. Some were long mistaken for fossils, and the distinction between the two was not fully

established until the mid-18th century. In fact, some fossils can be confused with dendrites, which are

pseudo-fossils whose tree-like structures (images of branches or forests) are produced by water loaded

with iron oxide (brown in color) or manganese (black in color) that has infiltrated cracks in limestone.

Paesine 65 stones are the best known of the picture stones and, once sawn and polished, they evoke

landscapes of ruins, different at each cut; Chinese dream stones, known and polished for twelve

centuries, suggest wild and poetic landscapes (steep ravines, trees, mosses, water, etc.) through their

veining; septaria (nodules of calcite, aragonite and clay) can reveal animals, people, faces or masks; the

meanders of alabaster and agate, jaspers and marbles have been interpreted by the Jesuit Athanasius

Kircher, “as birds, turtles or crayfish, cities, rivers and forests, crucifixes, bishops, skulls, Infidels with

turbans” 66 .

During the 20th century, the advent of contemporary art, by freeing itself from the figurative diktat,

opened up other perspectives: the museum was no longer the only possible exhibition setting, and the

living itself could burst into the works. Towards the end of the 1960s, the first Land Art artists were

precursors in this regard, installing often gigantic works in the middle of nature (initially, mainly in the

American deserts). Among them, the sculptor Andy Goldsworthy 67 (like other great figures of Land Art

such as Nils Udo, Richard Long and more recently Cornelia Konrads) liked to immerse himself in natural

places chosen to bring about new encounters between vegetation and stone – often cairns or low walls.

His sculpture Hanging trees (fig. 13) highlights the ephemeral nature of wood versus the permanence of

stone.

Figure 13. Andy Goldsworthy, Hanging Trees, one of several similar sculptures along Oxley Bank, 2007,

© Malcolm Morris, Creative Commons

64

Jean-Christophe Bailly, « Souveraineté des pierres », in Être pierre, ibid., p. 20.

65

Paesine, also known as “patterned stones” or “landscape stones” and sometimes referred to as “ruin marbles”, “Tuscan marbles” or

“Florence marbles”: a type of marly limestone from the Eocene period (early Tertiary) found in deposits in the Florence region.

66

Athanase Kircher (1602-1680), Mundus subterraneus […], quo […] universae denique naturae majestas et divitiae summa rerum

varietate exponuntur, Amsterdam, Jansson, Weyerstraet, 1664-1665.

67

Andy Goldsworthy (born 1956): British sculptor and one of the leading artists of Land Art and Arte Povera. Since 1979, he has been

creating ephemeral natural sculptures composed of stones, sand, leaves, snow, and ice. He does not seek to “put his mark” on the

landscape but to work in harmony with it, paying attention to the time manifested by natural phenomena in motion. In France, two of

his permanent works (Refuge d'art and Water cairns) are located in the Haute-Provence geological reserve.


In the current context marked by eco-anxiety due to the climate and biodiversity crises, we are seeing

an explosion of works linked to nature – to celebrate its qualities, use its materials or be moved by its

fragility. The art of sculptor Marinette Cueco 68 – which is related to Arte Povera – achieves all of this.

In a humble attention to nature, she gathered and collected the most ordinary materials (leaves, bark,

twigs and mosses, slates and pebbles, etc.) and braided, knitted or knotted them. The result is spidery

nets and tender and singular assemblages (shards of slate and magnolia petals, slates and rushes, etc.)

from which sometimes emerges a kind of writing of origins (fig. 14).

Figure 14. Marinette Cueco, Installation - Broken Slates and Magnolia Petals, Dunkirk LAAC Room 4 “Slates”

2021, © Cathy Christiaen, City of Dunkirk

Another contemporary representative of textile sculpture, Simone Pheulpin 69 also works on minerals

and plants; on but not with, because it is from cotton that the artist shapes strange structures mimicking

both minerals and plants – sometimes coral, or slabs of striated limestone, eaten away at the edges by

lichen (fig. 15). Ceramists also take advantage of the porosity between mineral materials and living

organisms and thus contribute to the contemporary questioning of the limits of life 70 .

