Item #7926 The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec. Kathy Acker, Laurie Jewell Wegman, William Wegman, cover, illustrations.
The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec
The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec

The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec. By Henri Toulouse Lautrec

New York: TVRT Press, 1978. 1st Edition. 12mo, publisher's illustrated stiff paper wraps.

First edition of postmodernist writer and performance artist Kathy Acker's early fiction. Writing in the form of a “cut-up” novel, Acker brings together fragments of pop-culture, politics, and theory through the perspective of the French painter Lautrec, in female incarnation. The deformed and love-starved Lautrec recounts her life to Van Gogh at a brothel. “I’m so unbearably desirous needy I can’t think about art. Who can think about art in this miserable city? I think about sex so much my art must be sex.” Originally published in 1975 as a small series of chapbooks, this edition is the first complete volume. Cover designed by Laurie Jewell Wegman, with black-and-white illustrations throughout by William Wegman. Some soiling and wear to wraps, a few small stains throughout textblock, page 45 creased. A very good copy of a scarce publication. Item #7926

$175.00