Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  vii

Introduction / Serge Guilbaut and John O'Brien  1

1. Cahiers du Cinéma Interview / Jean-Luc Godard  22

Part I. Cheek to Cheek in Paris and New York

2. Marcel Duchamp: The Signature Machine—Identity, Authority, Dispossession / Hadrien Laroche  31

3. The Young and the Old / Richard Leeman  60

4. Redefining the Boundaries of Culture: The French Experience of Jazz / Ludovic Tournès  82

5. A Critical Season for Alan Katz / Éric de Chassey  99

6. The Cacodylic Mind: Francis Picabia and the Neo-Avant-Garde, 1953–1963 / Tom McDonough  112

Part II. Violence, Machines, and Bodies

7. The Paradox of Time: Nouveau Réalisme's Curious "Archaeology of the Present" / Jill Carrick  129

8. To Be an "Exemplary" Machine: Tinguely's Homage to New York / Mari Dumett  152

9. Naked Lunch and the Neighbor / Clint Burnbaum  177

10. Bodybuilding or Bodycrushing? From Art to Theater: From Bodies to Corpses, a Rhizomatic Meditation on the Contemporary West / Regis Michel  191

Part III. Time Is Longer Than Any Distance

11. Action Writing/Action Reading / Luc Lang  205

12. From the Genius in the Mountain to the Party in the Dark: Art, Cinema, and Cultural Politics at the Beginning of the Cuban Revolution / Antonio Eligio (Tonel)  211

13. Disorder and Progress in Brazilian Visual Culture, 1959 / Aleca Le Blanc  234

14. That Tingling Sensation: 1959 and William Castle's The Tingler / Kjetil Radje  255

15. Atopic Atomic: Picro Manzoni's Space-Age Subtext and the "Ins and Outs" of the Modern Intellectual / Carla Benzan  275

Selected Bibliography  313

Contributors  319

Index  323

About the Author

Serge Guilbaut is Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of British Columbia and the author and editor of several books, including How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War. John O'Brian is Professor of Art History and Faculty Associate of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia and the author and editor of several books, most recently, Camera Atomica.

Reviews

"Excellent. . . . Breathless Days should be considered essential reading for those seeking a deeper understanding of a fascinating range of works created in a turbulent period of twentieth-century history."
*RACAR*