Anna & Bernhard Blume: Das Gluck Ist Ohne Pardon / Joy Knows No Mercy: Polaroids
Osfildern-Ruit / New York: Hatje Cantz / D. A. P., Distributed Art Publisher's, Inc., 2003.
Hardcover.
Published in conjunction with a 2003 exhibition. With essays by Annett Reckert, Andre Buchmann, and Werner Meyer.
A collection of digitally processed Polaroid images and Polaroid collages by German art photographers Anna & Bernhard Blume produced between 1988 and 2000. The series, entitled Principle of Cruelty, was a central focus of their work during the nineties. In these works, the artists' faces are distorted by trivial plastic objects, coat hangers and brightly colored household utensils. The classical genre of the artist self-portrait is transformed into a sequence of distortions that, in the words of Anna & Bernhard Blume, "put to rest the myth of the portrait and the autonomy of the subject it seeks to convey." 33 aphorisms based on the thought and work of Clement Rosset accompany the images – beginning with “Things are as they are: cruel.” Joy knows no mercy.
Item #902415ISBN: 3775791531
6-1/2 x 9-5/8", white paper over boards with red print, maroon endpapers, 127pp, biography, exhibitions, bibliography.
Black ink remainder mark bottom edge of text block, a little rubbing to paper over boards, light bumping to edges, near fine.
Price: $20.00