Snapshotism 
Mary Ann Caws
- I Am a Beautiful Monster by Francis Picabia, translated by Marc Lowenthal Buy this book
- The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris by George Baker Buy this book
Picabia’s book of writings and drawings, I Am a Beautiful Monster, is wrapped in a brown-bag cover of monsterdom, while George Baker’s book about Picabia, The Artwork Caught by the Tail, is presented in a costume of gleaming gold: so we have the modest-appearing original, with its provocative title, and the shiny interpretation of that writing and drawing. In Marc Lowenthal’s masterful translations and commentary, the footnotes are wildly informative and the plays of typography delightfully rampant. Examples of the aphorisms: ‘The brothel is the place where one feels most at home’ or ‘Life has only one form: forgetting’ or ‘To those talking behind my back: my ass is looking at you.’ The drawings seem an essential part of the publication, although it turns out that Picabia himself published his drawings and his poems separately. Too bad: as Lowenthal points out, they lead to the concrete poetry soon to be seen on the horizon.
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article and the back issue are also available for purchase online. Buy this article / Buy this back issue
Mary Ann Caws has a short illustrated biography of Salvador Dalí coming in June and a cooking memoir about living in Provence coming in November.
print layout
tell a friend