Flaming Creature: Jack Smith. His Amazing Life and Times
London: Serpent's Tail, 1997. 1st Edition. Quarto, publisher's stiff illustrated paper wraps, french flaps.
"Jack Smith’s photography, film, and performance conjure a world of flagrant passion, campy humor, and morbid beauty. Going against the grain of modern art, Smith was a storyteller, a fabulist..." (Lawrence Rinder). Monograph on avant-garde filmmaker Jack Smith, published in conjunction with the cross-disciplinary traveling retrospective exhibition initially held at MoMA’s PS1 in 1997. Centered around Smith’s equally lauded and reviled Flaming Creatures, the exhibition explored every facet of Smith’s influential career through numerous forms of ephemera from his personal archive including vintage photos, video and contact sheets; reconstructions of his costumes, period designer gowns, wigs, hats and performance accessories; manuscripts, letters and scripts; and magazines, books, and other objects. Illustrated with color and black-and-white photos, film stills, drawings, and reproductions; with texts by figures involved in the Lower East Side art and performance scene from the time including Susan Sontag, Jonas Mekas, Penny Arcade, and others, and with a biography by curator Edward Leffingwell, chronology, and index. Fine. Item #13609
$100.00