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Matthias Buchinger - 'The Greatest German Living'

Siglio 2016 ISBN 9781938221125 Acqn 25901
Hb 20x25cm 160pp ills 32
Matthias Buchinger (16741739) performed on more than a half-dozen musical instruments,
some of his own invention. He exhibited trick shots with pistols, swords and bowling. He danced
the hornpipe and deceived audiences with his skill in magic. He was a remarkable calligrapher
specializing in micrographyhandsome, precise letters almost impossible to view with the naked
eyeand he drew portraits, coats of arms, landscapes and family trees, many commissioned by
royalty. Amazingly, Buchinger was just 29 inches tall, and born without legs or arms. He lived to
the ripe old age of 65, survived three wives, wed a fourth and fathered 14 children.
Accompanying the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition Wordplay: Matthias Buchingers
Inventive Drawings from the Collection of Ricky Jay, the book is a cabinet containing a single,
multifaceted wonder, refracted through author Ricky Jays scholarship and storytelling. Alongside
an unprecedented and sumptuously reproduced selection of Buchingers marvelous drawings and
etchings, Jay delves into the history and mythology of the "Little Man," while also chronicling his
encounters with the many fascinating characters whom he meets in his passionate search for
Buchinger.
Ricky Jay is considered one of the worlds great sleight-of-hand artists. His career is further
distinguished by his accomplishments as author, actor and historian of "unusual entertainments."
He has appeared in films directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, Gus Van Sant and David Mamet.
His Jays Journal of Anomalies and Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women were New York Times
"Notable Books." The subject of the documentary Ricky Jay: Deceptive Practices, Jay is the only
conjurer to be profiled in the PBS series American Masters.

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Marcel Broodthaers - My Ogre Book, Shadow Theater, Midnight

Siglio 2016 ISBN 9781938221118 Acqn 25902
Hb 15x20cm 160pp 80col ills 32
This intimate and gorgeously produced book pairs Belgian artist-poet Marcel Broodthaers first
two collections of poetry, My Ogre Book (1957) and Midnight (1960)both previously
unpublished in Englishwith an 80-image projection work, Shadow Theater (197374), made
toward the end of his too-brief life. Together these works reveal a dizzyingly prodigious interplay
between the images and texts, particularly illuminating Broodthaers use of the oblique and dark
fairytale framework within (and against) which he plays with reflections and reproductions,
inversions and fictions, body and shadow, decor and violence. My Ogre Book (Mon livre dogre)
and Midnight (Minuit) served as a wellspring for Broodthaers later visual work: he continually
recycled and reworked them into new schemata in his installations, films, sculptures and
paintings. Both are wildly cinematic books that perform like a fictional theater set (or museum) for
a dark fable of which we are only dimly aware. In this vein, Shadow Theater (Ombres chinoises),
published in full for the first time here, creates a fantastical poetic landscape of semblance and
sleights of hand. The three works are published together to provide the reader with an
unprecedented opportunity to read Broodthaers in both language and image.

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