The Consul (Contributions to the History of the Situationist International and Its Time, Vol. II) - Softcover

Rumney, Ralph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0872863980 ISBN 13: 9780872863989

Publisher: City Lights Publishers, 2002

Synopsis

Throughout his adventurous life, Ralph Rumney was in constant flight from the wreckage of postwar Europe. Crossing paths with every avant-garde of the past fifty years, he was one of the founding members of the Situationist International. Rumney’s traveling companions — Guy Debord, Pegeen Guggenheim, Asger Jorn, Michèle Berstein, Bernard Kops, Yves Klein, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Bataille, William Burroughs, Félix Guattari, E.P. Thompson, Victor Brauner, and many others — are recalled in the oral history with sharp intelligåence and dry wit.

Profusely illustrated with Rumney’s own photos, paintings, and collages and other documentary materials.

"The Consul regains that magnificent freedom that a handful of people enjoyed and shared with artists, writers and others, in a world whose password was total, unfailing rejection of the world." —Judith Brouste, Art Press

"…fine compendium of the most poetic of political writings, albeit still a partial measure for fans, followers and future revolutionaries awaiting the complete translations of the journal Situationist Internationale." —Publishers Weekly

Ralph Rumney (1934 - 2002), was the sole member of the London Psychogeographical Society, a founding organization of the Situationist International (1957). He is the author of The Leaning Tower of Venice, a fabled psychogeographical exploration of that city.

Malcolm Imrie is a literary agent and translator whose translations include Guy Debord's Comments on the Society of the Spectacle and Josè Pierre's Investigating Sex: Surrealist Discussions 1928 - 1932.

About this title

About the Author

A vicar's son, Ralph Rumney (b. 1934) turned down places at Oxford and art school to go to London in 1951, where he began painting. He soon moved to Paris, meeting many who would later form the Situationist International. He was married to Pegeen Guggenheim and to Guy Debord's former wife, Michele Bernstein. He lives in southern France with his cat, Borgia.

Reviews

Igniting as an arts avant-garde in the 1950s and exploding as politically revolutionary at the heart of the Paris 1968 uprisings, the Situationist International has proved a tenaciously compelling radical movement in terms of asthetics and political theory. The MIT anthology, which includes both hard-to-find original material along with critical essays focused on central figure Debord, is ambitious and exciting, focusing on the group members' significance as political and urban theorists, refusing to let them be written off as idiosyncratic heirs of dada and surrealist art-as-provocation. The argument is persuasive, though the critical essays devoted to their art (like a lengthy amble through Debord's several films) aren't nearly as riveting as the group's manifestos, musings and collective position papers. Only the passionate note by T.J. Clark and Donald Nicholson-Smith matches the intensity of the original documents and no wonder, as they briefly were the group's British wing. The Consul, in which SI founding member Rumney recounts his life and times, is the second in a series of oral histories assembled (with photos) by French publisher Berreby, but it lacks the savor of '50s Parisian street and intellectual life that informed his earlier volume, The Tribe. Rumney's story doesn't revolve around the SI (particularly as he was booted early on); other claims to fame include a painting in the Tate Museum and a marriage to scion/suicide Pegeen Guggenheim. That might be enough to render Rumney's tale engaging, or at least juicy, but his self-justifying soliloquies stand in the way, and his vague uninterest in politics leaves the book without a center. But the MIT anthology stands as a fine compendium of the most poetic of political writings, albeit still a partial measure for fans, followers and future revolutionaries awaiting the complete translations of the journal Situationist Internationale. (Sept.)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: City Lights Publishers
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0872863980
• ISBN 13: 9780872863989
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 125