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A new selected writings from the Californian abstract expressionist famed for his colorful lyricism and dynamic painting This volume beautifully combines the artist's writing with his works on paper in an elegantly designed book. Focusing on principles expressed in his acclaimed Saturated Blue, this volume includes writings from Francis' journals that have never been published before. Sam Francis (1923–94) painted images with words as well as pigments. He approached art as a mediation between divine inspiration and human existence, and a guiding notion was the philosopher's stone, or Lapis Philosophorum. His writings took the form of aphorisms, poetry, dream memories and prose, each providing insight into his visual art. His publishing project, the Lapis Press, allowed Francis to pursue his love of writing and discover new ways to marry the brilliance of words with the visual. That ethos is reflected in the superb design of this collection. The production used a new seven-color print technology to create plates with added vibrancy and color density.

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One of the world’s preeminent Abstract Expressionists, California-born painter Sam Francis (1923-1994) first travelled to Japan in 1957, quickly established studios and residences there, and became active in a circle of avant-garde artists, writers, filmmakers, architects, and composers, including members of the nascent Gutai and Mono-ha movements. This book chronicles those connections, as well as his complex and evolving relationship with East Asian aesthetics from the 1950s through the 1990s. From the very first exhibitions Francis had in Tokyo, critics linked his evocative use of negative space with the Japanese concept of “ma”, a symbolically rich interval between objects or ideas. This shared pictorial and philosophical syntax laid the foundation for a feedback loop of mutual influence that spurred frequent collaborations between the artist and his Japanese contemporaries, extending into the realms of printmaking, ceramics, music, poetry, publishing, and performance. Written by art critic and curator Richard Speer, with a foreword by Debra Burchett-Lere, executive director/president of the Sam Francis Foundation, this is the first full-length monograph to explore an important but sometimes overlooked milieu in Post-World War II art—a dialogue between Eastern and Western sensibilities that prefigured our current era of global interconnectedness and cross-cultural exchange. Lavishly illustrated with colour plates and archival images, it is an adjunct publication for the related exhibition “Sam Francis and Japan: Emptiness Overflowing” (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2021), co-curated by Speer.

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