The paintings, drawings and films of Belgian artist Michaël Borremans (born 1963) seem to suspend humans above the logic of their actions, so that the simplest gesture or movement is emptied of sense and made arbitrary, tense and uneasily beautiful. Sometimes Borremans makes a garment the hero of the work, as in his well-known painting of a young woman with a bow: eye-catching as the subject's introspective facial expression undoubtedly is, the almost Pop-ish boldness of her bright white bow throws the whole composition into a bizarre tension between moody inwardness and mischievous extroversion rarely seen in contemporary art. The title of this first comprehensive overview hints at the submerged streak of wicked Belgian wit throughout Borremans' oeuvre, and presents the most coherent portrait of the artist to date. It assembles more than 100 works made over the past ten years, showing how motifs and allusions migrate across media, unifying the oeuvre into a singular investigation of atmospherics, humor and the unexpected communicative possibilities of a restrained palette of beiges, browns and greys. The particular advantage this overview offers is precisely in the presentation of such cross-media unity, also revealing how much each medium verges upon becoming the other (the cinematic qualities of the paintings, the painterliness of the films). With more than 120 color plates, Eating the Beard is the essential Borremans monograph.
"A snapshot in time is frozen in this triangle of light, the state of which can no longer be recovered by what can be labeled, but is an event that exists solely in the location thereof: in the painting."
Hans D. Christ, excerpted from Man Looking Down at His Hand in Michaël Borremans: Eating the Beard. Featured image, Michaël Borremans' Man Looking Down at His Hand, 2007, is reproduced from Michaël Borremans: Eating the Beard.
STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely.
FROM THE BOOK
"It is obvious that Michaël Borremans consciously, and not in the spirit of revolt, positions himself in the unending history of painting, draws from it, and is a master of the craft of painting perhaps as much as any contemporary artist. Numerous authors have justifiably derived his art from the context of this historical background. But his work is also imbued with an awareness of historical breaches that go hand in hand with the radical questioning and reformulations of images as self-contained works. The fact that Borremans can intensify panel paintings that apparently feature classic subjects to such an extent that they demonstrate their own patterns of representation--without concealing anything, without digressing into abstraction--at the same time identifies him as a 'visual scholar' who thinks conceptually."
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.25 x 11.75 in. / 224 pgs / 121 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $55.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $65 ISBN: 9783775728355 PUBLISHER: Hatje Cantz AVAILABLE: 9/30/2011 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Hans D. Christ, Hans Rudolf Reust.
The paintings, drawings and films of Belgian artist Michaël Borremans (born 1963) seem to suspend humans above the logic of their actions, so that the simplest gesture or movement is emptied of sense and made arbitrary, tense and uneasily beautiful. Sometimes Borremans makes a garment the hero of the work, as in his well-known painting of a young woman with a bow: eye-catching as the subject's introspective facial expression undoubtedly is, the almost Pop-ish boldness of her bright white bow throws the whole composition into a bizarre tension between moody inwardness and mischievous extroversion rarely seen in contemporary art. The title of this first comprehensive overview hints at the submerged streak of wicked Belgian wit throughout Borremans' oeuvre, and presents the most coherent portrait of the artist to date. It assembles more than 100 works made over the past ten years, showing how motifs and allusions migrate across media, unifying the oeuvre into a singular investigation of atmospherics, humor and the unexpected communicative possibilities of a restrained palette of beiges, browns and greys. The particular advantage this overview offers is precisely in the presentation of such cross-media unity, also revealing how much each medium verges upon becoming the other (the cinematic qualities of the paintings, the painterliness of the films). With more than 120 color plates, Eating the Beard is the essential Borremans monograph.
