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Batchelor coins the term "chromophobia"--A fear of corruption or contamination through color--in a meditation on color in western culture. Batchelor analyzes the history of, and the motivations behind, chromophobia, from its beginnings through examples of nineteenth-century literature, twentieth-century architecture and film to Pop art, minimalism and the art and architecture of the present day. He argues that there is a tradition of resistance to colour in the West, exemplified by many attempts to purge color from art, literature and architecture. Batchelor seeks to analyze the motivations behind chromophobia, considering the work of writers and philosophers who have used color as a significant motif, and offering new interpretations of familiar texts and works of art.
David Batchelor (born 1955, Dundee) is perhaps best known for his vividly coloured sculptural installations of illuminated lightboxes, industrial dollies, and other found objects. These three-dimensional works perhaps belie the fact that the root of his interest is and always has been in drawing, painting, abstraction and the monochrome - preoccupations that are best charted in his immensely varied 2D oeuvre. This exhibition will be the first in-depth survey of David Batchelor's drawings, paintings and photographic work
Color surrounds us: the lush green hues of trees and grasses, the variant blues of water and the sky, the bright pops of yellow and red from flowers. But at the same time, color lies at the limits of language and understanding. In this absorbing sequel to Chromophobia—which addresses the extremes of love and loathing provoked by color since antiquity—David Batchelor charts color’s more ambiguous terrain. The Luminous and the Grey explores the places where color comes into being and where it fades away, probing when it begins and when it ends both in the imagination and in the material world. Batchelor draws on neuroscience, philosophy, novels, films, and artists’ writings—as well a...
Writings on color from modernism to the present, with contributions writers from Baudelaire to Baudrillard, surveying art from Paul Gauguin to Rachel Whiteread.
Throughout his international career spanning more than thirty years, artist and writer David Batchelor has long been preoccupied with color. "Colour is not just a feature of [my] sculpture or painting," he notes, "but its central and overriding subject." This new publication is devoted to an ongoing series of sculptures titled Concretos. First made in 2011, Concretos combine concrete with a variety of brightly colored - and often found - materials.The publication features a text by Batchelor charting the origins and development of Concretos. He reveals that the first Concreto was made after encountering colored glass shards embedded in a concrete wall in the back streets of Palermo. Over tim...
This book begins by considering responses by French artists to the First World War, showing how Purism, Dada, and early Surrealism are related to the ethos of post-war reconstruction. The authors then discuss the language of construction in places as dissimilar as France, Germany, and the Soviet Union; the contrasting demands of the utility and decoration of objects and paintings; and the relationship of surrealism to questions of sexuality and gender and to Freudian theory. The book concludes by addressing the widespread debate over realism in art: whether it represents an alternative to the elitism of the avant-garde or whether avant-garde art should play a role in the development of a modern realism.
The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophobic impulse - a fear of corruption or contamination through color - lurks within much Western cultural and intellectual thought. This is apparent in the many and varied attempts to purge color, either by making it the property of some "foreign body" - the oriental, the feminine, the infantile, the vulgar, or the pathological - or by relegating it to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential, or the cosmetic. Chromophobia has been a cultural phenomenon since ancient Greek times; this book is concerned with forms of resistance to it. Writers have tended to look no further than the end of the nineteenth century. David Batchelor seeks to go beyond the limits of earlier studies, analyzing the motivations behind chromophobia and considering the work of writers and artists who have been prepared to look at color as a positive value. Exploring a wide range of imagery including Melville's "great white whale", Huxley's reflections on mescaline, and Le Corbusier's "journey to the East", Batchelor also discusses the use of color in Pop, Minimal, and more recent art.
In a time of social distancing and isolation, a meditation on the beauty of solitude from renowned Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor “Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it. A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.”—Kirkus Reviews “Elegant and formally ingenious.”—Geoff Wisner, Wall Street Journal When world renowned Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor turned sixty, he took a sabbatical from his teaching and turned his attention to solitude, a practice integral to the meditative traditions he has long studied and taught. He aimed to venture more deeply into solitude, discovering its full extent and depth. This beautifu...
The controversy surrounding Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII, made of 120 firebricks, gives an idea of the difficulty some people have in seeing such works as art. This book aims to show not only how "The Bricks" can be seen as art, but that sculpture such as this is some of the most interesting and imaginative work to come out of the 1960s. The term Minimalism has been applied to this type of art. Although the artists involved did not regard themselves as a group, the work is typically abstract, three-dimensional, modular, geometric, preconceived in design and industrial in execution. This introduction examines the implications of these characteristics. Looking in particular at the work of five key artists--Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Robert Morris--the author highlights some of the important differences in the development and direction of each artist's work. This thought-provoking publication also looks at the varied types of criticism and interpretation to which Minimalism has been subjected over the years. It ends by discussing how Minimalism, which has had a huge influence on subsequent art, continues to inform the work of contemporary artists.