Touching and Imagining. An Introduction to Tactile Art

Jan Svankmajer wrote this remarkable book on tactile art when he stopped directing films after censorship by the Czechoslovakian government and experimented intensively with tactile phenomena and the creative imagination. Illustrated with over 100 images, the book is organised around many reproductions of Svankmajer's wondrous tactile art objects, tactile poems, experiments and games. It also includes dialogues with, and artworks by, other collaborating artists from the Group of Czech and Slovak Surrealists. Svankmajer also gathers together as contributors such notable exponents of tactual experience as Edgar Allen Poe, Guillaume Apollinaire, Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Meret Oppenheim, Ay-O, and F.T. Marinetti. Michael Havas, producer of some of Svankmajer's films, says of the book: 'it is typically Svankmajer: erudite and very consequential. Sometimes also very funny and erotic. Totally unique.'