Clément Chéroux: Fautographie. Petite histoire de l’erreur photographique (2003) [French]

Si le terme de Fautographie semble remonter à Man Ray, la pratique, elle, sous ses multiples formes, est bien plus ancienne — aussi ancienne que la photographie elle-même. Ratures et ratages, bonnes ou mauvaises surprises, détournements, lapsus et pataquès ont jalonné son histoire, fécondé des avant-gardes, inspiré les concepts les plus sérieux ou les expériences les plus fantaisistes, suscité des débats esthétiques épineux mais passionnants. Car l’accident photographique est aussi délicat à saisir qu’à éviter ou à provoquer (sauf à considérer, avec Ben, qu’« il n’y a pas de photos ratées », ou au contraire qu’elles le sont toutes). À la fois avec sérieux, précision et légèreté, avec une érudition qui puise aussi volontiers dans l’histoire des images que dans la technique des manuels d’amateurs ou les théories de la modernité, Clément Chéroux propose une visite guidée, cohérente, réjouissante et abondamment illustrée de cette petite mais inépuisable maison des erreurs. Chacun, Jourdain qui s’ignore et fait de la photo ratée sans le savoir, pour sûr, s’y sentira un peu chez soi…

Publisher Yellow Now, Crisnée, 2003
ISBN 2873401737
183 pages

Review (Sylvie Aubenas, Etudes Photographiques)

Publisher

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Partha Mitter: The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1922—1947 (2007)

“This richly illustrated book explores the contested history of art and nationalism in the tumultuous last decades of British rule in India. Western avant-garde art inspired a powerful weapon of resistance among India’s artists in their struggle against colonial repression, and it is this complex interplay of Western modernism and Indian nationalism that is the core of this book.

The Triumph of Modernism takes the surprisingly unremarked Bauhaus exhibition in Calcutta in 1922 as marking the arrival of European modernism in India. In four broad sections Partha Mitter examines the decline of ‘oriental art’ and the rise of naturalism as well as that of modernism in the 1920s, and the relationship between primitivism and modernism in Indian art: with Mahatma Gandhi inspiring the Indian elite to discover the peasant, the people of the soil became portrayed by artists as ‘noble savages’. A distinct feminine voice also evolved through the rise of female artists. Finally, the author probes the ambivalent relationship between Indian nationalism and imperial patronage of the arts.

With a fascinating array of art works, few of which have either been seen or published in the West, The Triumph of Modernism throws much light on a previously neglected strand of modern art and introduces the work of artists who are little known in Europe or America. A book that challenges the dominance of Western modernism, it will be illuminating not just to students and scholars of modernism and Indian art, but to a wide international audience that admires India’s culture and history.”

Publisher Reaktion Books, 2007
ISBN 1861893183, 9781861893185
271 pages

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Graham Roberts: The Last Soviet Avant-Garde: OBERIU – Fact, Fiction, Metafiction (1997)

“This is the first comprehensive study of the group of avant-garde Soviet writers who styled themselves OBERIU, “The Association for Real Art”. Graham Roberts reexamines commonly-held assumptions about OBERIU, its identity as a group, its aesthetics, its relationship to the formalists and the Bakhtin circle, and its place within Russian and European literary traditions. Roberts concludes by showing how the self-conscious literature of OBERIU–its metafiction–occupies an important transitional space between modernism and postmodernism.

– A comprehensive study of important Soviet avant-garde group
– Sets the work of OBERIU in aesthetic and theoretical context of formalism and the Bakhtin circle
– Provides insights into the relationship between modernism and postmodernism”

Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1997
Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature
ISBN 0521482836, 9780521482837
274 pages

Oberiu on Wikipedia
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