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UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE
Ideas Have No Smell: Three Belgian Surrealist Booklets
Transfigured Publicity / Abstractive Treatise on Obeuse / For Balthazar
By Paul Nougé, Paul Colinet, Louis Scutenaire. Edited with translation by M. Kasper. Introduction by Mary Ann Caws.
The Belgian surrealist movement, like its contemporary French cousin, included both visual artists—René Magritte most famously—and writers, who were also its theorists. They shared with the Parisians a fierce commitment to personal, political and aesthetic liberty, and to humor, surprise and transgression as artistic strategies, but they parted company when it came to the unconscious and the occult. Ideas Have No Smell gathers exemplary works by three literary lights of Belgian surrealism: Transfigured Publicity, a visual text of early concrete poetry by poet and photographer Paul Nougé (1895–1967), the apostle of appropriation; the whimsical, hand-drawn artist's book Abstractive Treatise on Obeuse by Paul Colinet (1898–1957); and For Balthazar, a collection of aphorisms and observations by the ever skeptical author, lawyer and anarchist Louis Scutenaire (1905–87). In addition to the booklets presented in a facsimile-style translation by M. Kasper, this letterpressed slipcase includes an introduction by scholar Mary Ann Caws and a poster of an anonymously handwritten panneau of Nougé's visual poems, possibly coauthored with Magritte and previously reproduced only in Marcel Mariën's documentary history, L'Activité surréaliste en Belgique.
"The Belgian Surrealists were more radical, rational and imbued with the wit, folly and brevity of everyday life. This is a delightful sampler of three offbeat virtuosos." —McKenzie Wark
Friday, October 12 from 6–8PM, Ugly Duckling Presse launches Ideas Have No Smell: Three Belgian Surrealist Booklets, a new edition of little-known gems of the Belgian Surrealist movement, at Printed Matter. Be there for a reading by translator M. Kasper and a dada-performance of Paul Nougé’s visual poems by Georgia and Dikko Faust, followed by a discussion with M. Kasper, Mary Ann Caws, and McKenzie Wark. continue to blog
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FORMAT: Slip, Pbk, 3 vols, 4.75 x 5.75 in. / 60 pgs / 1 color / 17 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $30.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $40 GBP £27.00 ISBN: 9781946433138 PUBLISHER: Ugly Duckling Presse AVAILABLE: 10/23/2018 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD
Ideas Have No Smell: Three Belgian Surrealist Booklets Transfigured Publicity / Abstractive Treatise on Obeuse / For Balthazar
Published by Ugly Duckling Presse. By Paul Nougé, Paul Colinet, Louis Scutenaire. Edited with translation by M. Kasper. Introduction by Mary Ann Caws.
The Belgian surrealist movement, like its contemporary French cousin, included both visual artists—René Magritte most famously—and writers, who were also its theorists. They shared with the Parisians a fierce commitment to personal, political and aesthetic liberty, and to humor, surprise and transgression as artistic strategies, but they parted company when it came to the unconscious and the occult. Ideas Have No Smell gathers exemplary works by three literary lights of Belgian surrealism: Transfigured Publicity, a visual text of early concrete poetry by poet and photographer Paul Nougé (1895–1967), the apostle of appropriation; the whimsical, hand-drawn artist's book Abstractive Treatise on Obeuse by Paul Colinet (1898–1957); and For Balthazar, a collection of aphorisms and observations by the ever skeptical author, lawyer and anarchist Louis Scutenaire (1905–87). In addition to the booklets presented in a facsimile-style translation by M. Kasper, this letterpressed slipcase includes an introduction by scholar Mary Ann Caws and a poster of an anonymously handwritten panneau of Nougé's visual poems, possibly coauthored with Magritte and previously reproduced only in Marcel Mariën's documentary history, L'Activité surréaliste en Belgique.
"The Belgian Surrealists were more radical, rational and imbued with the wit, folly and brevity of everyday life. This is a delightful sampler of three offbeat virtuosos." —McKenzie Wark
