New: Book Report: Cravan

In honor of Wondercon (which I'm not attending (yes, I am lame)), a comic book review:

How often do you finish reading a comic book and think, "I wish there was a bibliography."? Arthur Cravan was a dada artist (except, of course, that there was no art, there was only dada). He lived under a variety of assumed names. He boxed. He moved around. This comic book, out recently from Dark Horse, is a biography. According to this comic, Cravan was also an art thief, a smuggler, a brawler, and perhaps wrote the Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

How much of this should I believe? How can I learn more? I tried searching the UC Berkeley library catalog, and found one Cravan biography--in French. The only French I know is tourist stuff, so I won't be able to understand that biography except when it talks about train timetables. I read an interview between V. Vale and some zinester named Dean living in Prague who wrote about Cravan. That has fewer details, but has some reading recommendations:

It's hard to find information in English on Cravan, although he's described quite well in Robert Motherwell's The Dadaist Painters and Poets. The best description, by the art critic Roger Conover, is in Four Dada Suicides.

I guess I need to read more books.

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Posted 2006-02-11