The second volume in the series Jean-Francois Lyotard Writings on Contemporary Art and Artists introduces forty-two poetical reflections and comments on the work of the well-known Californian painter Sam Francis (1923 1994). This new edition reprints the English text, which is no longer available, with the previously unpublished French original on facing pages. In Lyotard's opinion Sam Francis's work "pays homage to the visible marvel and bears witness to the visual enigma." Color evokes conflicting feelings in the artist: ." . . color says to me: 'Come, I am your consolation, I cure your...

This book is the third of a series of five volumes that exhaustively brings together the writings of Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924 1998) on contemporary art and artists. This collection of essays, written between 1974 and 1977 in the midst of Duchamp's rediscovery in France, was published by Editions Galilee, Paris, in 1977 and in English translation by the Lapis Press, Los Angeles, in 1990.

This volume republishes the two versions face-to-face, including the drawings, diagrams, and images of the original edition. Herman Parret presents the text in a substantial introduction, and...

Lyotard met Jacques Monory in 1972, and the text on him published at that time was the first that Lyotard dedicated to contemporary art since Discourse, Figure. Lyotard's interest in the plastic arts thus fits fully within the setting of his political preoccupations. The artist-protagonist stages the recurring motifs that fascinate Lyotard: the scene of the crime, the revolver, the woman, the victim, glaciers, deserts, stars. The atmosphere of the essays on Monory is "Californian." Monory's imaginary repertoire goes well beyond the masters of modernity and is in line rather with a "modern...