I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, and Provocation (The MIT Press)

Picabia, Francis

ISBN 10: 0262517485 / ISBN 13: 9780262517485

Published by The MIT Press, 2012

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, and Provocation (The MIT Press)
• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262517485
• ISBN 13: 9780262517485
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Acceptable

About this title

Synopsis

The first definitive edition in English of writings by poet, painter, pickpocket-plagiarist, and consummate anti-artist Francis Picabia, one of Dada's leading figures.

Poet, painter, self-described funny guy, idiot, failure, pickpocket, and anti-artist par excellence, Francis Picabia was a defining figure in the Dada movement; indeed, André Breton called Picabia one of the only “true” Dadas. Yet very little of Picabia's poetry and prose has been translated into English, and his literary experiments have never been the subject of close critical study. I Am a Beautiful Monster is the first definitive edition in English of Picabia's writings, gathering a sizable array of Picabia's poetry and prose and, most importantly, providing a critical context for it with an extensive introduction and detailed notes by the translator.

Picabia's poetry and prose is belligerent, abstract, polemical, radical, and sometimes simply baffling. For too long, Picabia's writings have been presented as raw events, rule-breaking manifestations of inspirational carpe diem. This book reveals them to be something entirely different: maddening in their resistance to meaning, full of outrageous posturing, and hiding a frail, confused, and fitful personality behind egoistic bravura.

I Am a Beautiful Monster provides the texts of of Picabia's significant publications, all presented complete, many of them accompanied by their original illustrations.

About the Author

Francis Picabia (1879-1953), painter and poet, was a leading figure in the Dada movement.