Reviews
"What we have here is not only an amusing tale, but an important document in art history, an insider's account of what it has been like to be an artist at a time when the only apt artistic response to the atrocities of the twentieth century anyone has so far discovered is the aggressively inane and nonsensical art called Dada."-Kurt Vonnegut "Gavin Twinge is a hero for our times: subversive, inventive, world-bestriding, world-destroying. He is the Vishnu of vicissitude and the Jehova of juxtaposition. In Ralph Steadman, Twinge has found his apotheosis, his amanuensis, his Boswell."-Will Self "New Yorker cartoonist and Hunter S. Thompson collaborator Steadman sends up modern art with this energetic combination of solemn aesthetics and oddball satire. The book is a fictional 'triography' of one Gavin Twinge, leader of the 'Doodaaa group,' a coterie of avant-garde artists loosely based on the Dada movement. Paragons of bohemian excess, Twinge and company go on epic drinking binges and push the boundaries of art with bizarre experimental pieces in which they paint with gnat blood or heat up beer cans until they explode onto a canvas . . . Amusing . . . [Steadman has a] fertile comic imagination."-Publishers Weekly, "What we have here is not only an amusing tale, but an important document in art history, an insider's account of what it has been like to be an artist at a time when the only apt artistic response to the atrocities of the twentieth century anyone has so far discovered is the aggressively inane and nonsensical art called Dada."-Kurt Vonnegut "Gavin Twinge is a hero for our times: subversive, inventive, world-bestriding, world-destroying. He is the Vishnu of vicissitude and the Jehova of juxtaposition. In Ralph Steadman, Twinge has found his apotheosis, his amanuensis, his Boswell."-Will Self " New Yorker cartoonist and Hunter S. Thompson collaborator Steadman sends up modern art with this energetic combination of solemn aesthetics and oddball satire. The book is a fictional 'triography' of one Gavin Twinge, leader of the 'Doodaaa group,' a coterie of avant-garde artists loosely based on the Dada movement. Paragons of bohemian excess, Twinge and company go on epic drinking binges and push the boundaries of art with bizarre experimental pieces in which they paint with gnat blood or heat up beer cans until they explode onto a canvas . . . Amusing . . . [Steadman has a] fertile comic imagination."- Publishers Weekly, New Yorker cartoonist and Hunter S. Thompson collaborator Steadman sends up modern art with this energetic combination of solemn aesthetics and oddball satire. The book is a fictional 'triography' of one Gavin Twinge, leader of the 'Doodaaa group,' a coterie of avant-garde artists loosely based on the Dada movement. Paragons of bohemian excess, Twinge and company go on epic drinking binges and push the boundaries of art with bizarre experimental pieces in which they paint with gnat blood or heat up beer cans until they explode onto a canvas . . . Amusing . . . [Steadman has a] fertile comic imagination., "What we have here is not only an amusing tale, but an important document in art history, an insider's account of what it has been like to be an artist at a time when the only apt artistic response to the atrocities of the twentieth century anyone has so far discovered is the aggressively inane and nonsensical art called Dada." -- Kurt Vonnegut "Gavin Twinge is a hero for our times: subversive, inventive, world-bestriding, world-destroying. He is the Vishnu of vicissitude and the Jehova of juxtaposition. In Ralph Steadman, Twinge has found his apotheosis, his amanuensis, his Boswell." -- Will Self " New Yorker cartoonist and Hunter S. Thompson collaborator Steadman sends up modern art with this energetic combination of solemn aesthetics and oddball satire. The book is a fictional 'triography' of one Gavin Twinge, leader of the 'Doodaaa group,' a coterie of avant-garde artists loosely based on the Dada movement. Paragons of bohemian excess, Twinge and company go on epic drinking binges and push the boundaries of art with bizarre experimental pieces in which they paint with gnat blood or heat up beer cans until they explode onto a canvas . . . Amusing . . . [Steadman has a] fertile comic imagination." -- Publishers Weekly, Gavin Twinge is a hero for our times: subversive, inventive, world-bestriding, world-destroying. He is the Vishnu of vicissitude and the Jehova of juxtaposition. In Ralph Steadman, Twinge has found his apotheosis, his amanuensis, his Boswell., What we have here is not only an amusing tale, but an important document in art history, an insider's account of what it has been like to be an artist at a time when the only apt artistic response to the atrocities of the twentieth century anyone has so far discovered is the aggressively inane and nonsensical art called Dada., "What we have here is not only an amusing tale, but an important document in art history, an insider's account of what it has been like to be an artist at a time when the only apt artistic response to the atrocities of the twentieth century anyone has so far discovered is the aggressively inane and nonsensical art called Dada."-Kurt Vonnegut "Gavin Twinge is a hero for our times: subversive, inventive, world-bestriding, world-destroying. He is the Vishnu of vicissitude and the Jehova of juxtaposition. In Ralph Steadman, Twinge has found his apotheosis, his amanuensis, his Boswell."-Will Self "New Yorkercartoonist and Hunter S. Thompson collaborator Steadman sends up modern art with this energetic combination of solemn aesthetics and oddball satire. The book is a fictional 'triography' of one Gavin Twinge, leader of the 'Doodaaa group,' a coterie of avant-garde artists loosely based on the Dada movement. Paragons of bohemian excess, Twinge and company go on epic drinking binges and push the boundaries of art with bizarre experimental pieces in which they paint with gnat blood or heat up beer cans until they explode onto a canvas . . . Amusing . . . [Steadman has a] fertile comic imagination."-Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
Ralph Steadman's alter-autobiography is a work of comical genius as well as a profound commentary on the state of contemporary art. Creator of his own inimitable visions of Freud, Leonardo, Orwell, Alice, and the Great Gonzo, Steadman now offers the tri ography of his artistic alter ego, the redoubtable Gavin Twinge. Twinge, last remnant of a nineteenth-century 'domestic engineering' dynasty, founder of the Doodaaa school, and pioneer of Barcode Art, Shredded Literature, and Centrifugal Abstraction, is the original angry voice of contemporary art. From the moment Steadman first meets Twinge in a London bookshop, it becomes his quest to get to the heart of the misery that drives the lost soul of Art. Drawing inspiration from Twinge's fellow Doodaaists-among them Lily Potsdam (Whiplash Muralist), Schlemiel Weiss (Gnat's blood Organic Watercolorist) and Aaron Dickley (Primal Scream Environmentalist)-Steadman proves to be a truly inspired biographer, matching Twinge drink for drink as he prepares for the great exhibition that will crown his life's work. Illustrated throughout in color and black-and-white in Steadman's (and Twinge's) inimitable style, Doodaa is a biography standing at the center of a hall of mirrors.