TAORMINA DEBUT DE SIECLE: PHOTOGRAPHIES DU BARON DE GLOEDEN by Von Gloeden, Wilhelm Baron (Photographer) & Lemagny, Jean-Claude (Contributor) - 1975

Paris, France: Editions Du Chene, 1975. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/No Dust Jacket, As Issued.. Paris, France: Editions Du Chene, 1975. Hardcover. Fine/None, As Issued. First Edition/First Printing. 105 pages. Retrospective collection of male nudes. One of the most beautiful books on the photographic art and achievement of Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden. The true First Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, particularly the American Facsimile Edition. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now rare. An exquisite production by Editions du Chene: Regular-sized volume format. Pink cloth boards with photographic reproduction pasted on the cover and pink titles embossed on the cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden. Preface by Jean-Claude Lemagny. Printed on thick, glossy stock paper in Paris to the highest standards. The production values of the French original are outstanding in every respect. Without DJ, as issued. Presents Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden's "Taormina Debut de Siecle: Photographies du Baron de Gloeden". Ground-breaking male nudes taken between 1895 and 1903. The volume contains images that had not appeared in book form. Von Gloeden's work is fixed in the cult imagination as an evocation of earthly paradise: Naked men, ancient ruins, and majestic landscapes. Roland Barthes memorably describes his work as a "carnival of contradictions", and therein lies its enduring fascination. Von Gloeden combined Greek landscape, Roman statuary, and Beaux Arts painting, resulting in a subversive pastiche art that broke with both the Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian representations of the male nude, and is singularly his own. Barthes found himself drawn to an intuitively innovative artist precisely because unlike the Marquis de Sade and formalists like the Surrealists, von Gloeden's blend of Naturalism and Classicism was ahead of its time without being self-consciously so, "without his having to think about it". Despite a difficult life of wild fluctuations in his personal fortunes, von Gloeden has persisted and influenced major 20th-century artists in successive waves: The first wave: His contemporaries, Baron Guglielmo von Pluschow, Vincenzo Galdi, and Pancrazio Bucini; the second: Herbert List; the third: Robert Mapplethorpe and Joel-Peter Witkin, who championed the work, collecting the vintage prints and creating "hommage" versions; the fourth: Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber, whose idealizing male nudes are essentially von Gloeden contemporized; and the present fifth wave: Nino Longobardi, who has appropriated von Gloeden's images into his collage art and the painter Marlene Dumas, who uses von Gloeden's photographs instead of real-life models. Jonathan Turner rounds out a century of continuing influence to an incredibly diverse constellation of artists: Joseph Beuys, Wolfgang Tillmans, Michael Buthe, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Pierre et Gilles, and John Dugdale. An absolute "must-have" title for von Gloeden collectors. This title is a great collection. This is one of few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (French) still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws or the subsequent American Edition. A rare copy thus. 105 plates. One of the greatest photographers of the male nude. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER VON GLOEDEN TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 2851080423.