68

Marinette Cueco (1934-2023): French sculptor who creates from plants and minerals. Since 1960, she has practiced weaving and

tapestry, and since 1978, she has applied these techniques to plants. Her works range from the most monumental sculptures (in situ,

ephemeral) to the most reduced formats (suitable for museum exhibitions). Last solo exhibition: “L’ordre naturel des choses” (The

Natural Order of Things), Lieu d'Art et d'Action contemporaine (LAAC) in Dunkirk (October 16, 2021 – March 6, 2022).

69

Simone Pheulpin (born 1941): French textile artist. Her pieces result from the repetitive folding of strips of raw cotton from the

Vosges, stacked and attached to each other with cleverly concealed pins. Her works can be found at the Victoria and Albert Museum in

London, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. She is represented by the Maison Parisienne gallery

in Paris. Most recent solo exhibition: “Simone Pheulpin, Plieuse de Temps,” Musée des Arts Décoratifs (December 7, 2021 – January

16, 2022).

70

See Living Forms, op. cit.


Figure 15. Simone Pheulpin, 'Geneviève' - Eclipse series, 2008-2023, © Antoine Lippens

In 2013, the sculptor Giuseppe Penone 71 invested Versailles with trees but also with marbles whose

lines he followed to reveal the veins: “from the veins of the stone to those of a body, from the lines to

those of muscles or nerves, from the mineral to the organic. Or to the plant: they look like fossilized

roots that the artist, now an archaeologist, would have slowly revealed, as if during excavations.” 72

Through his gesture, the sculptor will “exhume the form contained in the natural material, rediscover the

heart, the soul, the vital flow, by revealing the veins of the marble.” 73 He thus reaches the deep essence

of the stone, an experience that echoes that of Rudy Ricciotti, architect of the Mucem (Museum of

European and Mediterranean Civilizations): “touching a stone wall is touching a reality just as profound

as that of a tree. The stone wall speaks, it says things...” 74

Contemporary gardeners and landscapers are also working in many ways on new alliances between

stones and plants: rockeries are “artificial” gardens copying natural mountain gardens: on the mineral

side, we will find rocks, slate slabs, pebbles or volcanic stones; on the plant side, low or tall perennials

such as mountain shrubs (alpine rhododendron, azalea, creeping willow, alpine clematis, etc.). More

recently, the green walls (also called living walls) invented by the botanist Patrick Blanc are vertical

gardens or ecosystems, more or less artificial and which can be distinguished from green walls with

climbing plants. Green walls are designed either as decorative elements, or as works of art using plants,

or even as a contribution to urban ecology – through their positive influence on the microclimate, urban

flooding, air quality, and the food supply they represent for various animals.

71

Giuseppe Penone (born in 1947): Italian artist, lives and works in Turin and Paris. Associated with the Arte Povera movement since

1969. His work, constantly linking humanity and nature, always involves his own body (imprints, measurements, gestures) and

addresses the metamorphoses that time produces on organic, vegetable and mineral materials. Penone's works are exhibited worldwide

and he has been awarded several international prizes. A retrospective was dedicated to him in 2004 at the Pompidou Center. In 2007 he

represented Italy at the Venice Biennale.

72

Philippe Dagen, Le Monde, 13 juin 2013.

73

Ibid.

74

Rudy Ricciotti : Une rencontre animée par Carine Merlino pour la revue BÉTON PLURIEL | Cassis – Juin 2014 ;

https://jeanpaulcurnier.com « Le philosophe et l’architecte ».


4. Conclusion

Until now, the relationships between minerals and living things have been approached from two

angles: their reciprocal transformations (the mineral origins of living things and their petrifications) and

their in vivo exchanges (biomineralizations, neighborhoods, and symbioses). A third avenue remains to

be explored, that of a true intimacy between humans and the mineral world (stones, rocks) into which

they project themselves or find themselves, as the poet André Frénaud describes when he evokes « the

path of ferruginous blood in the stone. / The movement of my blood that recognizes itself there. » 75

Establishing this kind of relationship (necessarily asymmetrical) implies being more or less part of the

continuity of the mineral — in a sensory, scientific, or poetic manner. We have already mentioned the

importance of touch, which allows the sculptor or architect to reach the heart of the stone he is working

on, or the evolutionary transformations common to minerals and living things, although according to

distinct rhythms and modes, as François Farges judiciously reminds us: « Far from an anthropocentric

Gaia, minerals are not born, they are formed. Rocks do not live, they exist. Crystallizations do not die,

they disappear. » 76 However, Roger Caillois emphasizes about crystals that, even if they are not alive,

they still know right and left, they are born, grow and heal 77 .

