Published by Siglio. Introduction by Pierre Mac Orlan. Translation by Susan de Muth. Text by Amelia Groom. Illustrations by Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore.
First published in 1930 by anti-fascist, avant-garde publisher Éditions du Carrefour in Paris as Aveux non Avenus, Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowals) is Claude Cahun’s wildly radical answer to an invitation to write a memoir. Shattering the very premise of the “memoir”—the singularity of identity—into sharp and prismatic fragments, Cahun assembles an ever-mutating inquiry into the instability of “self” and its many masks. Using a multitude of forms (fables, jokes, aphorisms, letters, dialogues, dreams, hymns, pronouncements, etc.), to plumb the subjects of desire, love, gender, sex, fear, faith, religion and vanity (among others), Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowals) is a tour-de-force work of resistance: it provokes the reader to enter the capacious, provocative, playful and deeply imaginative space constructed by Cahun in defiance of all categorization, to repudiate a delimited, censured world and embrace, instead, the outcasts and cast-offs, the unknowable and the unknown. Thoughtfully redesigned to emulate the original artist’s book, this revised edition of the out-of-print English translation by Susan de Muth—originally published in the UK by the Tate in 2007 and in the US by MIT Press in 2008—includes novelist and critic Pierre Mac Orlan’s original 1930 preface along with contemporary essays by scholar Amelia Groom and translator de Muth. Almost 100 years old, Cancelled Confessions is not only prescient, but urgent: “It is not enough to be vanquished, you also have to turn defeat to your advantage.” Born in France in 1894, Claude Cahun (née Lucy Renée Mathilde Schwob) was a writer, artist and anti-fascist activist, associated with the Surrealists, yet who was obscure for decades. Cahun’s shape-shifting, gender-bending, “self” portraits—made in collaboration with Marcel Moore (née Suzanne Malherbe, aka l’autre moi, “the other me”)—feature Cahun in androgynous garb with shaved head, or elaborately costumed and adorned with makeup or masks, often with mirrors or doubling, always multiplying the “I.” These are the most recognizable works in a highly subversive, multiform oeuvre that includes Aveux non Avenus (Cancelled Confessions) as well as more untranslated writings. Now embraced as a pioneer of queer and feminist expression and heralded for a daring and inventive, years-long resistance to the Nazi occupation of the Isle of Jersey, Cahun created art—and a life—that aimed to disrupt societal, political and artistic orthodoxies with courage, wit and imagination.
Published by Aperture/Tate. Edited by Louise Downie. Essays by James Stevenson, Katharine Conley, Gen Doy, Claire Follain, Tirza True Latimer, Jennifer Shaw and Kristine von Oehsen.
This first comprehensive overview of the oeuvre of Claude Cahun offers a wealth of previously unpublished photographs and drawings, illuminating not only her work but also that of her partner Marcel Moore and establishing for the first time the extent of their collaboration. It also includes the first thorough account of their Resistance operations, trial, imprisonment and attempted suicides during the Occupation. Cahun (1894-1954) is best known for riveting photographic self-portraits that seem eerily ahead of their time and has become the focus of an almost cultlike following. She acted out diverse identities, both male and female, in scenes ranging from severely simple to elaborately staged and was a pioneer of the gender-bending role-playing now seen in works by artists such as Cindy Sherman (born the year Cahun died), Nikki S. Lee and many others. Cahun (a pseudonym for Lucy Schwob) and Marcel Moore (Suzanne Malherbe, 1892-1972) were an extraordinary couple who worked and lived together for more than 40 years. Avid participants in the cultural avant-garde in Montparnasse during the 1920s and 30s, they ultimately moved to Jersey, in the Channel Islands, the only part of Great Britain to be occupied by the Germans during World War II. In Don't Kiss Me, seven international authors examine Cahun's and Moore's lives and art-making; their theatrical, literary and performance activities; their relationship with the Surrealist movement; their writings and Cahun's photographic technique. The extensive illustrations encompass not only Cahun's iconic images but also Moore's drawings and previously unseen photographs, manuscripts and ephemera.
PUBLISHER Aperture/Tate
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 9.75 x 9.75 in. / 240 pgs / 30 color and 410 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 6/15/2006 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION Contact Publisher Catalog:
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781597110259TRADE List Price: $45.00 CAD $55.00
Don't Kiss Me