Pierre Klossowski
Encyclopedia
Pierre Klossowski was a French
writer, translator and artist. He was the eldest son of the artists Erich Klossowski
and Baladine Klossowska
, and his younger brother was the painter Balthus
.
, Pierre Klossowski was the older brother of the artist Balthazar Klossowski, better known as Balthus
. Their parents were the art historian Erich Klossowski
and the painter Baladine Klossowska
. His father, Erich Klossowski, was a German-educated Polish noble of the Rola coat of arms. His mother, Baladine Klossowska, was born as Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro in Breslau, Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland). Although the family has denied any Jewish heritage, a Polish journal reported Baladine was born into an Orthodox Jewish family with Belarussian origins.
When he was 18, Pierre was André Gide
's secretary and worked on the drafts of Les faux-monnayeurs
for him.
and Friedrich Nietzsche
, a number of essays on literary and philosophical figures, and five novels. He translated several important texts (by Virgil
, Ludwig Wittgenstein
, Martin Heidegger
, Friedrich Hölderlin
, Franz Kafka
, Nietzsche
, and Walter Benjamin
) into French, worked on films and was also an artist, illustrating many of the scenes from his novels. Klossowski participated in most issues of George Bataille's
review, Acéphale
, in the late 1930s.
His 1969 book, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, greatly influenced French philosophers such as Michel Foucault
, Gilles Deleuze
, and Jean-François Lyotard
.
's Au hasard Balthazar
as the avaricious miller who desires Marie, a character played by Anne Wiazemsky
.
He was involved in :
- Raoul Ruiz
's La vocation suspendue, 1977, 90' ;
- Raoul Ruiz
's L'hypothèse du tableau volé, 1979, 66' ;
- Pierre Zucca's Roberte, 1979, 100' ;
- Alain Fleischer's Pierre Klossowski ou l'éternel détour, 1996, 106'.
His text on de Sade is mentioned in the bibliography at the beginning of Pier Paolo Pasolini
's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, and quoted several times through the film.
at the Whitechapel Art Gallery also presented at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne and the Musée National d'Art Moderne
in Paris with a film retrospective.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
writer, translator and artist. He was the eldest son of the artists Erich Klossowski
Erich Klossowski
Erich Klossowski or Kłossowski was a German and Polish-French art historian and a painter, now primarily known as the father of the writer-philosopher- painter and actor Pierre Klossowski and the artist Balthus...
and Baladine Klossowska
Baladine Klossowska
Baladine Klossowska or Kłossowska was a twentieth-century European painter. She was the mother of the artist Balthus and the writer Pierre Klossowski, and the last lover of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.She was born Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro in Breslau, Prussia...
, and his younger brother was the painter Balthus
Balthus
Balthasar Klossowski de Rola , best known as Balthus, was an esteemed but controversial Polish-French modern artist....
.
Life
Born in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Pierre Klossowski was the older brother of the artist Balthazar Klossowski, better known as Balthus
Balthus
Balthasar Klossowski de Rola , best known as Balthus, was an esteemed but controversial Polish-French modern artist....
. Their parents were the art historian Erich Klossowski
Erich Klossowski
Erich Klossowski or Kłossowski was a German and Polish-French art historian and a painter, now primarily known as the father of the writer-philosopher- painter and actor Pierre Klossowski and the artist Balthus...
and the painter Baladine Klossowska
Baladine Klossowska
Baladine Klossowska or Kłossowska was a twentieth-century European painter. She was the mother of the artist Balthus and the writer Pierre Klossowski, and the last lover of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.She was born Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro in Breslau, Prussia...
. His father, Erich Klossowski, was a German-educated Polish noble of the Rola coat of arms. His mother, Baladine Klossowska, was born as Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro in Breslau, Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland). Although the family has denied any Jewish heritage, a Polish journal reported Baladine was born into an Orthodox Jewish family with Belarussian origins.
When he was 18, Pierre was André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
's secretary and worked on the drafts of Les faux-monnayeurs
The Counterfeiters (novel)
The Counterfeiters is a 1925 novel by French author André Gide, first published in Nouvelle Revue Française...
for him.
Writing
Pierre Klossowski wrote full length volumes on the Marquis de SadeMarquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...
and Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, a number of essays on literary and philosophical figures, and five novels. He translated several important texts (by Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
, Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
, Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
, Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was a major German lyric poet, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his...
, Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
, Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, and Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
) into French, worked on films and was also an artist, illustrating many of the scenes from his novels. Klossowski participated in most issues of George Bataille's
Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...
review, Acéphale
Acéphale
Acéphale designates both a public review created by Georges Bataille and a secret and esoteric society formed by Bataille and some other members who had sworn to keep silence.-Acéphale, the review:Dated 24 June 1936, the first issue was composed of only eight pages...
, in the late 1930s.
His 1969 book, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, greatly influenced French philosophers such as Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
, Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
, and Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is well known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition...
.
Film
Klossowski also appeared in Robert BressonRobert Bresson
-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
's Au hasard Balthazar
Au hasard Balthazar
Au hasard Balthazar, , also known as Balthazar, is a 1966 French film directed by Robert Bresson, starring Anne Wiazemsky.-Plot:...
as the avaricious miller who desires Marie, a character played by Anne Wiazemsky
Anne Wiazemsky
Princess Anne Wiazemsky is a French actress and novelist, of the Russian Rurikid family of Princes Vyazemsky-Counts Levashov. Through her mother, she is the granddaughter of François Mauriac. She appeared in Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar and in Godard's films La Chinoise and Week End...
