Sam Francis and Yves Michaud in Dialogue: Painting, Poetry, and Philosophy, a bilingual compendium of landmark interviews and seminal essays, illuminates the spirited transcontinental exchange between acclaimed postwar American artist of gestural abstraction Sam Francis and renowned French philosopher and art critic Yves Michaud. Offering an intimate and in-depth view of Sam Francis’s life and career, these historical documents are revisited and contextualized through a selection of contemporary reflections, including a recent interview with Yves Michaud, a foreword by Sam Francis Foundation director Debra Burchett-Lere, and an introduction by Paris-based art historian and scholar Susan L. Power, editor of this volume.

This cross-cultural meeting of minds, transpiring over the course of a decade from the early 1980s to 1990s between California and France, explores the profound nature of Sam Francis’s artistic practice, its foundation in well-being—of both the individual and society—and its intrinsic connection to poetic and philosophical thought. The relationship between image, word, and idea, a fundamental “trinity” for Sam Francis, is a leitmotif among other predominant themes, such as the essential role of the psyche, synchronicity, the boundless realm and healing power of art, or “the metaphysical and mystical expression of things,” as Yves Michaud has characterized the artist’s production.

The original design for this compact, handbook-sized volume artfully guides the reader through alternating sequences of text and image, ranging from archival photographs of Francis’s early years in France in the aftermath of World War II, to an array of reproductions of the artist’s work alongside studio portraits and images of friends and colleagues—a rich visual counterpart to the writings.

This publication is funded in part by a generous grant from the Fondation Jan Michalski.