Blows and Bombs: Antonin Artaud: The Biography

by Stephen Barber

The only biography of avant-garde Surrealist artist, filmmaker and theorist Antonin Artaud is now re-published in a new, expanded and updated edition. Spanning his involvement with the Surrealist movement, the seminal Theatre of Cruelty and his 9-year asylum incarceration, this is the definitive biography on this legendary figure of 20th century culture. Stephen Barber is a noted cultural historian and the leading authority on Artaud. Previous publications The Burning World (Edmund White biography), Caligula and The Screaming Body (Creation).

Genres: Biography, Theatre, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read.
Too mad for the timid Surrealists, too mad for Ireland, France, the Movies, the theater, he picks up where De Nerval stopped.
Artaud was associated with Lacan and Bataille, which really shows his influence.

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Artaud's life and writings, his biography, it might be said, evince a perpetual, agonized confrontation with the absolute outside, the madness or death which render this biography at the same time a thanatography. His struggle with the silence of the origin, its ineffacable absence which demands effacement, opens us to the collapse of interiority and exteriority in the transformational or transfigurational figure of the body - an-other body, altered, divested of organs and the ordered illness that society and God, in their structured maintenance of the borders between these domains, command. Said otherwise, a scream, a cry, from out of the most terrifyingly ancient of pasts, and the coming apocalypse (from the contemporary standpoint) of a future which shall never arrive for us.

The hatred of representation that Artaud manifests serves only to bear forth the inescapable bind of originary mimesis which entwines us at every turn; the theatre of cruelty offers to us the cruelty of life of which it is the double, and of which life is its double. This paradoxical redoubling renders explicit the absence of any originary state to which either of the relata might be the representation. The maddening spiral into the void elicits, by the play of this mise en abyme, an unspeakable rupture which marks thw gestures of our bodies and actions, ever enacting a dramatization without source text or original referent. A cruel fate, enough to cast one into madness - madness being the only expression available to the preswnt order of understanding by which to classify such an attempt at expression, to transgress the limits of what is currently sayable and transform our linguistically ordered form of life.

We cannot have done with the judgement of god, for in the wake of the absence of god the judgement remains - only it comes not from on high, but from the outside (which, as noted, has collapsed into what was the inside), the heartless heart of alterity which demands of us a response, an interminable translation of our existence, in pursuit of of the origin ever in withdrawal. Artaud's writng and his life remain a testament to such a response, an agonizing transformation of existence. But who testifies for such a testament? Are we not already bound to a sort of perverse responsibility, not as the society which suicided Artaud, but as others in ourselves, witness and victim of the cruelty which strikes us all, demanding a response, a justification, a judgement?

Amidst the madness of these questions and responses, these affections and acts, the interminable play of cruelty upon the stage of life and language, a silent demand resonates, through the sustained delay of our perpetual alteration. Let us figure it here in the words of Rilke, elicited by the acephalic torso of the statuesque figure of the god devoided of its primary organ, of the order disordered in its infinite transformation:
"You must change your life."

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good introduction to the mad creative and totally awesome Antonin Artaud, but what is needed is a much more huge bio on this guy. I am not even sure if there is a big bio on Artaud in French. Nevertheless we have to start somewhere and this is a good place than anywhere else.

Also the author Stephen Barber has written better books than this one. His study on Jean Genet is excellent. I got the feeling that he wrote this Artaud bio fast for publication. But it's good for reference, but please someone out there do a huge research on this writer/actor/drama genius - and make a great $35 biography!

[Alana · Rating 4 out of 5]

artaud likes to talk about shit a lot. i always thought “the smell of fear” was shit. i would ask but it remains primordially conclusive enough to me in singular thoughts and thoughts of bodies betrayed in askance of fear.
smell’s absence falls to the heart of the wrong senses. even so, touch sight the ears are struck to the heart by smell’s absence. there are no whole hearts that can love. perfumed scented pink cannot touch and feel and hear and see except rose tinted gouges already dead to death. censoriously senses are defiling senses till every brutal torrent only further numbs and placates the earth’s forgotten bodily landscapes. bowels have been abducted of their shit. all wrinkles smoothed. botoxed anuses bleached and excommunicated. so artaud shits on things to death because we are already dead and must be awoken to the vile life of a body whose anatomy is not yet fully known.

thnx n a nice big sentimental hug to stephen barber who did the lord’s good work with writing this artaud bio the way he did 🤙

[Bruce Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wild, weird, edge of your nightmare style of book. It is short and digestible. Inspirational for this reader to investigate further.

[J Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent, inspirational biography of a truly unique man who never surrendered

[Ash · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliantly informative read that's both packed with carefully researched knowledge and written in a way that's easy to follow and understand

[Reijo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Those who can appreciate the contributions of Baselitz, Schnabel, Fassbinder, Hijikata, Derrida, Kristeva, Deleuze, etc., and other artists and thinkers who have pushed the boundaries of acceptable commentary and performance arts will find this biography, indefinite as it is, interesting and important in understanding of an artist who was found by the public, often, incomprehensible. Many opportunities for the reader for reflection. Another book by Barber, "The Screaming Body", will be of interest to those who would appreciate Artaud"s contribution to surrealist film and Artaud's drawings.

[Rhiannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been studying Artaud in the theatre module of my French studies degree. Although he wasn't the main character of the semester (it was Ionesco) something about his writing really struck me. Despite the fact that him and his theatre of cruelty were sidelined by society, he passionately and obsessively worked to fight against theatre of the boulevard and carve a new type of theatrical representation in its place. A mode of theatre which preferred animalistic, pure sounds and movements in a spontaneous sequence as a form of expression, never to be exactly reproduced.

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Occasionally long-winded and incredibly obscure biography, not of Artaud's entire life, but more about his struggles in getting the message of his Theatre of Cruelty out to the public. Some very interesting anecdotes of his disastrous first performances and I was introduced to such colourful characters as André Gide and Anaïs Nin. If you have a taste for the obscure, and I mean really obscure, then this is for you.

[Tawny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this quite a few times over the period of a few years when I was rather obsessed with Artaud. I still think it's one of the best books on Artaud, capturing his extreme life and the ultimate price he paid. He was indeed the most surrealist of the surrealists. A lot of the phrases that Barber uses are quite memorable.

[Ash Reads Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative nonfiction on Atonin Artaud's life and it's influence on his theory/approaches to theatre. I used this for a high school research project on Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty and found it was a useful resource.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good exploration of Artaud, his work, and his life.