Description
In the course of his brief life, the adventurer, poet and boxer, Arthur Cravan (1887–1918) galvanized the avant-garde circles of Paris and New York together with his pugnacious attitude, handsome looks, his romance with Mina Loy, his commitment to the Dada lead to and his Dadaist journal Maintenant. In early 1917 he left Europe for the United States, where he continued to sow scandal, notably when arrested for indecent exposure on the opening of an exhibition by the “Independents” (Picabia, Duchamp and co.) in New York. The united states’s entry into the war made him eligible for conscription, and within the last days of 1917 he crossed the border into Mexico. He was once last seen in October 1918 and is thought to have drowned somewhere off the Mexican coast. This book makes a speciality of Cravan’s Barcelona years. Also presented here for the primary time are the works of Cravan’s painter alter-ego, Édouard Archinard. This volume constitutes probably the most substantial book on Cravan in English yet published.