However pertinent the rational arguments in favor of a continuity between the mineral and the living,

human intimacy with the former is rather imaginary. Some, like Caillois (him again!), surrender to its

mystery: « Je parle des pierres nues, fascination et gloire, où se dissimule et en même temps se livre un

mystère plus lent, plus vaste et plus grave que le destin d’une espèce passagère. » (I speak of bare stones,

fascination and glory, where a mystery is hidden and at the same time revealed, slower, vaster and more

serious than the destiny of a passing species.) 78 , as is the poet Yves Bonnefoy: « Such is the stone. I

cannot bend over it without recognizing it as unfathomable, and this abyss of plenitude, this night which

covers an eternal light, is for me the real in an exemplary way. Pride which founds what is, dawn of the

sensible world! » 79 Others, far from these “visionary mineralogies” of which André Breton spoke

(regarding the poet Novalis), resort to fiction: La mort de la Terre (The Death of the Earth), a science

fiction novel by Rosny Aîné (author of the bestseller La guerre du feu (The War of Fire) features beings

“of a mineral nature and helical shape”, the “ferromagnetists”, who have largely supplanted humans but

are themselves destined to be supplanted by crystals: « The innumerable souls of the crystals were

awakening to the light [...] Targ saw in it a reflection of mineral life, of this vast and tiny life, threatening

and profound, which had the last word with men, which would, one day, have the last word with the

ferromagnetic kingdom. » 80 Finally, in “The Tale of the Stone,” Tim Ingold imagines a talking stone,

which looks back on its entire life and imagines its end: « Perhaps one day, the heat generated by all

these cement furnaces and the fossil fuels they consume will cause the oceans to rise, and I will find

myself, as I was at the beginning, under the waves. Little by little, I will be covered in marine debris,

75

André Frénaud, Il n’y a pas de paradis, Paris, Gallimard « Poésie », 1962, p. 92.

76

François Farges, « Vibrations minérales et autres cristallisations vitales », op. cit.

77

See on this subject, and on the poetic mineralogy of Caillois in general, the beautiful article by Juan Rigoli: “Life in stone”

https://www.cairn.info/revue-litterature-2013-2-page-96.htm

78

Roger Caillois, “Incipit” de Pierres, [1966], followed by other texts, Paris, Gallimard, “Poésie” collection, 1989.

79

Yves Bonnefoy, « Les tombeaux de Ravenne », I 18. (I : L’improbable), L’Improbable et autres essais, Paris, Essais/Gallimard,

1983.

80

Rosny Aîné, La mort de la Terre (The Death of the Earth), serialized in Les Annales politiques et littéraires, 1910; reprinted by GF

Flammarion, 1997, p. 72.


and I will end my life like a fossil, not in the air but buried deep down, a stone within a stone. I will

finally have returned home. » 81

Thus closes the hierarchically tangled loop of the mineral and the living: after having contemplated

the mineral becoming alive at the dawn of life, the living becoming mineral again post-mortem or through

the grace of art, the inclusions of the mineral in the living (biominerals) and of the living in the mineral

(fossils), we are finally faced with the oxymoron of the mineral itself being alive!

81

Tim Ingold, « Conte de la pierre » (A Tale of Stone), inspired by a visit to the ancient Greek temples at Selinunte, Sicily, in Being

Stone, op. cit., p. 74.


