Originally self-published by Guy de Cointet (1934–83) in 1972, A Captain from Portugal is a short novel composed of the artist’s own coded letterforms. Printed in a hand-drawn, polygonal font, this artist’s book retains the formal logic of a standard paperback—including section breaks, illustrations and captions—that begs to be read like any other book. However, instead of standard literary fare, Cointet delivers a series of visually mesmerizing encrypted texts. Rather than alienating the reader, these texts pull them in through delicately arranged patterns, at times so intricate as to create a moiré effect on the page. Complementing these writings are additional boxlike codes, a short song presented in staff notation and several illustrations, a few of which point to the artist’s jagged, triangular drawings of the early 1980s.
Published by JRP|Editions. Edited by Lionel Bovier, Clément Dirié. Preface by Larry Bell. Text by Marie de Brugerolle. Afterword by Gérard Wajcman.
Now back in print, this volume is the first overview of the French-born, Los Angeles–based artist Guy de Cointet (1934–83). De Cointet was fascinated with language, which he explored primarily through performance and drawing. His practice involved collecting random phrases, words and even single letters from popular culture and literary sources—he often cited Raymond Roussel’s novel Impressions of Africa as influential—and working these elements into nonlinear narratives, which were presented as plays to his audience. De Cointet is one of the major figures in Los Angeles’ Conceptual art movement of the 1970s, having strongly influenced a number of prominent Los Angeles–based artists, including Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley. The book, written by Marie de Brugerolle and published with the Estate of Guy de Cointet, offers an overview of this enigmatic and influential oeuvre.
Published by Walther König, Köln. Foreword by Patrick Charpenel. Text by Magalí Arriola, Jay Sanders, Marie de Brugerolle.
Published with Fundación/Colección Jumex.
The installations, books, films and plays of Guy de Cointet (1934–1983) offer conceptually playful and witty treatments of codes, ciphers and optical tensions between language and image. Born in France and based in Los Angeles from 1965 until his death, de Cointet was also an important mentor as a teacher at the Otis Art Institute for a generation of Californian artists, including Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley. Long esteemed by artists and critics but little exhibited until recently, his work has been the subject of considerable renewed interest over the past decade or so. This volume, published for a 2012/13 survey show at Fundación/Colección Jumex in Mexico, includes extensive documentation (playscripts, photographs) of his plays Tempo Rubato, IGLU and Tell Me, alongside relevant works on paper, archival photographs and essays by Magalí Arriola, Jay Sanders and Marie de Brugerolle.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Text by Marie de Brugerolle.
Mentor to a generation of Californian Conceptualists and performance artists, Guy de Cointet (1934-1983) took language as a material from which to generate drawings, plays and performances. De Cointet collected phrases, words and even single letters culled from popular culture and literary sources, and scripted them as dialogues or props for plays inspired by the writings and homonymic compositional methods of Raymond Roussel: in the 1976 play At Sunrise... A Cry Was Heard, for example, a large painting depicting letters bisected by a white sash provides the dialogue of the lead actress, who recites its jumble of letters as if it were ordinary conversation. His drawings were often generated by geometric erasures of found text, leaving behind Concrete-style abstract patterns. A formative figure for Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy during his tenure at the Otis Art institute, de Cointet is today in the process of being rediscovered; this timely monograph is the first overview of his enigmatic and influential oeuvre.
Guy de Cointet
Guy de Cointet: Tempo Rubato
Guy de Cointet