Miscellaneous Texts: "Aesthetics and Theory of Art" and "Contemporary Artists": Jean-Francois Lyotard: Writings on Contemporary Art and Artists

Special pricing on two-volume set

The first volume of Jean-Francois Lyotard's Miscellaneous d104s on contemporary art and artists, Aesthetics and Theory of Art, contains nine essays on general aesthetics and the theory of art. They are published in the original French along with the translations in English. Most of these texts, preserved in the Lyotard archives of the Bibliotheque Litteraire Jacques Doucet in Paris, are presented here for the first time. They cover the whole period of his production, from 1969 to 1997, and they make the development of his philosophy of art explicit. After the "libidinal" conception of art in his early writings, the "Kantian twist" of around 1980 places his view on art under the aegis of the sublime.

The second volume of Jean-Francois Lyotard's Miscellaneous d104s, Contemporary Artists, gathers thirty-nine essays by Lyotard that deal with twenty-seven influential and innovative contemporary artists: Luciano Berio, Richard Lidner, Rene Guiffrey, Gianfranco Baruchello, Henri Maccheroni, Riwan Tromeur, Albert Ayme, Manuel Casimiro, Ruth Francken, Barnett Newman, Jean-Luc Parant, Francois Lapouge, Sam Francis, Andre Dubreuil, Joseph Kosuth, Sarah Flohr, Lino Centi, Gigliola Fazzini, Bracha Lichtenberger Ettinger, Henri Martin, Michel Bouvet, Corinne Filippi, Stig Brogger, Francois Rouan, Pierre Skira Pastels, and Beatrice Casadesus. Many of these texts were originally published in catalogs; others were published in hard-to-find journals. This volume of Miscellaneous d104s is illustrated with more than sixty images, mainly in color, of works of art discussed by Lyotard in these writings."