19.03.2022 14:00:00 - 19.03.2022
Divus Publishing is pleased to invite you to the presentation of Matthew Bown's new book, The Absolute Mixture: Shit Art Positive, a comprehensive study of scatology in contemporary and modern art.
Also featuring book releases, projections and performances from Morbid Books and Infinity Land Press.
Date: Saturday, 19 March 2022
Time: 14:00-18:00
Location: Chez Pierre d'Alancaisez, 2 Clunbury Street, Hoxton N1 6TT
More about The Absolute Mixture book is available here
You are further invited to the tickets-only Potlatch 1 party at the same address, 19:00-21:00, featuring Matthew Bown and Hana Spooner, Surrealist Temple Band, Martin Bladh, Audrey Slasz and Karolina Urbaniak. Tickets are available from eventbrite
Matthew Bown is a London-, Moscow- and Berlin-based art-dealer, historian and critic. In 2015, he gave the keynote speech at the annual conference of the International Association of Art Historians (AICA) exploring the connections between the Christian relic cult and the modern art market. He has published extensively on Russian art, including books for Yale University Press and Phaidon Press.
The Absolute Mixture regards excremental art as a kind of extension of the avant-garde project of dismantling the separation between art and life, and all that this entails. It is introduced by a limited survey from medieval times; the main focus, however, is on twentieth-century and contemporary art. It is written by the Times Literary Supplement art critic, gallerist and writer Matthew Bown.
The Absolute Mixture is shaped by multiple interweaving 'excremental discourses', including (but not limited to) disgust theory (beginning in eighteenth-century Germany); Freudian-Lacanian-Kristevan philosophy-cum-psychoanalysis; and notions of rebellion from Diogenes to Sloterdijk's kynicism; and contemporary notions of ecologically-sound production and recycling. The Absolute Mixture is the first book-length study devoted to the scatological in art and, we believe, breaks substantial new ground.
The book includes over 200 illustrations. Artists whose work is considered in the book include Andres Serrano, Anish Kapoor, Anton Henning, Anya Gallacio, Arman, Aubrey Beardsley, Auguste Rodin, Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose, Carl Andre, Carol Rama, Chris Ofili, Cildo Mereiles, Cindy Sherman, Dan Colen, David Hammons, Dieter Roth, Felix Nussbaum, Francis Bacon, Franz West, G. G. Allin, Gelitin, George Grosz, George Maciunas, Giorgio Spiller, Giotto, Günther Brus, Herluf Bidstrup, Kurt Kren, Isidore Isou, James Ensor, James Gillray, Joan Miro, John Isaacs, John Miller, Julian Schnabel, Karen Finley, Katsu, Keith Boadwee, Kerry Trengove, Kiki Smith, Leigh Bowery, Manuel Ocampo, Marc Quinn, Marcel Duchamp, Martin Creed, Mary Barnes, Mary Kelly, Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler, Matthias Greuter, Mike Bouchet, Mike Kelley, Mona Hatoum, Otto Muehl, Paul McCarthy and Jason Rhoades, Paul Noble, Peter Bruegel the Elder, Piero Manzoni, Rembrandt, Richard Hamilton, Salvador Dali, Sam Goodman and Boris Lurie, Santiago Sierra, Sarah Lucas, Semyon Faibisovich, Stefan Dokoupil, Stuart Brisley, Titian, Tom Friedman, Traviès, Wim Delvoye, Gilbert and George and others.
