Description
Book SynopsisSelected for the 2012 AAUP Book, Jacket and Journal Show in the category 'Scholarly Illustrated'!
Awarded with 'Best Vormgegegeven Boek 2011' for the best designed book in the category business and academic publications
Sam Francis. Lesson of Darkness is the second of a series of six volumes, bringing together the most important writings of Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) on contemporary art and artists. This second volume introduces forty-three poetical reflections and comments on the work of the well-known Californian painter Sam Francis (1923-1994). This edition reprints the English text published in 1993, which is no longer available, face to face with the previously unpublished French original. It also reproduces in full colour all forty-three paintings commented upon by Lyotard.
In Lyotard's opinion ‘the work [by Sam Francis] pays homage to the visible marvel and bears witness to the visual enigma'. Lyotard discovers in these poetic reflections the subtle variety of meanings in the use of colour in Sam Francis's paintings.
Photos: Van Looveren & Princen
Trade ReviewStride Magazine November 2010
De rijkdom van Lyotards beschouwingen, het samengaan van tekst en reproductie, de nummering van de afgebeelde werken waardoor er ook in het uitgebreide voorwoord precies naar kan verwezen worden en de rustige vormgeving maken dit boek in alle opzichten 'af', klaar om gelezen, herlezen en overdacht te worden.
Erik De Smedt, H-ART 12.11 2010
First published in British magazine Blank Page in 1993, the poem is republished, alongside the previously unseen French original, in an elegantly designed volume that offers both a singular response to an artist's work and a contribution ta a critical rethinking of painters - such as Francis's friend and fellow American in Paris Joan Mitchell - who were working in the immediate fallout of Abstract Expressionism, outside of New York.
Laura McLean-Ferris, ArtReview 2010
Table of ContentsTable des matières
Table of contents
Herman Parret:
Préface /
Preface
Jean-François Lyotard:
Sam Francis. Leçon de Ténèbres /
Sam Francis. Lesson of Darkness
Geoffrey Bennington:
Postface /
Epilogue
