tal r hugo ball flametti

HARPUNE VERLAG
PRESENTS
HUGO BALL
FLAMETTI
or the Dandyism of the Poor
ILLUSTRATED BY
TAL R
»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
HUGO BALL
FLAMETTI OR THE DANDYISM OF THE POOR
ILLUSTRATED BY TAL R
Publisher
Sarah Bogner, Josef Zekoff
Text
Hugo Ball
Illustration
Tal R
168 Pages
24 x 33 cm
One-of-a kind linen binding
Elegant boxed edition with vignette designed by Tal R
This unique artist book with 10 original prints by Tal R is being published in a
limited 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 challenge 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 combination 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 Voltairefounder 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 experiences 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 a
document 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 Abbondio, 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 synthesis 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 soundpoems 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 journalist 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 excelent 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 appeared 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 aesthetics, 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 Zekoff
Semperstraße 60/15
1180 Wien
+43 650 59 35 633
harpune@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 illustrated 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 for
In 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
HARPUNE VERLAG
Manual Typesetting
Printing at the Studio Kurt Zein, Vienna
Tal R - Flametti
Tal R - Mechmet in jail
Tal R - The Girls good Demons, printing plate
Wood cut plates