JUST PUBLISHED

Monika Haag / Mark Woodman (Ed.)

THE BLUE CONNECTION

Exploring a Universal Color

Bilingual English/German edition Hardcover 30 x 22 cm
154 pages, 114 color plates

With contributions by M. Appadorai (Mas Subramanian), Rozbeh Asmani, Carla A. Bordini Bellandi, Dietmar Danner, Tom Fecht, Monika Haag, Rolf Heide, Xiaojing Huang Nikolaus Koliusis, Paula Leonard, Eric Michel, Taron S. Schauenburg, Jian Ming Song, Mark Woodman and John E. Zissovici

ISBN 978-3-949990-99-1

€ 39.80

Distributed by FRÖLICH & KAUFMANN Berlin www.froelichundkaufmann.de (# 1375725)

Read more…
The Blue Connection begins with a blue ballpoint pen discovered in the window of a Santa Fe jeweller by the color designers and editors Monika Haag and Mark Woodman. The purchase of this unique piece, crafted from lapis lazuli, became the catalyst for a passionate discussion about the color blue. Soon, the universal quality of this hue became clear, connecting us far beyond cultures, traditions, borders, gender and age. The world of art, science, design, fashion and architecture is universally linked to this shade of emotion, of nature and the cosmos, of water, the sky and an infinite space.

Blue has many faces and recently evolved as a programmatic color increasingly identified with sustainability, health, peace and global responsibility. Blue seems omnipresent, always accessible and naturally attainable with endless associations and connections. Thus, the pen from Santa Fe began its journey to the authors, from Europe to China and on to the US – and came back with a wide variety of perspectives on blue.

This bilingual German/English edition explores blue as a universal color in 15 illustrated contributions from international design professionals including architects and artists, designers and chemists, scientists and philosophers to photographers, engineers and divers. The Blue Connection enriches the reader with its empathic potential for an open and universal discourse to conclude with a cutting edge look into recent research on color perception approaching the frontiers of quantum physics.

UPCOMING

AGNES MARTIN

ON BEAUTY

When I think of art I think of beauty – Lecture at the Museum of Fine Art Santa Fe, 1989. Facsimile of the handwritten manuscript with a color reproduction of Friendship by Agnes Martin in verso (Untitled, acrylic on linen by courtesy of the Harwood Museum of Art, Taos NM)

Limited edition of 1000 copies / 18 pages / Fine art reproduction 81.4 x 81.4 cm in verso 

Multilingual edition English / Deutsch / Français / 日本語

Poster Publication 81.4 x 81.4 cm (Folded and supplied with a protective banderole 14 x 42 cm)

ISBN 978-3-949990-02-1

September 2024

€ 10

Beauty in a World on Fire

Agnes Martin gave her lecture on beauty in April 1989 to a young audience in Santa Fe *. Thirty-five years later we live in a completely different world, while her autonomous, clear and poetic lines still speak for themselves. Living in a world on fire we felt the urge to republish her original manuscript supplemented by new translations. And like the universal horizons of her iconic paintings, her message requires no further introduction nor comment.

Today, beauty is becoming a question of mental survival, an antidote for the mind to better navigate in a dangerous and increasingly harsh world poisoned by polar- ization. Beauty conceals an effective counter-concept, but its power still doesn’t come simply “in the mail”. Too often silenced by daily horrors, beauty seems to be gradually disappearing from our everyday lives. For Agnes Martin, “the response to art is the real field of art”, its value lies in the sensitive observer, and the artist is in her eyes “a person who can recognize his own failure”. In Advice to Young Artists (1972), she encourages an inspired, unconventional artistic life that “leads away from the example of the past”. And finally, the experience of beauty inscribed in her very own art has also created her very best examples.

Thus, we are grateful for the kind permission to reproduce one of her untitled signature paintings in verso, a field of light and lightness created 1993–1994. In times of uncertainty, her uncompromising plea for beauty remains a particularly valuable artistic legacy, uniquely condensed in between the handwritten lines of this lecture and the universality of her painted horizons: “My paintings have neither object nor space nor line nor anything – no forms. It’s about light, about lightness, about fusion, about formlessness, about the breaking up of form. You wouldn’t think of form by the sea. You can go into it when you encounter nothing. A world without objects, without interruption, a work without interruption or obstacle. It’s about accepting the necessity of simply, directly entering a field of vision, like crossing an empty beach to look at the ocean”.

Gérard Klein / Emma Nilsson

Tom Fecht – INCERTITUDES

An introduction to DARK MATTERs

English edition 28 pages / 30 x 18 cm / 19 plates

ISBN 978-3-949990-00-7
Spring 2025

€ 10