The Consul (Paperback)

Ralph Rumney

ISBN 10: 1859843956 / ISBN 13: 9781859843956

Published by Verso Books, London, 2002

About this Item

Paperback. Throughout his adventurous life, Raloh Rumney was in constant flight from the wreckage of postwar Europe. Crossing paths every avante-garde of the past fifty years, he was one of the founding members of the Situationist International. Rumney's friends, lovers and travelling companions - Guy Debord, Pegeen Guggenheim Asger Jorn, Michele Bernstein, Bernard Kops, Yves Klein, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Bataille, William Burroughs, Felix Guattari, E. P. Thompson, Victor Brauner, and many others - are recalled in the oral history of The Consul with sharp intelligence and dry wit. Ralph Rumney, English painter, was one of the founding members of the Situationist International. His membership ended after disagreement with Guy Debord, but his association with radical movements in art and politics never ended. The interviews recall an extraordinary career dedicated to revolt. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781859843956

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Consul (Paperback)
• Publisher: Verso Books, London
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1859843956
• ISBN 13: 9781859843956
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Artist Ralph Rumney's (1934-2002) oral history The Consul is an important, if slight, document that makes an engaging addition to our knowledge about the avant-garde's most extreme faction (along with its companion volume Jean-Michel Mension's The Tribe). The Situationist International (SI) certainly needs contributions to its history that lie outside those carved by its dominating leading lights Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem. Rumney, interviewed at length before (by Alan Woods) in the entertaining The Map Is Not the Territory, was a founding member, and the only British representative, of the SI (Andrew Hussey's flawed but competent biography of Debord, The Game of War, is probably the best place to start for an overview) and has spent a lifetime drinking and drifting, and rejecting the world, in the best psychogeographical fashion. The Consul, beautifully presented with host of photographs of Rumney, his art and his companions, is a languorous, absorbing and affecting ramble through Rumney's life, which, whilst hardly being ground-breaking, gives a further roundness and insight into a most invigorating, radical and challenging group of artists. --George Bowman