Arts et sciences


Découverte de la vie abyssale : de nouvelles

perspectives scientifiques et artistiques

Discovering life in the deep sea: new scientific and artistic perspectives

Christophe Migon 1

1

Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche-sur-Mer, UMR 7093 CNRS et Sorbonne Université, Station Zoologique,

06230 Villefranche-sur-Mer, christophe.migon@imev-mer.fr

RÉSUMÉ. Jusqu’à l’expédition du Challenger (1872-1876), et en dépit de travaux isolés qui démontrèrent le contraire dès

le début du XIX ème siècle, la communauté naturaliste était convaincue que les profondeurs marines n’abritaient aucune vie

animale. Mais dès que les découvertes du Challenger furent publiées, les zoologistes prirent connaissance de formes de

vie tout à fait inédites et les artistes qui représentaient à cette époque les organismes étudiés par les scientifiques permirent

aux spécialistes mais aussi à un public plus large de visualiser des créatures surprenantes. D’autres expéditions,

notamment celle du Valdivia (1898-1899), révélèrent une vie abyssale toujours plus diverse et abondante, lithographiée ou

aquarellée jusqu’au milieu du XX ème siècle, avant que la photographie n’ouvre une autre perspective artistique.

ABSTRACT. Until the Challenger expedition, and despite isolated studies that proved otherwise in the early 19th century,

the naturalist community was convinced that the depths of the sea were devoid of animal life. But as soon as the

Challenger's discoveries were published, zoologists became aware of completely new forms of life, and the artists who

depicted the organisms studied by scientists at the time enabled specialists, but also a wider audience to visualise these

surprising creatures. Other expeditions, notably that of the Valdivia, revealed an ever more diverse and abundant abyssal

life, which was lithographed or painted in watercolour until the mid-20th century, before photography opened up another

artistic perspective.

MOTS-CLÉS. Grandes expéditions, faune abyssale, représentations artistiques.

KEYWORDS. Great expeditions, deep-sea fauna, artistic representations.

Introduction

Pendant longtemps, les zoologistes ont pensé que le fond des océans était vide de toute forme de vie.

En se basant sur la décroissance à peu près linéaire de l’abondance et la diversité biologique avec la

profondeur, le géologue anglais Henry de La Beche (1796-1855) avait déduit que les abysses étaient des

déserts biologiques (de La Beche, 1833). Dix ans plus tard, Edward Forbes (1815-1854), naturaliste et

géologue lui aussi, avait même établi une limite à 300 brasses, c’est-à-dire 550 mètres, au-dessous de

laquelle se serait étendue une « zone azoïque », c’est-à-dire littéralement sans vie animale. Pour les

scientifiques de l’époque ce postulat allait de soi, les eaux profondes étant totalement obscures, glacées

et soumises à des pressions hydrostatiques impropres au développement de la vie marine. Des

personnalités distinguées telles que le zoologiste, botaniste et géologue Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), entre

autres, se ralliaient sans réserve à cette théorie (Agassiz & Gould, 1851). Avant même de La Beche et

Forbes, le naturaliste et explorateur français François Péron (1775-1810) pensait que les abysses étaient

constitués de glace (lui-même parlait de « congélation éternelle des abîmes ») et que les icebergs

provenaient du fond des mers. L’idée de telles étendues marines sans vie a perduré assez longtemps, si

l’on considère qu’en 1861, Jules Michelet (1798-1874) écrit que le fond des océans n’est qu’une « noire

solitude, rien que sable aride et cailloux, sauf des ossements et des débris, tant de biens perdus que

l’élément avare prend toujours et ne rend jamais » (Michelet, 1861), alors même que certains travaux

avaient déjà démontré le contraire. En effet, quelques rares scientifiques avaient pêché des organismes

vivants au-delà de la limite fixée par Forbes. Cela était d’autant plus difficile qu’en dépit de techniques

de conservation des spécimens (souvent fragiles) encore embryonnaires, il était indispensable

d’échantillonner des animaux vivants, car certains chercheurs, tel le renommé Matthew Fontaine Maury


(1806-1873), soutenaient que le matériel remonté par dragage à la surface, comme par exemple des

squelettes de foraminifères, provenaient d’animaux vivant à la surface qui avaient coulé au fond de

l’océan après leur mort.

Nous savons aujourd’hui que non seulement la vie existe dans les profondeurs marines, mais aussi

que les abysses abritent une incroyable biodiversité, bien supérieure à ce qu’on pouvait imaginer encore

récemment (Cordier et al., 2022). La découverte progressive de cet environnement au fur et à mesure

des développements technologiques au service de l’océanographie, n’a pas seulement fait avancer nos

connaissances, elle a aussi inspiré les naturalistes et les artistes du XIX ème siècle.

