Georges Bataille: Blue of Noon (1957–) [FR, EN, ES]

“Set against the backdrop of Europe’s slide into fascism, this twentieth-century erotic classic takes the reader on a dark journey through the psyche of the pre-war French intelligentsia, torn between identification with the victims of history and the glamour of its victors. One of Bataille’s overtly political works, it explores the ambiguity of sex as a subversive force, bringing violence, power and death together in a terrifying unity. Written in 1935.”

Publisher Pauvert, Paris, 1957
215 pages

English edition
Translated by Harry Matthews
Publisher Marion Boyars, London, 1979
This edition Paladin Books, 1988
ISBN 0586086242
155 pages

Review: Kirkus (1979).
Commentary: David Fieni (2003).

WorldCat (EN)
Wikipedia (EN)

Le bleu du ciel (French, 1957/1971)
Blue of Noon (English, trans. Harry Matthews, 1979, HTML, PDF)
El azul del cielo (Spanish, n.d.)

Hendrik Petrus Berlage: Thoughts on Style, 1886–1909 (1996)

“Looking back to the period around 1910, Mies van der Rohe once commented that there was but a single architect then working on the European architectural scene, “Berlage was a lone giant.”

In parallel activities as both an architect and an architectural philosopher, H. P. Berlage created a series of buildings that witnessed the gestation and birth of architectural Modernism and a body of writings that probed in depth the problems and possibilities of this new style. But whereas his Stock Exchange in Amsterdam, with its rational mastery of materials and space, has long been celebrated for its seminal influence on the architecture of the new century, Berlage’s passionate writings on architecture, which exerted an equal influence on his contemporaries, have often been neglected.

In his wide-ranging critical introduction, Iain Boyd Whyte convincingly demonstrates that one corpus of work cannot be understood without taking into account the other: Berlage’s writings inform his architecture to the same extent that his buildings reflect his probing aesthetic deliberations. Berlage’s principal texts are here brought together in English translation for the first time. Collectively, they present to the English-language reader a new and vital chapter in the history of European modernism.”

Introduction by Iain Boyd Whyte
Translated by Iain Boyd Whyte and Wim de Wit
Publisher Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica/CA, 1996
Texts & Documents series
ISBN 0892363339, 9780892363339
331 pages

Review: Suzanne Frank (J Arch Education 1997).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (54 MB)

Alison Knowles: Journal of the Identical Lunch (1971)

“A journalistic account of a series of performances of a single piece. The book begins with a description of ‘the identical lunch’ which consists primarily of ‘a tunafish sandwich on wheat toast with lettuce and butter, no mayo, and a large glass of buttermilk or a cup of soup.’ These were eaten ‘many days of each week at the same place and at about the same time.’ After this description, and a reproduction of a restaurant check for the same (total, with tax, $1.68, for two) there follows a series of accounts of the performance of this ‘identical lunch’ by Susan Hartung, John Giorno, Dick Higgins, Vernon Hinkle, and others. Many of these accounts have dates, some identify the place and circumstances and difficulties or rewards of the performance. The accounts are recorded in different formats – perhaps by the original performers – using typewriter, typesetting, handwriting, and so forth. The book collects records of lunches which both are and are not identical.” (Source)

First published in The Outsider, nos. 1-5.

Publisher Nova Broadcast Press, San Francisco, 1971
[68] pages
via Artists’ Books Online

PDF (36 MB)
JPGs