March 25, 2010

The flambloyant Walasse Ting

Walasse Ting, a Chinese-American artist, was born in Shanghai in 1929. In 1946, he left China for Hong Kong and then moved to Paris in 1952. He got close to the avant-garde movement CoBrA. In 1957, he moved to New York and was influenced by Pop Art. He participated in the publication of One Cent Life, a major illustrated book of Modern Art. Walasse Ting, master of acrylic, has a characteristic style : colourful palette, intense light. In 1958, Ting wrote a series of poems My Shit and My Love, which was be published for the first time in 1961 by the Smith Gallery in Brussels.

JUST LOVE

I live white skeleton
Meet love
Blood jump
Rain flood night
We drink three thousand wine cup
Make one million love
Ten Thousand paintings
Sex cyclone
Conquers fire :
Six suns crash
Nine volcanoes spit
Seven oceans leap
Ninety nine dragons roar
Eight thousand thunders open in one second
Life great happy
Death not sad
Why I tremble?
Walasse Ting - in My Shit and My Love - 1961




Currently, the librairie Loliée offers :
  • TING (Wallasse). My Shit And My Love. 10 poems. Bruxelles, Galerie Smith, novembre 1961, in-4, stapled, illustrated cover. First Wallasse Ting 's publication with 2 original lithographs in colour. Limited to 1099 copies.

March 03, 2010

Dorothea Tanning : a surrealism woman

Born in 1910, Dorothea Tanning left his family in 1930 to follow the course of the Academy of Arts in Chicago. She then moved to New York and lived from advertising works. She is strongly impressed by the 1936 exhibition "Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism" and, in 1942, she joined the New York surrealism's group led by André Breton in exile. She met Max Ernst, who is then married to Peggy Guggenheim. She became, in 1946, the fourth wife of the German artist, during a double ceremony which also united Man Ray to the dancer Juliet Browner. In 1953, Ernst and Tanning settled in France. Two years after the death of Max Ernst in 1976, Dorothea Tanning returned in New York.
Her work is anchored in Surrealism but focuses more specifically, in the 50s, on the figure of the woman, of the muse. In 1974 a retrospective is done in Paris, at the Center Pompidou, by Pontus Hulten.

At nearly 100 years, Dorothea Tanning is one of the last living members of the surrealist movement.
(source: dorotheatanning.org)

Currently, the librairie Loliée offers :
  • Tanning (Dorothea) - Sartoris (Ramon). Three Plays. S.l [Washington], The Black Sun Press, 1944, in-4, hardcover. First edition with 3 original drawings by Dorothea Tanning. This copy is dedicated by Tanning to Paul Eluard.