David Batchelor Bücher

Das Buch ist eine Art subversive „Farbenlehre“, die uns auffordert, Farbe radikal wahr- und ernstzunehmen. Auf einen anekdotischen Beginn über den Schrecken von Weiß folgt eine essayistische Reise durch Kunst, Architektur, Design, Kosmetik, Philosophie, Mode und Film. Farbe – so die These – steht für das Gegenteil von Vernunft, Ordnung und Reinheit und wird als solche verdrängt und bekämpft – oder gefeiert. Philosophen, Künstler, Filmemacher und Dichter wie Baudelaire, Warhol, Huxley, Bachtin, Rushdie, Barthes, Wittgenstein, Jarman, Goethe u.a. kommen dabei zu Wort.

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.

A publication of London-based artist David Batchelor's Concretos sculptures (2011-) exploring concrete in conjunction with other brightly coloured materials.

Minimalism was one of the most exciting developments in the art of the 1960s. Although the artists involved did not regard themselves as a group, the work is typically abstract, modular, preconceived in design and industrial in execution.