Werner Spies: L'œil, le mot — Art Criticism Collection

A collection of texts by German art historian Werner Spies, published between 1998 and 2006 in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, reveals his role as a contemporary art critic. Known for his exhibitions and writings on Picasso, Max Ernst, and Surrealism, Spies demonstrates a storytelling talent that challenges French intellectual conventions. The book covers artists like Boltanski, Calle, Kiefer, Christo, and Horn, employing an Anglo-Saxon approach to art writing focused on tangible causality rather than symptomatic extracts. Spies, a resident of France for forty years, personally corrected the French translations, offering readers a familiar yet distinct analytical system rooted in literature, cinema, and visual arts.