Les premières observations

Il semble que le naturaliste danois Otto Friedrich Müller (1730-1784) ait, le premier, préconisé

l’utilisation de dragues pour l’étude des organismes vivant en profondeur. Dès 1810, tandis que la théorie

azoïque est quasi-unanimement acceptée par la communauté des zoologistes, Antoine Risso, figure

majeure de l’école naturaliste niçoise, décrit dans son Ichthyologie de Nice ou Histoire naturelle des

poissons du département des Alpes-Maritimes (Risso, 1810) des poissons et des crustacés pêchés au

large de Nice et dans le golfe de Gênes entre 600 et 1000 mètres, comme par exemple certaines espèces

de roussettes, d’aiguillats ou encore de syngnathes (Risso, 1810). C’est sans doute une des premières

évidences de vie abyssale. Risso confirme en publiant une Histoire naturelle des crustacés des environs

de Nice (Risso, 1816) et une Histoire naturelle des principales productions de l’Europe méridionale

(Risso, 1826). Peu après les premières publications de Risso, John Ross (1777-1856) échantillonne en

1818, à plus de 1000 mètres de fond dans la baie de Baffin, l’étrange échinoderme Astrophyton linckii

(Figure 1). Le même Ross pêchera plus tard, au cours de l’expédition du Bulldog en 1860, des étoiles de

mer vivantes collectées à 2 300 mètres dans l’Atlantique nord. D’autres dragages démontrent durant

cette période qu’une vie abondante se développe en profondeur. Par exemple, le Norvégien Michael Sars

(1805-1869), prêtre et naturaliste, s’intéresse particulièrement à l’hypothèse azoïque de Forbes. Assisté

de son fils, il remonte à l’air libre les premiers crinoïdes vivants connus (on pensait que cette espèce,

dont les formes fossiles sont abondantes, était éteinte depuis longtemps), collectés à environ 550 mètres

de fond. Cela conduit à la publication, en français, des Mémoires pour servir à la connaissance des

crinoïdes vivants (Sars, 1868). En 1850, il pêche également plusieurs espèces d’invertébrés à 600 mètres

au fond d’un fjord. Dès lors, Sars devient un fervent défenseur des opérations de dragage en eaux

profondes. Il est probable que ses travaux aient eu une influence sur l’organisation d’expéditions

destinées à explorer les abysses. Pourtant, globalement, les découvertes citées ici et quelques rares autres

restent relativement confidentielles ou du moins n’ont-elles pas la diffusion qu’elles méritent.

Cependant un événement imprévu aura des conséquences décisives : Henry Fleming Jenkin (1833-

1885) relève pour le compte de la compagnie anglaise Mediterranean Telegraphy Company un câble

sous-marin mis en place entre la Sardaigne et l’Afrique du Nord et qui avait séjourné à des profondeurs

de l’ordre de 2 000 mètres, voire plus. Sur un morceau de ce câble sont fixés des coraux et des bivalves.

Cet échantillon est envoyé au Muséum d’Histoire naturelle de Paris et à la Royal Society de Londres.

Même si le Français Alphonse Milne-Edwards, futur directeur du Muséum d’Histoire naturelle de Paris,

pressent l’importance de cette découverte et crée un « Comité des dragages » afin de sensibiliser ses

confrères à la possibilité d’une vie sous plus de deux cents atmosphères (Sonrel, 1870), les Anglais

réagissent plus vite. L’Écossais Charles Wyville Thomson (1830-1882), au cours de la campagne du

Porcupine (1870), avait déjà échantillonné en profondeur des animaux ; trois ans plus tard il publie The

Depths of the Sea où sont notamment décrites en détail au chapitre 6 les techniques de dragages profonds

de l’époque (Thomson, 1873). Aidé du Canadien John Murray (1841-1914), il fait pression auprès de la

Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge pour que la Royal Navy arme un

navire de 2 300 tonneaux, le HMS Challenger, pour une grande expédition autour du monde. Le

