Lesson of Darkness

by Jean-François Lyotard

The second volume in the series Jean-François 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). Th is new edition reprints the English text, which is no longer available, with the previously unpublished French original on facing pages.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 melancholy, love me,' and it says to me: 'Go, I am your deception, traverse me, lose yourself and enough of absent truth.'" Lyotard is the first to see through the subtle variety of meanings in Sam Francis's use of color. This edition also reproduces in full color all forty-two paintings discussed by Lyotard.

Genres: Art, Poetry

98 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1994

About the author

Jean-François Lyotard (DrE, Literature, University of Paris X, 1971) was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is well-known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and for his analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition.

He went to primary school at the Paris Lycées Buffon and Louis-le-Grand and later began studying philosophy at the Sorbonne. After graduation, in 1950, he took a position teaching philosophy in Constantine in French East Algeria. He married twice: in 1948 to Andrée May, with whom he had two daughters, and for a second time in 1993 to the mother of his son, who was born in 1986.

Reviews

[Mélanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jean-François Lyotard's "Sam Francis: Lessons of Darkness…like the paintings of a blind man…" is a most spectacular synthesis of art book-poetic work-philosophical reflection. The paintings are abstract expressionist and mostly minimalist, facing them are small bites of lyotard's writing (poetically phrased and elliptical insights more than art crit.).