Description
Burroughs/Haring: Apocalypse (book, bilingual edition)
APOCALYPSE by Keith Haring and William S. Burroughs
(French/English)
Published by Dernier Terrain Vague
1993
96 pages
Softcover with dust jacket
4.13″ x 5.9″ / 10.5cm x 15cm
Out-of-print
Apocalypse is a series of 10 prints by Keith Haring illustrating texts by William S. Burroughs. This collaborative work was first published in English in 1988.
This bilingual edition (French/English) was published in 1993 by Dernier Terrain Vague, a French publisher.
Haring came across the Beat generation poets at the 1978 Nova Convention when he was a student at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, and had been inspired by Burroughs’ methods of breaking down language ever since. It’s a very interesting, unusual work: Haring painted his visions of hell on earth in a more chaotic way than his other works, with dramatic figures and themes, violence even, sometimes painting over some reproductions of high art pieces. The book presents each print in full, then closes up on some details from Haring’s dark vision: a demon, a TV, a snake, a monster, twisted arms, a doomed plane, falling bodies…Haring’s graffiti style and use of vivid colors make it a powerful work, matching the boldness and chaos of Burroughs’s “cut-up” text.
Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the “greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift”, a reputation he owes to his “lifelong subversion” of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be “the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War”, while Norman Mailer declared him “the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius”.
It’s a small format, soft cover with a dust jacket, but a very nice quality edition.
The dust jacket shows some slight wear, but the book itself is in perfect, mint condition.
To learn more about the Apocalypse prints, visit:
https://www.haring.com/!/year/1988
