TAL R

HUGO BALLFLAMETTI

OR THE DAnDyIsM OF THE POOR

HARPUnE VERLAG PREsEnTs

»This book is such a carnival of characters and it is not that difficult to understand that these characters exist exactly today, they just have different shoes and different glasses. Most likely they drink the same and they take the same drugs - so it’s always the same.« TAL R

ILLUsTRATED By

HUGO BALLFLAMETTI OR THE DAnDyIsM OF THE POOR

ILLUsTRATED By TAL R

PublisherSarah Bogner, Josef Zekoff

Text Hugo Ball

IllustrationTal R

168 Pages24 x 33 cmOne-of-a kind linen bindingElegant boxed edition with vignette designed by Tal R

This unique artist book with 10 original prints by Tal R is being published in alimited edition of 30 signed and numbered copies. The multicolored original illustrations were created using a technique that combines woodcut and etching and were printed at the studio of Kurt Zein, Vienna. The text is set in Garamond hot metal type and printed in multicolor letterpress on Zerkall handmade paper. Individual multicolored linen swath binding makes each copy unique. Hand bound!

»I chose a quite unusual technique which means a combination of a wood cut and an etching - usually you either do a wood cut or an etching. Etching has this thing that it makes lines very physical, like you can almost pick it up - it’s almost like a woolen sweater. And wood cut has this more flat but very beautiful transcendent look and the look of wood, which is the beauty but also the chal-lenge in wood cut, because it`s so beautiful that it can kill you in a way. It’s not that easy because it has this almost too much beauty, but the combina-tion of this woolen sweater and this flat forest look, I thought was quite a good look ...« TAL R

FLAMETTI OR THE DAnDyIsM OF THE POOR

»Artistes come from a different planet. They are not burghers. Oppression begets artistes. No such thing as humanity without flaws. Picturesque, magical, exotic: only out of desperation.« HUGO BALL/FLAMETTI

In a letter to his sister, Maria Hildebrand, dated December 1916, Cabaret Voltaire-founder and Dadaist Hugo Ball heralded the completion of his novel, Flametti: This little novel contains my whole philosophy on 200 pages. Love for those who are on their knees. For the outcasts, the crushed, the tormented.

In this nearly forgotten autobiographic artist novel, Ball portrays his own experi-ences in circus and varieté through the rise and fall of the theatre director Flametti and brings the exciting, adventurous and tragic world of tricksters, artists, tightrope walkers and comedians to life.

Shortly after Hugo Ball retired from the Dada movement he wrote in his diary: In an odd kind of split mentality, I finished Flametti today, a short novel of about a hundred and seventy pages. As an occasional piece, as a gloss to Dadaism, it will disappear with Dadaism for all I care! Ball was profoundly mistaken, as Dada has become one of the world’s greatest genres in modern art, and Flametti adocument of increasing importance in the history of Dada and bohemian life.

HUGO BALL

Hugo Ball, author and co-founder of the Zürich Dada movement, was born 22nd of february 1886 in Pirmasens, Germany, died 14th of september 1927 in San Ab-bondio, Switzerland. Ball studied sociology and philosophy at the Universities of Munich and Heidelberg from 1906 to 1907 and moved to Berlin to join the Max Reinhardt School of Dramatic Art in 1910. He was employed as stage director in several theaters in Berlin and in 1913 at the Munich Chamber Theater. His ambition was to develop a theater modeled on the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk - a synthe-sis of all the arts - that could motivate social transformation and rejuvenation. He also began writing, contributing critical reviews, plays, poems, and articles to the expressionist journal Die Neue Kunst. Soon after the outbreak of World War I he left Germany and emigrated with his wife, Emmy Hennings, to Switzerland. Both took employments - Ball as a pianist, his wife as a recitationist - in a variety group in the Niederdorf, the amusement quarter of Zürich.

In February 1916 he founded the Cabaret Voltaire in the Spiegelgasse in Zürich. Cabaret Voltaire became a meeting point for young artists like Hans Arp, Marcel Janco, Tristas Tzara, and later Richard Huelsenbeck and Walter Serner. They founded the Dada-group as a kind of countermovement and criticism of Expressionism, Kubism and Futurism. On the 14th of july 1916 Ball published the Dada Manifesto, making a political statement about his views on the terrible state of society. His

intentions with regard to the Cabaret Voltaire he defined in the following words: It is necessary to clarify the intentions of this cabaret. It is its aim to remind the world that there are people of independent minds - beyond war and nationalism - who live for different ideals.

Ball protested several times against the humiliating fact of a world war in the 20th century. In light of this, all static values of culture appeared to him to be questionable. Reflecting the chief principle behind Dadaism, he composed sound-poems and poems consiting of nonsensical words. Hugo Ball gave a description of his Zürich experiences in the autobiographic artist novel Flametti oder Vom Dandysmus der Armen.

His involvement with the Dada movement lasted approximately two years, in 1917 he ceased to take an active part. Ball moved to Bern, where he worked as a jour-nalist for Freie Zeitung. He contributed articles on German and Soviet politics, propaganda, and morality. He also returned to his study of Bakunin and prepared a manuscript of his Zur Kritik der deutschen Intelligenz (Criticism of German Intelligence) for publication, trying to present a profound analysis of the German state of mind.

