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CHRISTINE BURGIN
Albert Grass: The Adventures of a Dreamer
Edited by Zoe Beloff.
The 25 pictures in this book comprise the dream journal of Albert Grass, founder of the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society, an organization that might have been, which was created by Zoe Beloff as part of her project The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and Its Circle. Beloff created this hand-drawn prototype for a comic book as the work of Grass, made from perhaps 1936 to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. It seems possible that Grass originally intended “The Dreamer” as a comic-book hero in the mold of The Spirit or Superman, but this conception quickly changed. By chapter three “The Dreamer” loses his ability to fly, remains earthbound and the work becomes a more serious investigation into his own psychic life, many of his anxieties speaking directly to us today. This edition proposes an early attempt to use the language of the comic book to graphically manifest the unconscious.
Featured image is reproduced from Albert Grass: The Adventures of a Dreamer.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Hyperallergic
Carey Dunne
The project began seven years ago, when the director of the Coney Island Museum invited Beloff to stage an exhibition celebrating the centennial of Freud's visit to the Dreamland Amusement park in 1909. "Rather than simply illustrate Freud's visit, I wanted to explore the unconscious of the people who lived, worked and played in Coney Island ... The Society was a framework for this. The fact that I invented it was completely in tune with the setting. Everything in the Amusement Park is a crazy fiction - that is its charm." ... Whatever you think of Freudian psychoanalysis, it's hard to argue that an art piece that can create false memories in its viewers isn't powerful.
FORMAT: Pbk, 7.75 x 10.25 in. / 56 pgs / 56 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $20.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $27.95 GBP £17.50 ISBN: 9780977869640 PUBLISHER: Christine Burgin AVAILABLE: 7/26/2016 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Christine Burgin. Edited by Zoe Beloff.
The 25 pictures in this book comprise the dream journal of Albert Grass, founder of the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society, an organization that might have been, which was created by Zoe Beloff as part of her project The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and Its Circle. Beloff created this hand-drawn prototype for a comic book as the work of Grass, made from perhaps 1936 to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. It seems possible that Grass originally intended “The Dreamer” as a comic-book hero in the mold of The Spirit or Superman, but this conception quickly changed. By chapter three “The Dreamer” loses his ability to fly, remains earthbound and the work becomes a more serious investigation into his own psychic life, many of his anxieties speaking directly to us today. This edition proposes an early attempt to use the language of the comic book to graphically manifest the unconscious.
