An engaging and challenging introduction to Jean Genet, this concise biography of the French writer and his work cuts directly to the intersection of thought and life that was essential to Genet's creativity. Arguing that Genet's life was an extraordinary spectacle in which the themes of his most revolutionary works were played out, Stephen Barber gives both the work and its singular inspiration in Genet's life their full due. Abandoned, arrested, and repeatedly incarcerated, Genet, who died in 1986, led a life that could best be described as a tour of the underworld of the twentieth...
An engaging and challenging introduction to Jean Genet, this concise biography of the French writer and his work cuts directly to the intersection of ...
Though well-known for his founding of the avant-garde Situationist International movement and his prominent political and cultural activism, Guy Debord was nonetheless a surprisingly elusive and enigmatic figure, spending his last years in an isolated farmhouse in Champot, France. Andy Merrifield's Guy Debord pushes back the farmhouse shutters and opens a window onto Debord's life, theory, and art. Merrifield explores the dynamics of Debord's ideas and works, including the groundbreaking Howls for Sade and his 1967 classic, The Society of the Spectacle. Debord...
Though well-known for his founding of the avant-garde Situationist International movement and his prominent political and cultural activism, Guy Debor...
A revealing account of an artist whose enduring obsession with chance and coincidence shaped both his life and work, Marcel Duchamp illuminates one of the most important and influential figures in all of modern art. Drawing on the artist s own correspondence as well as interviews, Paris-based curator and art critic Caroline Cros explores the creative processes behind Duchamp s works including his famous anti-sculptures, the "Readymades"; the enigmatic Grand Verre; and the seductive, disturbing Etant Donnes as well as the often hostile reception he encountered in Paris...
A revealing account of an artist whose enduring obsession with chance and coincidence shaped both his life and work, Marcel Duchamp illuminates...
"What I have just written is false. True. Neither true nor false, like everything one writes about madmen, about men." With these sentences, Jean-Paul Sartre undermines the truthfulness of his own autobiography, Les Mots. Undeterred by such circumlocutions, Andrew Leak here cuts through Sartre's own disavowals to unearth the man behind the literary and philosophical giant. This biographical study integrates Sartre's works into his personal life, revealing the intimate contexts in which his philosophy developed. From Sartre's beginnings as a bright and precocious student, Leak...
"What I have just written is false. True. Neither true nor false, like everything one writes about madmen, about men." With these sentences, Jean-Paul...
Ludwig Wittgenstein is generally considered as the greatest philosopher since Immanuel Kant, and his personal life, work, and his historical moment intertwined in a fascinating, complex web. Noted scholar Edward Kanterian explores these intersections in Ludwig Wittgenstein, the newest title in the acclaimed Critical Lives series.
Wittgenstein's works--from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations---are notoriously dense, and Kanterian carefully distills them here, proposing thought-provoking new interpretations....
Ludwig Wittgenstein is generally considered as the greatest philosopher since Immanuel Kant, and his personal life, work, and his historical moment...
Despite Jean Cocteau s renown as a leading figure in European cinema, his work and life have rarely been examined together. Evaluating Cocteau s career and his fascinating personal life on equal terms, James Williams offers here a groundbreaking analysis that sets them both within highly revealing historical and artistic contexts. Williams s biographical investigation of this poet, dramatist, novelist, designer, and filmmaker centers around Cocteau s constant self-questioning and how it permeated his work. From Cocteau s work in fashion and photography to his formal experimentation to his...
Despite Jean Cocteau s renown as a leading figure in European cinema, his work and life have rarely been examined together. Evaluating Cocteau s caree...
A major influence on such filmmakers as Hitchcock, Godard, Fellini, and Scorsese, Sergei Eisenstein left an enduring legacy that was deeply informed by the political realities of early-twentieth-century Soviet Communism. In Sergei Eisenstein, Mike O Mahony uses this historical lens to examine the richly diverse films, writings, and artwork of one of the foremost filmmakers of the twentieth century. Drawing on an extensive archive of Eisenstein s published and unpublished writings, O Mahony situates his oeuvre in the social and political context of the first three decades of...
A major influence on such filmmakers as Hitchcock, Godard, Fellini, and Scorsese, Sergei Eisenstein left an enduring legacy that was deeply informed b...
Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure that of being Salvador Dali. He was a force unto himself, an icon of outrageousness, artistic brilliance, eccentricity, and unmistakable style. Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali y Domenech, Marquis of Pubol, was one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century, and in this concise narrative acclaimed art historian Mary Ann Caws provides a sharply written survey of his life and work.Salvador Dali examines every twist and turn in Dali s long and multifaceted career and the pivotal artistic movements at whose center...
Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure that of being Salvador Dali. He was a force unto himself, an icon of outrageousness, ...
Both an artist and activist, Octavio Paz won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1990. This recognition was the culmination of decades of work, as Paz strove to marry traditional Mexican poetry with distinctly surrealist and Spanish influences. Along withhis work, Paz s contribution to the intellectual debates of his time, such as those over the role of Mexican art in national identity, cannot be overemphasized. In Octavio Paz, Nicholas Caistor takes a fresh look at Paz s exquisite poetry and fascinating life. Born during the Mexican Revolution, Paz spent his youth fighting to free...
Both an artist and activist, Octavio Paz won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1990. This recognition was the culmination of decades of work, as Paz s...
Along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs (1914 97) is an iconic figure of the Beat generation. In William S. Burroughs, Phil Baker investigates this cult writer s life and work from small-town Kansas to New York in the 40s, Mexico and the South American jungle, to Tangier and the writing of Naked Lunch, to Paris and the Beat Hotel, and 60s London alongside Burrough s self-portrayal as an explorer of inner space, reporting back from the frontiers of experience.
After accidentally shooting his wife in 1951, Burroughs felt his destiny as a writer...
Along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs (1914 97) is an iconic figure of the Beat generation. In William S. Burroughs
