David Batchelor Knihy

Chromophobia - a fear of corruption or contamination through colour - has lurked within Western culture since ancient times. This is apparent in the many attempts to purge colour from art, literature and architecture, 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 inessential or the cosmetic, which in many cases amounts to the same thing. In Chromophobia, David Batchelor analyzes the history of, and 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. Batchelor suggests how colour fits, or fails to fit, into the cultural imagination of the West, exploring such diverse themes as Melville's "great white whale," Le Corbusier's "journey to the East," Huxley's experiments with mescaline. Dorothy's travels in the Land of Oz and the implication of modern artists' experiments with industrial paints and materials.

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 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.

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