Jeff Wall (b.1946) adopts the nineteenth-century poet Baudelaire's famous description of one of his contemporaries as 'a painter of modern life' to describe his own very different work: huge transparencies mounted on to light boxes that diffuse a brilliant glow of white light evenly through his photographs of contemporary urban scenes and 'constructed' social situations. Wall is foremost among the pioneering artists who since the late 1960s have brought photography to the forefront of contemporary art. His constructed images employ the latest sophisticated technology in the creation of compelling tableaux, which are evocative of subjects ranging from Hollywood cinema to nineteenth-century history painting. When exhibited in their glowing light boxes they evoke both the seduction of the cinema screen and the physical presence of minimalist sculptures such as Dan Flavin's fluorescent light installations or Donald Judd's metal and Perspex wall reliefs. All of these elements - traditional figurative painting, cinema, Minimalism, Conceptual art, documentary photography - are consciously evoked and explored in Wall's work. Associated closely since the late 1960s with Conceptual artists such as Dan Graham, with whom he collaborated on The Children's Pavilion (1988-93), Wall has engaged at a sophisticated level with theories of representation and its social dimensions both as an artist and as a theoretical writer on contemporary art and culture.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Phaidon Press Ltd
ISBN-13
9780714855974
eBay Product ID (ePID)
95069048
Product Key Features
Book Title
Jeff Wall
Author
Jean-Francois Chevrier, Thierry Duve, Boris Groys
Format
Hardcover
Language
English
Publication Year
2009
Number of Pages
280 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
290mm
Item Width
250mm
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Boris Groys, Thierry Duve, Jean-Francois Chevrier
Series Title
Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series
Country/Region of Manufacture
United Kingdom
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