.
He was involved in :
- Raoul Ruiz
Raoul Ruiz
Raúl Ernesto Ruiz Pino was a Chilean filmmaker.Ruiz spent some years at the Catholic University of Santa Fe, Argentina's cinema school. Back in Chile, he directed his first feature film Tres tristes tigres in the late 1960s, winning the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival...
's La vocation suspendue, 1977, 90' ;
- Raoul Ruiz
Raoul Ruiz
Raúl Ernesto Ruiz Pino was a Chilean filmmaker.Ruiz spent some years at the Catholic University of Santa Fe, Argentina's cinema school. Back in Chile, he directed his first feature film Tres tristes tigres in the late 1960s, winning the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival...
's L'hypothèse du tableau volé, 1979, 66' ;
- Pierre Zucca's Roberte, 1979, 100' ;
- Alain Fleischer's Pierre Klossowski ou l'éternel détour, 1996, 106'.
His text on de Sade is mentioned in the bibliography at the beginning of Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, and quoted several times through the film.
Drawing
From 20 September to 19 October 2006 there was a display of Klossowski's drawings and life size sculptures made after them with sculptor Jean-Paul Réti along with the art of Hans BellmerHans Bellmer
Hans Bellmer was a German artist, best known for the life-sized pubescent female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. Historians of art and photography also consider him a Surrealist photographer.-Biography:...
at the Whitechapel Art Gallery also presented at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne and the Musée National d'Art Moderne
Musée National d'Art Moderne
The Musée National d'Art Moderne is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. Created in 1947, it was then housed in the Palais de Tokyo and moved to its current location in 1977...
in Paris with a film retrospective.
Translations
- Friedrich Sieburg, Défense du nationalisme allemand, Grasset (1933)
- Friedrich Sieburg, Robespierre, E. Flammarion (1936)
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus suivi de Investigations philosophiques (1961)
- Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche (1971)
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Le Gai Savoir
- Walter Benjamin, L'œuvre d'art à l'époque de sa reproduction mécanisée [in consultation with the author for the first publication of the essay in 1936]
Secondary texts
- Arnaud, A., Pierre Klossowski (Paris: Seuil, 1990) ISBN 9782020114950 In French.
- Decottignies, J., Klossowski notre prochain (Paris: H. Veyrier, 1985) ISBN 9782851993779 In French.
- Decottignies, J., Pierre Klossowski. Biographie d’un monomane (Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1997) ISBN 9782859395230 In French.
- Faulkner, J., “The Vision, the Riddle, and the Vicious Circle: Pierre Klossowski Reading Nietzsche’s Sick Body through Sade’s Perversion.” Textual Practice. 21[1] (March 2007): 43–69.
- Hill, Leslie, Bataille, Klossowski, Blanchot: Writing at the Limit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
- James, Ian, Pierre Klossowski: The Persistence of a Name (Oxford: Legenda, 2000)
- James, Ian and Ford, Russell (guest editors), Diacritics, Special Issue: Whispers of the Flesh Essays in Memory of Pierre Klossowski, 35[1] (Spring 2005).
- Lugan-Dardigna, A.-M., Klossowski. L’homme aux simulacres (Paris: Navarin, 1986) ISBN 2-86827-044-1 In French.
- Madou, J.-P., Démons et simulacres dans l’œuvre de Pierre Klossowski (Paris: Méridiens Klincksiek, 1987) ISBN 9782865631827 In French.
- Marroni, A., Klossowski e la comunicazione artistica (Palermo: Centro Internazionale Studi di Estetica, 39, 1993)
- Marroni, A., Pierre Klossowski. Sessualità, vizio e complotto nella filosofia (Milan: Costa & Nolan, 1999) ISBN 9788876483837
- Bennett, Jill, "Kama and Eroticism", Body. The Art Gallery of New South Wales (1997).ISBN 0-9587206-0-6
- Marroni, A. Laws of perversion and hospitality in Pierre Klossowski, "Journal of European Psychoanalysis", 25, 2007;
- Marroni, A. L'arte dei simulacri. Il dèmone estetico di Pierre Klossowski, Costa & Nolan, Milan 2009, ISBN 9788874371242;
- Spira, Anthony, & Sarah Wilson, Pierre Klossowski (Ostfilden: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2006) ISBN 3775717927. Exhibition Catalogue. Whitechapel Gallery London 20 September - 19 November 2006, Ludwig Museum Cologne 21 December 2006 - 18 March 2007, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris 2 April - 4 June 2007.
- Ubilluz, Juan Carlos, Sacred Eroticism: Georges Bataille and Pierre Klossowski in the Latin American Erotic Novel (Bucknell University Press, 2006) ISBN 0838756255
External links
- Klossowski obituary from The Independent, August 14, 2001, by Ian James
- Klossowski obituary from Art Forum, November 2001, by Benjamin Ivry
- Reading Pierre Klossowski from Context, by John Taylor
- Book review and biography, by Brett Bowles
- Pierre Klossowski biography by Elena Filipovic, focussing on his drawing
- Pierre Klossowski page on the-artists.org
- Journal of European Psychoanalysis