Challenger, à l’origine bâtiment de guerre, est profondément transformé. Outre la mise en place de

véritables laboratoires de biologie et de chimie à bord, il est notamment adapté aux dragages profonds

avec 291 kilomètres de cordage, ce qui est vraiment considérable pour l’époque. Cette expédition a un


retentissement exceptionnel. Peu de temps auparavant, deux campagnes d’exploration, celles du

Lightning et du Porcupine en 1868 et 1870 respectivement, avaient fourni à la communauté scientifique

de l’époque deux informations décisives : d’une part, les températures abyssales pouvaient descendre

au-dessous de 4°C, température qu’on croyait être le seuil minimal ; d’autre part, des échantillonnages à

4 450 mètres de profondeur avaient révélé l’existence d’une faune riche et variée bien au-delà de 550

mètres, c’est-à-dire dans cette zone mal nommée azoïque.

Figure 1. Astrophyton linckii échantillonné à plus de 1 000 mètres de

profondeur. Extrait de Thomson (1875).

L’extraordinaire épopée du Challenger infirme définitivement la théorie des abysses sans vie. Le

commandement de cette campagne est confié au capitaine George Nares (1831-1915). Pour la direction

scientifique, Charles Wyville Thomson est assisté de naturalistes distingués. Le bateau quitte Portsmouth

le 21 décembre 1872 pour y revenir en 1876 après une navigation d’environ 70 000 milles nautiques,

soit un peu moins de 130 000 km. Le Challenger navigue sur presque toutes les mers de la planète : on

procède à 362 prélèvements le long des côtes américaine (du Brésil à la Nouvelle-Écosse) et africaine,

dans les océans Atlantique, Pacifique et Antarctique, dans les mers australes et en mer de Chine, en

Australie, Nouvelle-Zélande, Océanie et Indonésie. Le redoutable Cap Horn est franchi. Environ 4 700

espèces nouvelles sont découvertes dans tous les océans et à toutes les profondeurs, jusqu’à plus de 8

000 mètres dans la fosse des Mariannes, toutes soigneusement dessinées notamment par l'artiste de

l'expédition, le Suisse John James Wild (1824-1900). Cette fantastique aventure se traduit par la

publication entre 1878 et 1895 d’une cinquantaine de volumes, où sont décrits et figurés de nombreux

organismes abyssaux (Figures 2a et b). On trouve dans ces ouvrages quelques-unes des plus célèbres

illustrations d’organismes marins, dues non seulement à Wild mais aussi à Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919)

et Adolf Giltsh (1853-1911) (Dolan, 2024a).


a

b

Figures 2. Espèces récoltées lors de l’expédition du Challenger

a. Melanocetus murrayi (a), Diceratias bispinosus (b), Ceratias uranoscopus (c),

Cryptopsaras couesii (d). (Günther, 1887)

b. Holothurie de type Scotoplana (Théel, 1879)

Représentations artistiques d’espèces nouvelles

Les naturalistes du XIX ème siècle recouraient à l’aquarelle ou la lithographie pour décrire leurs

découvertes. Certains exécutaient eux-mêmes ces représentations, à l’instar d’Ernst Haeckel, déjà cité,

auteur du remarquable Kunstformen der Natur (Formes artistiques de la nature) et à l’origine d’un millier

de gravures et aquarelles sur l’ensemble de sa carrière. D’autres faisaient appel à des illustrateurs

spécialisés comme (pour les Français) Charles-Alexandre Lesueur (1778-1846), Vincent Fossat (1822-

1891) ou encore Jean-Gabriel Prêtre (1768-1849). On trouvera un aperçu du talent de ces illustrateurs et

de quelques autres dans Dolan (2024a) ou dans Sardet (2024).


