For Georges Didi-Huberman, artist James Turrell is an inventor of impossible spaces and unthinkable sites, of aporias, of fables. Creator of some of the most fascinating works of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, Turrell uses as his medium the most elemental material of sight and art: light. One crucial aspect of his work is the fabulation of place and vision with its foundation deep in history.

Didi-Huberman takes the reader on a journey between the impossible limit of the horizon and the arrival into a site of reverie and light, from the story of Exodus to the Pala d'Oro of San Marco's Basilica in Venice, through art history and the origins of religious worship, finally plunging into Turrell's cadmium dust and light, into the Painted Desert of his installation Roden Crater. For the esteemed art historian, Turrell's artistic practice becomes the equivalent of walking along endless pathways in the desert, in "minuscule cathedrals where man discovers himself walking in color."

About the Author

Georges Didi-Huberman is lecturer at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in Paris. He has published more than twenty books on art history and philosophy and received the 2015 Theodor W. Adorno Prize.

Drew S. Burk is a cultural theorist, editor, and translator of contemporary French philosophy.

Reviews

"Burk's translation of Didi-Huberman's The Man Who Walked in Color allows the flesh of words to express the flesh of colour and light, the solidity and volume of fabled spaces, and the quickness and the obdurateness of material objects and surfaces. Beautifully produced, this book is an elegant visual complement to the original Minuit edition of Didi-Huberman's essay."-French Studies

"In his slim but densely structured philosophical study, which takes the form of an extended fable, Georges Didi-Huberman explores the visionary quality of Turrell's work in both its spiritual and phenomenological dimensions."-Leonardo Reviews

Book Information
ISBN 9781945414015
Author Georges Didi-Huberman
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Univocal Publishing LLC
Publisher Univocal Publishing LLC
Dimensions(mm) 203mm * 127mm * 51mm