For the last forty-odd years, more and more artists have been abandoning the canvas as a medium — one seemingly so old that we tend to forget that it has not always existed. Some view this desertion as a betrayal of the art of painting. In writing this book (or, rather, the dual volumes comprising it, which may each be read independently), the author attempted to find out whether the history of the canvas conceals any ideas that may shed light on today's art of painting. These two volumes explore the long period extending from 1273 (when Cimabue painted the Arezzo Crucifix) to 1973 (the death of Picasso), while striving to answer the questions raised by today's enlightened amateurs.
Genèse d'une disparition, deals with the advent of the canvas and of the model that still guides our perception. Here, the author describes how painters form the space which gives viewers the illusion that the surface of the canvas is transparent and opens onto an unlimited vista.
La peinture contre le tableau depicts the battle that painting waged against itself from the end of the 18th century until the early 1970s.

Art critic and sociologist LaurentWolf is a Paris-based correspondent for the Swiss daily Le Temps. Painting was his main personal and professional activity from 1971 to 1991.