Utz and Other Stories from the Art-World, by Bruce Chatwin

  • Year2013
  • LanguageRussian
  • Edition3000
  • Pages432
  • BindingPaperback
Buy bookAvailable on Bookmate
Garage publishing program in collaboration with Ad Marginem Press

In this novel, English writer Bruce Chatwin investigates the phenomenon of the art collector.

Utz by the English writer Bruce Chatwin (1940 – 1989), follows the fortunes of Kaspar Utz, a collector of Meissen porcelain living in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. The book also includes a collection of texts delving into the world of art collecting: articles for press and catalogues, as well as accounts of meetings with prominent cultural figures of the time, including the architect Konstantin Melnikov, philosopher Ernst Yung, renowned collector George Costakis and fashion designer Madeleine Vionnet, amongst others.

The book takes its inspiration from Chatwin’s fascination with the phenomenon of art collecting. Chatwin learnt about collectors during his time at Sotheby’s auction house – where his career rose rapidly, from gallery technician to Head of the Impressionist Department – and his experience there forms the basis of this work. Whilst at Sotheby’s, the writer developed his own theories on the motivations for collecting: believing that the desire to possess beautiful, but ultimately functionless, objects comes from a suppressed need to keep moving, a trait inherited from our nomadic ancestors. Chatwin develops this idea in his essay The Morality of Things and in his novel Utz, which tells the story of Kaspar Utz, a collector from Prague, whose passion for collecting porcelain carries him through the conflicts and events of the 20th Century: world wars, the suppression of the Prague Spring by Soviet Troops in 1968 and his persecution by the Czechoslovakian communist government.

 

WHERE TO BUY IN MOSCOW:
The publications of the programme can be found in GARAGE Bookshop, in the main bookstores of Moscow: "Moskva", "Biblio-Globus", "Molodaya Gvardiya", "Moskovskiy Dom Knighi", "Falanster", chain of bookstores "Noviy Knizhniy", and in the Internet store ozon.ru.

Author

Bruce Chatwin worked as an impressionist paintings specialist at Sotheby’s in the 1960s and as an art critic for The Sunday Times Magazine in the 1970s. He produced a number of written works, including travel writing based on his journeys across Europe, Latin America, Western Africa, the Middle East, India, Australia and the Soviet Union.

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