He began revising his personal diaries for the years 1910–1921, and in 1927 these writings were published as Die Flucht aus der Zeit (Flight Out of Time), an exce-lent insight into his Dada-period.1927 he published an early critical biography of novelist Hermann Hesse (Her-mann Hesse, His Life and His Work).

BIBLIOGRAPHy/sELECTIOn

Die Nase des Michelangelo; Tragikomödie in vier Auftritten, 1911

Der Henker von Brescia; Drei Akte der Not und Ekstase, 1914

Flametti oder Vom Dandysmus der Armen; Roman. Reiss, Berlin 1918

Zur Kritik der deutschen Intelligenz; Der Freie Verlag, Bern 1919

Byzantinisches Christentum; Drei Heiligenleben (zu Joannes Klimax, Dionysius

Areopagita und Symeon dem Styliten); Duncker & Humblot, München 1923

Die Folgen der Reformation; Duncker & Humblot, München 1924

Hermann Hesse – Sein Leben und sein Werk; S. Fischer, Berlin 1927

Die Flucht aus der Zeit; Diary, Duncker & Humblot, München 1927

TAL R

Tal R is among the most significant contemporary artists. Since the 1990s, his versatile oeuvre has drawn enormous attention internationally. His works have ap-peared in various solo and group exhibitions in Denmark, the USA, Germany, Israel and the UK.

His techniques include painting, collage, illustration, sculpture, object-making, and installation. He often uses elements from popular culture – music, comic book aes-thetics, TV and old video game graphics – collaging them into an extraordinary and complex imagery. In doing so, he recycles traditional techniques and visual forms, transforms various styles and contexts, and integrates them into his work.

Harpune Verlag has recently published Tal Rs new Artist Book Egyptian Boy.

1967 Born in Tel Aviv, Israel

1986–1988 Billedskolen, Copenhagen

1994–2000 Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen

Tal R lives and works in Copenhagen

TEACHInG POsTs

1991–1993 Nut Cracker Art School, Copenhagen

2000 Gastprofessur, Kunstakademie Helsinki

2003 Gastprofessur, Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg

2005–2007 Gastprofessur, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

Since 2008 Professor, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

sOLO EXHIBITIOns / sELECTIOn

2013 Egyptian Boy, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin

Sail away, Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg

Sortedam, Galerie Bo Bjerggaard, Copenhagen

Fog over Malia Bay, Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Vienna

2012 Mann über Bord, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf

Banana Beach, Galerie Gerhardsen Gerner, Oslo

Mann über Bord, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck

2011 Science Fiction, Victoria Miro, London

Tal R, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin

The Elephant behind the Clown, Kunstverein Hamburg

Tal R, Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel

2010 Tal R, Contemporary Fine Art, Berlin

2009 You laugh an ugly laughter, Kunsthalle zu Kiel

You laugh an ugly laughter, Kunsthalle Tübingen

Teenager Beach, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Málaga

Old Confused, Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall

2008 Flovmand, Galerie Haas, Zurich

You laugh an ugly laughter, Giò Marconi, Mailand /Milan, IT

Tal R: Prince Fruit, Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg

Adieu Interessant, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin

Tal R: Masters and Method, Niels Borch Jensen, Berlin

DOWnLOADs

PICTURES

FLAMETTI EXCERPT

are available for download at: www.harpune.at/presse.html

Reproduction at no cost is permitted solely in the context of current reporting on the book and with inclusion of full credits. Any other use requires the user to independently resolve copyright and right of use issues. Transfer to third parties is not permitted.

COnTACT

Harpune Verlag

Sarah Bogner, Josef ZekoffSemperstraße 60/151180 Wien+43 650 59 35 633harpune@harpune.at, www.harpune.at

HARPUnE VERLAG

Harpune Verlag, founded by Sarah Bogner and Josef Zekoff in Vienna in 2010, publishes exclusive artist‘s books in limited editions that bring together text and image. Harpune‘s program focuses on the creator as a solitary performer, magician, artist, and soliloquizing superhero before a changing audience.

Harpune Verlag has set sail with publications by Olaf Breuning, Hermann Burger, Andy Hope 1930, Schorsch Kamerun, Erich Lessing, Jonathan Meese, and Elfie Semotan. Parts of the production, such as hot metal and manual typesetting, are carried out in the typesetting and letterpress workshop Neue Satz Wien, a former print shop headed by Sarah Bogner since October 2011.One long-term project is Harpune‘s new edition of Herman Melville‘s magnificent novel Moby Dick in the original English version: The 137 chapters are each illustra-ted by an artist and published non-chronologically as individual fillets in an edition of 460 copies. Forty copies each are produced as special editions.

Awarded the with the Most Beautiful Books of Austria prize 2012 forIn the Evening I Was To Bear the Night by Schorsch Kamerun & Andy Hope 1930!

Harpune Verlag regularly hosts exhibitions, readings, and events. The entire program can be found at www.harpune.at

Manual Typesetting Printing at the Studio Kurt Zein, Vienna

Tal R - The Girls good Demons, printing plate Wood cut plates

HARPUnE VERLAG

Tal R - Flametti Tal R - Mechmet in jail