The Anatomy Of Cruelty: Antonin Artaud: Life And Works - Softcover

The work of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) is the most seminal, shattered and inspirational of the twentieth century, extending across literature, film, performance, manifesto, sound art, drawing, and a sequence of exploratory journeys. For the twentieth-first century, too, it is the most extreme, challenging and vital body of work - able to anatomise and negate all compromised cultures, and engender new theories, images and texts of the body, revolution, madness and the creative act.

Stephen Barber's intensively researched and highly acclaimed work on Artaud, originally published in three books spanning almost twenty years, has revealed Artaud's work to English-language readers in all of its intricacy and extraordinary capacity for transmutation. As a definitive research archive on Artaud's work, "The Anatomy Of Cruelty" collects all of this material, as well as a previously unpublished postscript on the impact of the first translations of Artaud into English, during the 1960s: forming a unique critical biography based on primary sources and interviews with Artaud's surviving collaborators. It also features sections looking in depth at his unparalelled and interconnected work in theatre, film, visual art and sound recordings (notably his astonishing screams); and a study of his very last work - over four hundred notebooks, pierced with knives and burns, in which he embedded his final, most incendiary words. Plus: 6 full-page photographs and illustrations, a complete filmography, and selected bibliography.
For all readers engaged with Artaud's work, this compendium is both comprehensive and indispensable. Includes material first published in "Blows & Bombs”, "Screaming Body” and "Terminal Curses”.