Les échantillons récoltés au cours de l’expédition exceptionnelle du Challenger ont fait l’objet de très

nombreuses publications. La diversité des organismes marins, l’excentricité parfois de leur aspect (e.g.,

Sardet, 2013 ; Dolan, 2024a, b), ont toujours inspiré de très belles œuvres aux illustrateurs de l’époque

(e.g., Haeckel, 1904 ; Figures 3a et b). Le travail de Haeckel a d’ailleurs influencé de nombreux

illustrateurs et artistes de son temps (Migon et al., 2024). Parmi beaucoup d’autres, cela est le cas de

l’École de Nancy (Art Nouveau) et, très vraisemblablement, celui de l’artiste inconnu qui a réalisé les

vitraux de l’Institut océanographique de Paris (Inizan, 2011). La pêche d’organismes vivant à des

profondeurs réputées sans vie au cours de la campagne du Challenger a donc ouvert des perspectives

nouvelles pour la science, mais a aussi offert aux illustrateurs la possibilité de représenter les animaux

tout à fait inédits des abysses. En effet, les contraintes du milieu abyssal déterminent des formes de vie

étranges, tout à fait différentes des espèces déjà connues des naturalistes et, à plus forte raison, d’un

public plus large.

a

b

Figures 3. Illustrations tirées du Kunstformen der Natur d’Ernst Haeckel.

a. Céphalopodes

b. Leptoméduse

D’autres expéditions apporteront de précieuses contributions à la découverte de nouveaux organismes

issus des profondeurs océaniques. Les campagnes du Talisman et du Travailleur, dirigées par Alphonse

Milne-Edwards et Léopold de Folin (1817-1896) comprennent de nombreux dragages profonds entre

1880 à 1883 dans des environnements variés : le canyon sous-marin de Capbreton, la péninsule ibérique,

Madère, les Canaries, le Maroc, la Corse. Pour la première fois, le Talisman utilise un câble métallique

à la place des cordages de chanvre. C’est au cours de ces explorations qu’est découvert, par exemple, le

surprenant Eurypharynx pelecanoides (Figure 4), par 2 300 mètres de fond. On peut encore citer le

Suédois Otto Martin Torell (1828-1900) qui remonte à son bord des invertébrés dragués au-dessous de

2 000 mètres dans les eaux arctiques.


Figure 4. Eurypharinx pelecanoides. Cette espèce vit toujours au-dessous de 1 000 mètres de profondeur,

parfois jusqu’à 7 000 mètres. Illustration tirée de Holder (1906)

Parmi ces expéditions, celle du Valdivia (1898-1899) eut une importance considérable pour l’étude

de la faune abyssale. Mise en place et dirigée par le zoologiste allemand Carl Chun (1852-1914),

spécialiste des céphalopodes et pionnier de la recherche sur le plancton (Dolan, 2023), elle avait pour

objectif spécifique l’étude des fonds abyssaux, ce qui était tout à fait innovant. De surcroît, la campagne

se voulait complémentaire de celle du Challenger en échantillonnant des zones marines que n’avait pas

explorées sa devancière. Le bateau à vapeur Valdivia part de Hambourg et parcourt 32 000 milles

nautiques, soit un peu plus de 59 000 kilomètres, à travers les océans Atlantique (côte occidentale de

l’Afrique), Indien et Austral. Cette vaste expédition génère un très grand nombre de publications

scientifiques (24 volumes, 12 000 pages et un millier d’illustrations, après trois articles préliminaires

publiés en 1899 et un rapport présenté la même année à la British Association for the Advancement of

Science ; Schott, 1900) étalées entre 1902 et 1940. L’artiste de l’expédition Friedrich Wilhelm Winter

(1878-1917) réalise de très nombreuses représentations des spécimens récoltés au cours de l’expédition,

par exemple des céphalopodes qui se prêtent particulièrement bien à l’expression artistique (Figures 5a

et b). On notera la grande qualité de ces planches.


a

b

Figures 5. Espèces récoltées lors de l’expédition du Valdivia (Chun, 1910-1915).

a. Mastigoteuthis cordiformis

b. Pterygioteuthis Giardi

Pour l’exploitation des résultats de la campagne, Chun se charge des céphalopodes. Il décrit

notamment Vampyroteuthis infernalis, plus connu sous le nom évocateur de Vampire des abysses (Figure

6). Cette espèce ne dépasse pas 30 cm et vit typiquement entre 600 et 900 mètres de profondeur. Comme

beaucoup de céphalopodes, elle est bioluminescente (Vérany, 1851 ; Otjacques et al., 2023) et Chun

publie par la suite d’importants travaux sur cette particularité répandue dans le milieu privé de lumière

des profondeurs marines. Le zoologiste August Brauer (1863-1917) publie quant à lui des études

anatomiques des poissons abyssaux collectés au cours du voyage du Valdivia (Figure 7).


