A compendium of landmark interviews and seminal essays that illuminates the spirited transcontinental exchange between acclaimed postwar American artist of gestural abstraction Sam Francis and renowned French philosopher and art critic Yves Michaud.
Offering an intimate and in-depth view of Sam Francis's life and career, these historical documents are revisited and contextualized through a selection of contemporary reflections, including a recent interview with Yves Michaud, a foreword by Sam Francis Foundation director Debra Burchett-Lere, and an introduction by Paris-based art historian and scholar Susan L. Power, editor of this volume.
This cross-cultural meeting of minds, transpiring over the course of a decade from the early 1980s to 1990s between California and France, explores the profound nature of Sam Francis's artistic practice, its foundation in well-being—of both the individual and society—and its intrinsic connection to poetic and philosophical thought. The relationship between image, word, and idea, a fundamental "trinity" for Sam Francis, is a leitmotif among other predominant themes, such as the essential role of the psyche, synchronicity, the boundless realm and healing power of art, "the metaphysical and mystical expression of things," as Yves Michaud characterizes the artist's production.
The original design for this compact, handbook-sized volume artfully guides the reader through alternating sequences of text and image, ranging from archival photographs of Francis's early years in France in the aftermath of World War II, to an array of reproductions of the artist's work alongside studio portraits and images of friends and colleagues—a rich visual counterpart to the writings.
American artist Sam Francis (1923-1994) is a representative of non-figurative painting and more particularly of Action Painting in the United States, a movement in which the very act of painting is carried out without any preconceived idea of the final result. It is the act, the gesture of the artist, that takes precedence.
In 1943, he enlisted as an aviator in the air force, but in 1944 his plane crashed in the middle of the desert. He was hospitalised for two years with a spinal injury and began to paint during his convalescence, convinced of the therapeutic virtues of art. After leaving the hospital, he began studying art at Berkeley and in 1946 he left for San Francisco to take classes with Clyfford Still, an artist he had discovered at an exhibition.
Sam Francis sought to convey an impression of infinity, a space without beginning or end. His works are then only pieces of an infinity that continues well beyond the canvas. In this way he goes beyond the very notion of a frame. Figures and background must occupy the entirety of the pictorial space, diluting to make room for depth.
In some of his paintings, this "dissolution" of the figure goes so far as to make it liquid, resulting in vertical flows of paint, similar to a spider's web, a network linking the spots together. This is followed by a thorough research on light. He was preoccupied by the two contradictory states of light: black, the original background from which the light emerges, and white, the basis of light and the sum of the colours.
He sought to achieve the right balance since, according to him, "an increase in light leads to an increase in darkness". This is why he experimented with the superimposition of "veils of colour" which allowed him to attenuate the intensity of the light. His painting is not fixed. The irregular shape of the spots and the unevenness of the colour in tones and shades give an impression of movement.
Yves Michaud (born 1944 in Lyon) is a French philosopher and art critic.
