Over a four-decade career, the Franco-Haitian artist has built his own world of contrasts, contradictions and blissful escape

Almost 200 artists in the Altadena neighbourhood have had their homes or studios burned down, while modernist buildings and irreplaceable collections have been destroyed

Fires are a seasonal recurrence in the dry chaparral region of Los Angeles. Often fanned by the Santa Anas, gales known as the “devil winds,” they spark easily in the long, hot months of summer and autumn. But on 7 January, when those winds blew at 85 mph through areas parched from winter drought, a hurricane of fire swept into lower-lying – and densely populated – areas that had never seen such blazes before. The flames incinerated thousands of homes and priceless cultural heritage, marking the worst natural disaster in LA history. The second largest city in the US and a global cultural capital – home to the Hollywood film industry and a rich contemporary art scene – may never be the same again.

More than a week on, with the Eaton fire 81% contained and the massive Palisades fire only 52% contained, the LA arts community is still taking stock of the losses. Altadena, a middle-class residential neighbourhood that is home to many artists, was particularly devastated by the Eaton Fire. According to artist Andrea Bowers, 190 artists have lost or suffered significant damage to their homes, studios, and work. That figure comes from Grief and Hope, a survey and relief fund Bowers launched on 9 January with several other arts professionals, including fellow artist Kathryn Andrews, who lost her home to the Palisades fire. The tally continues to rise.

Is western civilisation being destroyed by its own decadence? Was the Roman empire? And does a preference for Lord of the Rings over The Matrix indicate that we are all doomed? Our critic tries to sift fact from fiction …

We are decadent. It’s obvious. Look around you. Books have been replaced by screens, restaurants are bigger cultural events than art (though they too are dying), and our highest cultural temple is The Traitors. “Western civilisation is being destroyed by its own decadence,” ran a Daily Telegraph headline last year. In his book The Decadent Society, American journalist Ross Douthat argues that the US has been in decline ever since Neil Armstrong got back from the moon. And conservative provocateur Michel Houellebecq has made the decadence of the west a pervasive theme of his novels – including the most recent, Annihilation, which I got for Christmas and read by twinkling tree lights, its bleak vision gradually sapping my festive spirit. So now I am going to inflict Houellebecq’s story on you.

A French civil servant, returning to his teenage bedroom, sees his old posters for The Matrix Revolutions and it all comes flooding back. He was obsessed with that 2003 film, he remembers, but his younger sister Cécile and her generation had other fandoms: “Not Nirvana now, but Radiohead; and not The Matrix, but The Lord of the Rings. There were only two years between them, but that might have been enough to explain the difference, things still moved quite quickly in those days, much less quickly than in the 1960s, of course, or even in the 1970s, the deceleration and immobilisation of the west, heralding its annihilation, had been progressive.”

These two breathtaking shows by women artists – one shot in Oregon State hospital, the other a collaboration between siblings – helped challenge the photographic establishment

The Belgian photographer’s 2012 image exemplifies his gift for connecting with animals on camera

Recent research into animal behaviour indicates that, contrary to the belief that horses only respond to stimuli in the moment, they have the ability to think ahead and plan their actions. The horse in this picture by Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt seems to have no urgent need for such strategic thinking. The mane of flaxen tresses, the loose ringlets of the tail, the languorous attitude, meadow flowers as far as the eye can see – Vanden Eeckhoudt’s horse seems to exist in a kind of pony club elysium, idly dreaming an afternoon away.

The Belgian-born photographer’s images of animals often invite you to imagine their subjects’ interior lives, though rarely is the vision as bucolic – or as apparently unperturbed – as this one. Vanden Eeckhoudt’s lazing horse – pictured in a field in Germany in 2012 – comes from his series of animal portraits in his book Doux-Amer (“bittersweet”). If this photo provides a dose of saccharine, it is set against other much starker images of animals in the landscape – feral farm dogs on stony ground, pigs ready for slaughter, catching the photographer’s eye.

Zoologies is at Le Carreau de Cergy in Cergy, France, until 2 March