World Food Books

Marc Camille Chaimowicz
Writings and Interviews

2025, English
Softcover, 728 pages, 22 x 14 cm
Published by Sternberg Press / Berlin

$78.00 - Out of stock

The collected writings of artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz, along with the stories behind them told by Alexis Vaillant.

Marc Camille Chaimowicz was an acclaimed visual artist known for his performances, installations and curatorial flair. He was also a writer. This volume, the first comprehensive collection of writings by the artist, includes seminal interviews, chitchats, jokes, performance reports, insightful statements and letters in essay form, as well as rare documents, such as early surviving leaflets, typewriter handouts and hard-to-find articles. Spanning 1971–2023, the book unlocks the work of an artist considered to be a refreshing role model for a new generation of culture mavens and style savants. Drawing from literature, modernist architecture, interior design, art theory, glam rock and camp culture, the collection reveals the artist's inner self alongside the art, social flânerie and the goings-on of his time. Entertaining and witty, the texts stand out brilliantly with their early acumen and inclusivity, while setting a new template for an expression of queerness through writing. With access to Chaimowicz's personal material and photographs, curator and editor Alexis Vaillant is a guide to the artist's writings. Vaillant provides behind-the-scenes commentary and context—a time capsule of pleasure featuring Andy Warhol, Des Esseintes, Josef Frank, David Bowie, Vito Acconci, Eileen Gray, Alex Kapranos, Jean Cocteau, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jean Genet, Bob Dylan, Emma Bovary and Roger Cook, among others. This book presents readers with an in-depth look into Chaimowicz's quixotic shaping of his written work, which comes to life as a knowing and longing prose for the twenty-first century.

Embarked on a pursuit of pleasure, Marc Camille Chaimowicz addresses a multiplicity of topics that range from the agility of a jumping dog and the evocation of the color orange as torture, to the idea of feminized architecture and the description of Vienna as a rare city in which we can both work and dream. This source book provides a unique insight into the artist's pioneering aesthetics of camp. Randomly witty and humorous, and overtly charged and frivolous, the non-conclusive, compelling "writings" of Marc Camille Chaimowicz set a new template for the expression of queerness through writing. They are not only remarkable for the singularity of their wording and their acumen to inclusivity, but for the skillful way in which they illuminate the range of thinking of their author. First, in close dialogue with his work and the self-contained interiority that is in it; then, in connection with the fragmented cultural context the artist has taken part in from 1971 onwards; but ultimately, as points of contact with the socio-political dimension of the present.

Born in Paris in the aftermath of World War II of a Polish father and a French mother, Marc Camille Chaimowicz (1947-2024) moved as a child to the United Kingdom. He studied at Ealing, Camberwell, and the Slate School of Art in London. In new artistic times, careful to bring art and life closer, often using performance, the life of Marc Camille Chaimowicz has become a great workshop. Living in the exhibition spaces, he sets up hotels entrances, decorates them with his own artefacts, and serves there some tea to visitors with musical background. When it became an official art practice which was no longer subversive, Chaimowicz abandoned performance art. From 1975 to 1979, he designed the interior of his Approach Road flat. Wallpapers, curtains, videos he made while performing in his own decor: everything had been tailored-imagined, drawn, and conceived to turn his interior into a room conducive to reverie. From the 1980s onwards, decors and furniture set like in a theatre scenography took their place in museums. Since then, hundreds of exhibitions have featured the interiors series of this international artist.

Former Chief Curator at CAPC, Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux, Alexis Vaillant is a curator, writer, and editor based in Lisbon. His publications with Sternberg Press include- Legend (2008); Jean-Luc Blanc- Opera Rock (2009); Options With Nostrils (2010); Big Minis- Fetishes of Crisis (2011); Mark von Schlegell's New Dystopia (2012); On Things As Ideas (2016).

File under: Marc Camille Chaimowicz Marc Camille Chaimowicz Alexis Vaillant Sternberg Press / Berlin Sculpture / Installation Theory / Essay Art Drawing Performance / Dance / Theater Textiles Furniture Architecture / Interior

NO DANDY, NO FUN: LOOKING GOOD AS THINGS FALL APART
Edited by Hans-Christian Dany, Valérie Knoll

2023, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 11.5 x 18 cm
Published by Sternberg Press / Berlin

$40.00 - In stock -