Bèsties 10. Artaud
11.00€
Thirteen creations by Antonin Artaud taken from his two most important poetry collections, El Llombrígol dels llimbs and El Pesa-Nervis (L’Ombilic des limbes and Le Pèse-nerfs, 1925), representative of the diverse and unclassifyable style of the Marseillan author, already present at the beginning of his career. In his poetry, Artaud steps away from the self and goes way beyond, willing to encompass the full scope of the evil that society introduces in individuals, something that he suffered first-hand in his troubled relationship with Surrealism and André Breton. Inventor of total art, Artaud is cryptic and metaphysical, and yet displays a clarity of thought that transcends lyricism to get directly to the conscience of the reader.
Antonin Artaud (1896-1948). Poet, playwright, essayist and theatre director, he played a central role in 20th century avant-garde movements and is considered to be one of the fathers of contemporary theatre. In 1932 he wrote Teatre de la crueltat (Théâtre de la cruauté), a manifesto that laid the foundations of avant-garde theatre together with his plays El teatre i el seu doble (Le Théâtre et son double, 1938) and Heliogàbal (1934). Homeless and mentally ill, he spent most part of his later life living in asylums. Van Gogh, suïcidat per la societat (Van Gogh le suicidé de la société, 1947), one of his most famous works, was published shortly before his death.
Edgar Alemany (Castell, Menorca, 1989) is a poet and musician. He has published two books, Calidoscopi (El Gall editor, 2007) and Funàmbuls de llum (Viena, 2009), and the small volume Hi ha el dau amb porta (Gnurf, 2012). He has translated into French and published in the Cahiers Artaud nº2 his poem “Així cau” (Éditions les Cahiers, 2014) and currently lives in Paris, where he studies acting in connection with the figure of Artaud.
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Bèsties is a wallpaper collection that combines the poetry and the portraits of some of the most acclaimed authors of universal literature. A selection of excerpts —posthumous, unpublished, forgotten— are presented in a groundbreaking format by the translators, current Catalan poets. The posters escape the parcelling of conventional pagination to project in a single canvas the unity of meaning emanating from the poems. Each wallpaper comes with a separate front page including a foreword by the translator, which contextualizes their selection and situates the author in their context.