Painting with architecture in mind

“What do we want from the architect?
Four walls and top light, that’s what!"
Georg Baselitz

The collection of essays in this forthcoming book bring together multiple ways of thinking and practicing in the spaces between painting and architecture. Although there has been a long standing interrelationship between these two historically esteemed practices the authors in this volume will reveal that however much the disciplines of western painting and architecture have occupied related theoretical and discursive territory over the early part of the twentieth century - and especially the period of the avant gardes - the concerns of painters and architects in the late 20th century have sometimes diverged as indicated by Baselitz’s exhortation. However the question of painting’s own architectonics and the architectural frame of the building it occupies, are fundamental to the perceptual experience of painting. Some of the most architecturally minded painters of the 20thC have investigated how their works enfold the space in which they are exhibited undermining any clear distinction between interior and exterior, virtual and concrete space. These essays explore the radical ways in which the historical and contemporary relationship between painting and architecture can be reconfigured and re-imagined from the varying perspectives of art history, critical theory, philosophy and aesthetics.