Preview our Spring 2024 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
PORK SALAD PRESS
Concrete Comedy
An Alternative History of Twentieth-Century Comedy
By David Robbins.
Conventional histories of comedy address the verbal comedy presented on stage or screen, or in broadcast media. During the twentieth century, however, there emerged another form of comedy--a comedy of doing rather than saying--that yielded prop-like conceptual objects and gestures of public theater. Termed “concrete comedy” by internationally known artist and writer David Robbins, its origins date from around 1915, with the work of Karl Valentin, a German comedian of stage and screen who also made comic objects, and Marcel Duchamp, who used the art context as a site as for comedy. Concrete Comedy discusses visual artists (Manzoni, Warhol, Cattelan, Kippenberger, among many others) alongside entertainers (Albert Brooks, Andy Kaufman, Robert Benchley, Jack Benny), musicians (The Ramones, The Replacements, Frank Zappa), couturiers (from Chanel to Viktor & Rolf), architects (SITE Architects) and dozens of other comic imaginations. It offers both an alternative to conventional comedy and an alternative reading of certain abiding strategies in recent art.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Art in America
Stephen Maine
The author's unassuming, slightly crackpottish voice and enthusiasm for his subject—and it does seem to be his subject, with little other literature around-makes for an engrossing read.
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
David Robbins--artist, comedian, writer--defines Concrete Comedy as "a comedy of doing rather than saying." On the occasion of his booksigning at the New York Artist's Book Fair (at MoMA P.S.1, Sunday 1 pm), Robbins talks to Artbook about his fantastic new book, Concrete Comedy: An Alternative History of Twentieth-Century Comedy. continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 6.75 x 9.5 in. / 360 pgs / 2 color / 300 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $49.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $67.5 ISBN: 9788791409585 PUBLISHER: Pork Salad Press AVAILABLE: 8/31/2011 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Concrete Comedy An Alternative History of Twentieth-Century Comedy
Published by Pork Salad Press. By David Robbins.
Conventional histories of comedy address the verbal comedy presented on stage or screen, or in broadcast media. During the twentieth century, however, there emerged another form of comedy--a comedy of doing rather than saying--that yielded prop-like conceptual objects and gestures of public theater. Termed “concrete comedy” by internationally known artist and writer David Robbins, its origins date from around 1915, with the work of Karl Valentin, a German comedian of stage and screen who also made comic objects, and Marcel Duchamp, who used the art context as a site as for comedy. Concrete Comedy discusses visual artists (Manzoni, Warhol, Cattelan, Kippenberger, among many others) alongside entertainers (Albert Brooks, Andy Kaufman, Robert Benchley, Jack Benny), musicians (The Ramones, The Replacements, Frank Zappa), couturiers (from Chanel to Viktor & Rolf), architects (SITE Architects) and dozens of other comic imaginations. It offers both an alternative to conventional comedy and an alternative reading of certain abiding strategies in recent art.
