Doodaa. The Balletic Art of Gavin Twinge. A trography by Ralph Steadman

Bloomsbury 2002

Stron 333.

130 ilustracji na kredowych wklejkach /czarno-białe i kolorowe/

Format 16x24 cm.

What we have here is not only an amusing tale, but an important document in art history, an insider's account of what it has been like to be an artist at a time when the only apt artistic response to the atrocities of the twentieth century anyone has so far discovered is the aggressively inane and nonsensical art called Dada' KURT VONNEGUT

Creator of his own inimitable visions of Freud, Leonardo, Orwell, Alice, and the Great Gonzo, Ralph Steadman now offers the triography of his artistic alter ego, the redoubtable Gavin Twinge. The fictional Twinge, last remnant of a nineteenth-century 'domestic engineering' dynasty, founder of the Doodaaa school, and pioneer of Barcode Art, Shredded Literature, and Centrifugal Abstraction, is the original angry voice of contemporary art.

From the moment Steadman first meets Twinge in a London bookshop, it becomes his quest to get to the heart of the genius's dark mystery, and to discover how, after Duchamp and the school of Dada, art lost its soul. Drawing inspiration from Twinge's fellow Doodaaaists—among them Lily Potsdam (Whiplash Muralist), Schlemiel Weiss (Gnat's Blood Organic Watercolorist) and Aaron Dickley (Primal Scream Environmentalist)— Steadman proves to be a truly inspired biographer, matching Twinge drink for drink as he prepares for the great exhibition that will crown his life's work. Illustrated through­out in color and black-and-white in Steadman's (and Twinge's) inimitable style, Doodaaa is a biography standing at the center of a hall of mirrors.

'Don't write, Ralph - you'll bring shame on your family' HUNTER S. THOMPSON

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments: Honorary Doodaaists                                                                         xiii

P'--.'.lu                                                                                                                               XVlii

Introduction: An Encounter with Gavin Twinge                                                                  1
Distillation Art Gallery between pages 14 and 15
PART I

1    British Art: World's End                                                                                              17

2    Gavin Twinge: Tite Circumstances                                                                              25

3    The Nineteenth-Century Ancestors: The Colonic Legacy                                            37
A Early Years: Artist's Block                                                                                            55

5    Arrondissements: Bodily Parts of Paris                                                                      62

6    Schooldays: Taught by Tyrants                                                                                   95
Flart: Aerial Abstracts                                                                                               110

8    Vera Steadman: Starlit Auntie and Muse                                                                   115

9    A Blot on the Stave: Musical Diversions                                                                  128

Family Photo Album middlefold PART II

10    Christ's Bride Stripped Bare by Her Religious Mechanics (already) 137

11    Doodaaa: the Philosophy of French Plumbing                                                          172

12    Doodaaaists: the Nietzsche Feature                                                                           186

13    Peasant Heaven: the Anti-Fete                                                                                   213

14    Fugitive Doodaaaists: the Slunt Factor                                                                      234