Ralph Rumney has been in constant flight from the wreckage of postwar Europe. Crossing paths with every avant-garde of the past fifty years, he was one of the founding members of the Situationist International. Rumney’s traveling companions—Guy Debord, Yves Klein, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Bataille, William Burroughs, Félix Guattari, E.P. Thompson—are recalled here with sharp intelligence and dry wit.
Profusely illustrated with Rumney’s own photos, paintings, and collages and other documentary materials.
Ralph Rumney (b. 1934), a vicar’s son, turned down places at Oxford and art school to go to London in 1951, where he began painting. He was married to Pegeen Guggenheim and, later, to Michèle Bernstein. He lives in southern France, with his cat, Borgia.