Francis Baudevin

Francis Baudevin (born 1964) makes paintings from graphics designed for various products, primarily pharmaceuticals and album covers. He removes the type, leaving only the graphics, and enlarges the results onto canvases and walls, thereby retrieving geometric abstraction from its influence on commercial design.

For his addition to JRP|Ringier's Hapax Series--pocket-size paperback volumes featuring visual essays by cultural producers from various fields--artist Francis Baudevin reveals himself to also be a music connoisseur. This volume features an in-depth interview with Cornerhouse Books editor Valérie Mavridorakis, in which Baudevin provides a refreshing take on the relationship between contemporary art and music, from rock to experimental. His makes the case that, since the 1960s, the art and music scenes have been intertwined, and the resulting exchanges and collaborations reveal the need for an expanded interdisciplinary history of art. Though it is a cultural history that remains to be written, this book proposes its outline.