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

13 August 2016, dusan

“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.)

Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Jacob Wamberg (eds.): Totalitarian Art and Modernity (2010)

18 May 2016, dusan

“In spite of the steadily expanding concept of art in the Western world, art made in twentieth-century totalitarian regimes – notably Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and the communist East Bloc countries – is still to a surprising degree excluded from mainstream art history and the exhibits of art museums. In contrast to earlier art made to promote princely or ecclesiastical power, this kind of visual culture seems to somehow not fulfill the category of ‘true’ art, instead being marginalised as propaganda for politically suspect regimes.

Totalitarian Art and Modernity wants to modify this displacement, comparing totalitarian art with modernist and avant-garde movements; confronting their cultural and political embeddings; and writing forth their common generalogies. Its eleven articles include topics as varied as: the concept of totalitarianism and totalitarian art, totalitarian exhibitions, monuments and architecture, forerunners of totalitarian art in romanticism and heroic realism, and diverse receptions of totalitarian art in democratic cultures.”

With contributions by Mikkel Bolt, Sandra Esslinger, Jørn Guldberg, Paul Jaskot, Jacob Wamberg, Christina Kiaer, Anders V. Munch, Kristine Nielsen, Olaf Peters, K. Andrea Rusnock, and Marla Stone.

Publisher Aarhus University Press, Århus, 2010
Acta Jutlandica series, 9
ISBN 8779345603, 9788779345607
359 pages
via Mikkel Bolt

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (10 MB)

Barbara Will: Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy Dilemma (2011)

8 August 2015, dusan

“A study of the friendship between Gertrude Stein and Bernard Faÿ, director of the Bibliothèque Nationale under the collaborationist Vichy government and chief protector of Stein’s interests in France during World War II. From the late 1920s-40s Stein and Faÿ shared a worldview marked by aesthetic radicalism and political conservatism, culminating in Stein’s agreement in 1941, at the suggestion of Faÿ, to translate the speeches of Marshal Philippe Pétain into English. This book reads the Stein-Faÿ relationship as a case study through which to raise larger theoretical questions: about the role of prominent intellectuals in wartime France; about the place of America in the Vichy imagination; about the libidinal promise or threat of fascist ideology for sexual identity; and most importantly, about the intersection of modernism and fascism.”

Publisher Columbia University Press, 2011
Gender and Culture series
ISBN 0231152620, 9780231152624
xviii+274 pages

Reviews: Renate Stendhal (LA Review of Books 2011), Sarah Posman (Modernism/modernity 2012), Richard M. Berrong (Gay and Lesbian Review 2012), Christopher Benfey (New Republic 2012), Michael Kimmelman (NY Review of Books 2012), Angela Kershaw (French Studies 2012), Birgitvan Puymbroeck (Modern Fiction Studies 2013), Karen Leick (H-France 2013).

Publisher
WorldCat

EPUB

See also Gertrude Stein’s war years: Setting the record straight, a dossier edited by Charles Bernstein in May 2012. (added 10 Apr)