Figure 6. Vampyroteuthis infernalis, découvert dans les eaux du Cap Vert lors de l’expédition Valdivia

(Chun, 1910-1915)

Figure 7. Poissons abyssaux collectés au cours la campagne du Valdivia, représentés par August Brauer :

Nemichthys scolopaceus et Laptocephalus mirabilis (Brauer, 1906)


Bien que les poissons des profondeurs soient généralement de petite taille, d’autres organismes

abyssaux ont évolué différemment. Un phénomène biologique particulier, le gigantisme abyssal, a ainsi

ajouté un intérêt supplémentaire à l’étude des organismes des profondeurs : outre le cas bien connu des

céphalopodes tel le calmar colossal (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), certains crustacés et invertébrés

marins des abysses sont sensiblement plus gros que leurs homologues des faibles profondeurs. C’est le

cas de Bathynomus giganteus qui vit aux alentours de 2 300 m de profondeur et mesure typiquement 35

cm voire jusqu’à 50 cm. Alphonse Milne-Edwards publie une première description d’un spécimen de cet

animal pêché dans le Golfe du Mexique lors de l’expédition du Challenger (Milne-Edwards, 1879), puis

une étude plus détaillée est publiée en 1902, soit deux ans après la mort de Milne-Edwards (Milne-

Edwards & Bouvier, 1902 ; Figure 8).

Figure 8. Bathynomus giganteus (Milne-Edwards & Bouvier, 1902).

À gauche face dorsale, à droite face ventrale

Les fonds marins étant toujours plus explorés, beaucoup d’espèces nouvelles ont été découvertes et

représentées par la gravure ou l’aquarelle au cours du XIX ème siècle et jusqu’au début du XX ème . Une

planche du dictionnaire Larousse de 1922 dédiée aux abysses nous en fournit une illustration (Figure 9).

Encore en 1946, le mensuel Science et Vie publiait dans un article sur les « êtres vivants lumineux » une

planche représentant une variété de poissons des abysses (Puisségur, 1946 ; Figure 10). Ces

représentations plus récentes se sont probablement inspirées du travail d’August Brauer pour

l’expédition Valdivia.


Figure 9. Planche consacrée à la faune abyssale du dictionnaire

Larousse au début du XXème siècle (Larousse 1922)

1 : Psychropotes ; 2 : Melanocetus ; 3 : Eurypharyx (sic) ; 4 : Stomias

boa ; 5 : Malacosteus ; 6 : Oneirophanta ; 7 : Bathypterois

Figure 10. Poissons abyssaux lumineux représentés dans un article

de la revue Science et Vie de 1946 (Puisségur, 1946)

a : Sternoptyx diaphana ; b : Idiacanthus fasciola ; c : Lamprotoxus

flabellibarba ; d : Malacosteus niger ; e : Ichthyococcus ovatus ; f :Lasognathus saccostoma.

Beaucoup d’autres organismes des couches les plus obscures de l’océan sont venus enrichir les

publications des océanographes, mais c’est alors la photographie qui a succédé aux aquarelles et aux

lithographies. À son tour, la photographie a ouvert une perspective nouvelle pour l’étude des organismes

abyssaux. Mais on peut choisir de partager l’avis d’Ernst Haeckel : « la photographie en couleurs ne


pourra jamais remplacer l'image individuelle et subjective du peintre. » (Haeckel, 1905). Il y a sans

aucun doute encore beaucoup de créatures étranges à découvrir dans les couches les plus profondes de

l’océan. Il suffit pour s’en convaincre de rappeler qu’en 1960, Don Walsh et Jacques Piccard, à bord du

bathyscaphe inventé par Auguste Piccard, le père de Jacques, ont vu un poisson évoluer dans la lumière

des projecteurs à 10 916 mètres de profondeur, dans le point le plus profond de notre planète, la fosse

des Mariannes.

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