Die Monosau

In the mid-1990s, Jonathan Meese, the ant of world-class art, compiled photocopies of hand-written, self-authored German and English texts, drawings and photographs in an artist book made of an artless binder. Some of the texts revolve around his own creative linguistic coinages and relate to both well-known and invented personalities, myths, people of power, history and pop culture.


Meese is obsessed with recombining them to create new meanings and his own private mythology, a practice characteristic for his artistic approach. Transgressing conventions, he never ceases to derive new correlations and patterns from these combinations. The book contains Gold 1-Gold 7; Zeichnung ‚de‘; Gold 8-Gold 10; Prolog; Die Monosau; Go Mary, Gold and King of Hearts; Something in something; Das üble Schloss und Monsieur Maigret; Einige Kröten sind on the rocks again; Schatzl-City-Inslerussüs; Lollytzs; Rudolpho Valentino; Tea-Shooting, among many other short prose.


Brigitte Meese, the artist’s mother, typed out all these texts in vespertine diligence, in order to send the manuscript to any and all of the prestigious German literary publishers, as her son aimed at nothing less than revolutionising the literary genre of the novel. After receiving downright rejections from across the board, Meese rededicated the dummy into a book object, which sold in a small print run through his art gallery. Now the book has been published as a paperback edition to finally see its true destiny – being sold to the public in bookstores.


Jonathan Meese opposes any form of patronizing, and he is a firm opponent of political systems, religious doctrines and unsophisticated ideas. He strives for autonomous works of art, innocent play free of ideology, and a theatre night free of direction. This means: Caps off! for starters. Plus: Stand at attention! Stand dignified in the service of the text! And understand once and for all that K.U.N.S.T. is not the same as culture! K.U.N.S.T. is yesterday and tomorrow. K.U.N.S.T. seriously doubts everything, even itself, to infinity and farther beyond…


HERO LISTING:GnaeusHomerRichard WagnerIsisEchnatonStanley KubrickNarsesMaldororNeroBalthisVolksSelbstcaligulaMarquis de SadeWallensteinNofreteteCarusoNabob DandupantStalinLohengrinArtaudNonnineide SeppBrucknerKrnprinz RudolfMary VetseraKlossowskiAlexis SorbasProustElixiere des TeufelsParacelsusAlex de LargeHalHagen von Tronjede GralErich v. StroheimWeidenmannSchopenhauerFieberkommandantErzgottErzsöldnerMetabayreuthononde TennoBarry LyndonWalhallaClockwork d’OrangeAugust StrammT. CapoteGuyotatInquisitionWahnfriedMaoRasputinKetzerRübezahlIsisselbstRobbespierreRichard KinskiNietzscheKalininMike TysonMishimaRimbaudRamses IIPoundFred AstaireBrahms…

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