David Batchelor

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.

Chromophobia

chromaphobia

Francis Haskell

Briony Fer

Paul Wood

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.

Art Between the Wars

Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism

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.

Minimalism

The alien Metalmark offered mankind a starship and its advanced technology in a trade for the rights to planet Mercury and moon Triton. What could go wrong? But his appearance sent the nations of Earth into turmoil as many people suspected danger and a trick. Our dreams of futuristic breakthroughs made Metalmark a celebrity in the West, but inflamed the Islamic world. A scientist with the space agency and a CIA spy became two of Metalmark's defenders. Our chance to join superior beings and travel the stars depended on the clash of futurists with ancient traditions. Could he sell us the means to a quantum jump in progress? But . . . he wanted Mercury and Triton for habitats where his species could spawn . . . what did that mean?

The Metalmark Contract

From the Publisher: 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 Bachelor 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", Bachelor also discusses the use of color in Pop, Minimal, and more recent art.

Cromofobia

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.

A new book from Reaktion best-selling author and artist, David Batchelor, The Luminous and the Grey is a unique study of the places where colour comes into being and where it fades away.

The Luminous and the Grey

Em Minimalismo, David Batchelor apresenta de forma clara e equilibrada os principais aspectos desse movimento que soube se instalar, precisamente, no intervalo entre o arcaico e o contemporâneo; o feito-em-série e o feito-à-mão; a simplicidade conceitual e a complexidade da percepção. Combinando a análise cuidadosa das obras com inúmeros depoimentos de artistas, o autor desenha um quadro profundamente revelador dos modos de ação do minimalismo, explicando de que modo este chegou a se tornar uma espécie de 'gramática visual' contemporânea.

Minimalismo

Paul Harrison

John Wood

Charles Esche

Since they began collaborating in 1993. John Wood and Paul Harrison have accumulated a series of playful and beguiling video works which are distinguished as much by their droll sense of humour as their unerring economy of execution. Played out against a minimalist, monochrome backdrop, or within the sealed-off space of the monitor itself, each of the works involves the presence of one of the artists, either as the butt of an extended sight-gag or as the trigger for a spiralling, visually surprising conceit. This publication, which features an essay by Charles Esche, documents Wood and Harrison's work to date, including single-screen works and installations.

John Wood and Paul Harrison

Stuart Hall

Matthew Hilton

Kieran Connell

mac (Arts centre) Staff

To mark the 50th anniversary of the institutional origin and now the global discipline of Cultural Studies, this publication and the exhibition it accompanies explores the continuing and persistent influence of Birmingham's now defunct Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies on artist's practicing today.Representing the relevance of the Centre's vast body of work, this publication examines the key areas of study - class, gender, race and style - through the work of contemporary artists including Trevor Appleson, Mahtab Hussein, Sarah Maple, Sarah Silverwood and Nick Waplington. In addition, it includes a series of never-before-seen works in Britain by alumni students David Batchelor and Janet Mendelsohn.A foreword by former Director of the Centre, the acclaimed theorist Stuart Hall, is published here posthumously. In it he states: 'The artists featured in this collection are not working in 'cultural studies' - not formally at any rate. Like all good artists, however, they are engaged with the political and cultural contexts of their time. A great deal has changed since we began our experiment [at the Centre] five decades ago but as the work of these artists demonstrate, the kind of questions that we were interested in remain pertinent.'Published on the occasion of the exhibition 50 Years On: The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at mac birmingham, 10 May - 29 June 2014.

The Centre for Contemporary Culture Studies

50 Years On

Writings on color from modernism to the present, with contributions writers from Baudelaire to Baudrillard, surveying art from Paul Gauguin to Rachel Whiteread.

Colour

Andrea Schlieker

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

Flatlands

The October Colouring-In Book

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 as his own experience as an artist working with color—to understand how we see and use colors. He considers the role of color in creation myths, industrial chemistry, and optics, and examines the particular forms of luminosity that saturate the modern city. Following this inquiry into the hues that we face every day, he turns to one that is both color and noncolor: grey itself, which he reveals is as much a mood, feeling, and existential condition as a shade that we experience with our eyes. Deftly argued, always thought-provoking, and ever entertaining, The Luminous and the Grey is a beautiful study of how we see and feel our multicolored world.

David Batchelor

Books

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