‘Leigh Bowery’ Violette Editions 1998
Leigh Bowery. The 1998 first edition hardcover published by Violette. Long since sold out. Incredible reference to every stage of Bowery’s career and each development of his outre persona. 240 pages. Personally incscribed from a friend, as a gift. Excellent condition.
Introduction by Hilton Als, afterword by Boy George
Edited and produced by Robert Violette
Designed by Alan Aboud
Printed cloth binding, 240 pages
Over 300 colour illustrations
35 x 33.3 cm (13 ¾ x 13 in, h x w)
Asking USD$350
London : Violette Editions, 1998. Quarto, illustrated cloth, pp. 240, extensively illustrated. Photography by Nick Knight and Annie Leibovitz. Introduction by Hilton Als. Afterword by Boy George. A very good copy of the first monograph on Melbourne-born conceptual performance artist Leigh Bowery. Very scarce. ‘Any appraisal of Leigh as a performer tends to involve words like punk, kink, drag, camp, schlock. To my mind he transcends those concepts. Thanks to his twisted imagination and wit, he was able to soar above modish trashiness and establish himself as a subversive artist.’ ? John Richardson, The New Yorker Texts, interviews, photographs and other contributions by Leigh Bowery, Nicola Bowery, Tom Bowery, Cerith Wyn Evans, Charles Atlas, Lucian Freud, Bruce Bernard, Michael Clark, Nick Knight, Rifat Ozbek, Fergus Greer, Sue Tilley, Richard Torry, John Maybury, Annie Leibovitz and others.
Leigh Bowery
The first major book on this great artist, published in 1998 by Violette Editions
‘Any appraisal of Leigh as a performer tends to involve words like punk, kink, drag, camp, schlock. To my mind he transcends those concepts. Thanks to his twisted imagination and wit, he was able to soar above modish trashiness and establish himself as a subversive artist.’ – John Richardson, The New Yorker
Texts, interviews, photographs and other contributions by Leigh Bowery, Nicola Bowery, Tom Bowery, Cerith Wyn Evans, Charles Atlas, Lucian Freud, Bruce Bernard, Michael Clark, Nick Knight,
Rifat Ozbek, Fergus Greer, Sue Tilley, Richard Torry, John Maybury, Annie Leibovitz and others.
Leigh Bowery (1961–94) was a performance artist, fashion designer, nightclub sensation, art object, trained pianist, aspiring pop-star and above all an icon whose influence traversed the music, art, film and fashion worlds. Perhaps his best-known role was as the nude model for some of Lucian Freud’s most famous and powerful paintings – ironic for the man whose costumes were legendary and which famously frightened taxi drivers, persuaded Japanese tourists to queue for hours and inspired fashion gurus from Vivienne Westwood to John Galliano.
This highly illustrated book is the first and only complete monograph on the artist and includes previously unpublished photographs and ephemera from Bowery’s personal archive. It documents his life and work from his arrival in London in 1980 from Sunshine, Australia, through his collaborations with the dancer Michael Clark, his proprietorship of the infamous 1980s nightclub Taboo, his outrageous performances in New York, London and Tokyo, to his formation of the pop group Minty and in the 1990s his most famous incarnation as muse for the painter Lucian Freud, whose portraits of Bowery hang in the Tate, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other museums around the world.
Hilton Als, a staff writer and theatre critic for The New Yorker, also writes for American Vogue and Artforum and is the author of The Women (1997). He is a Guggenheim Fellow and in 2016 won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In addition to his writing and academic roles, such as his position as inaugural Presidential Visiting Scholar at Princeton University in 2020, Als has also curated exhibitions by Alice Neel, Celia Paul and the group show Forces of Nature.
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Leigh Bowery (1961-94) was a performance artist, fashion designer, nightclub sensation, art object, trained pianist, aspiring pop-star and above all an icon whose influence traversed the music, art, film and fashion worlds. Perhaps his best-known role was as the nude model for some of Lucian Freud’s most famous and powerful paintings ? ironic for the man whose costumes were legendary and which famously frightened taxi drivers, persuaded Japanese tourists to queue for hours and inspired fashion gurus from Vivienne Westwood to John Galliano.
This highly illustrated book is the first and only complete monograph on the artist and includes previously unpublished photographs and ephemera from Bowery’s personal archive. It documents his life and work from his arrival in London in 1980 from Sunshine, Australia, through his collaborations with the dancer Michael Clark, his proprietorship of the infamous 1980s nightclub Taboo, his outrageous performances in New York, London and Tokyo, to his formation of the pop group Minty and in the 1990s his most famous incarnation as muse for the painter Lucian Freud, whose portraits of Bowery hang in the Tate, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other museums around the world. Hilton Als, a staff writer for The New Yorker, also writes for American Vogue and Artforum and is the author of The Women (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1997).