Monochrome : darkness and light in contemporary art / Craig Staff.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Staff, Craig G., 1971- author.

Series:

International library of modern and contemporary art ; 20.

International library of modern and contemporary art

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Monochrome art.

Color in art.

Genre:

Illustrated works.

Physical Description:

xiii, 193 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : I.B. Tauris, 2015.

Summary:

"The monochrome -- a single colour of paint applied over the entirety of a canvas -- remains one of the more contentious modernist artistic inventions. But whilst the manufacture of these 'pictures of nothing' was ostensibly straightforward, their subsequent theorisation has been anything but. More than a history, Monochrome: Darkness and Light in Contemporary Art is the first account of the monochrome's lively role in contemporary art. Liberated from the burden of representation, the monochrome first stood for emancipation: an ideological and artistic impulse that characterised the avant-garde of the early twentieth century. Historically, the monochrome embodied the most extreme form of abstraction and pure materiality. Yet more recently, adaptations of the art form have focused on a broader range of cultural and interpretive contexts. Provocative, innovative and timely, this book argues that the latest artistic strategies go beyond stylistic concerns and instead seek to re-engage with ideas around authorship, process and the conditions of the visible as they are given and understood through both light and darkness. Discussing works by artists such as Katie Paterson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tom Friedman, Bruno Jakob, Sherrie Levine and Ceal Floyer, the book shows that the debates around an artwork's form and its possibility for meaning that the monochrome first engendered remain very much alive in contemporary visual culture"--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Part I Of Darkness

1 Fathoming Darkness: Arrested Vision and Monochromacity in the Work of Balka, Whiteread and Paterson 11

2 Accumulating Discourses: Trajectories, Contingencies and Mutations 27

3 Complicating Presence, Reenacting History 43

Part II Of Light

4 Turner, Wheeler and Rauschenberg: Materialising Light 71

5 Lightening the Idealistic Load: The Dumb, the Imprecise and the Almost 87

6 The Evacuation of Imagery: Monochromacity and the Work of Nothing 106.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 177-190) and index.

ISBN:

9781784530488

1784530484

9781784530495

1784530492

OCLC:

909251159