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THE WITCHES OF TEPOZTLAN (and Other Unpublished Operas)
Pablo Helguera

The Witches of Tepoztlan (and Other Unpublished Operas) by Pablo Helguera ISBN:1934978000 || 9781934978009. Retail price $ 15.95

Other books by the author: The Manual of Conteporary Art Style; The Boy Inside the Letter (also in Spanish); Artoons.

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"THE WITCHES OF TEPOZTLÁN (AND OTHER UNPUBLISHED OPERAS) describes the cases of four different and rather obscure operas written by equally obscure composers whose existence, whether fictitious or real, is never confirmed by the author. By intertwining these four stories in the form of a narrative fugue, this book invites the reader to reflect on the conception of a masterpiece, the role that biography plays in turning an author into an antihero or a mythical figure, and the relationship between a work, its author, and its interpreters.

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Author:

Pablo Helguera is a visual artist living in New York. His work, which ranges from performance art, video, and public art, often involves historical research, fiction, humor, and criticism. Previously, Helguera worked as Senior Manager of Education of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, as well as many other museums. He has described the book as follows: "The Manual is an autobiography of sorts, documenting the anecdotes, behind-the-scenes maneuvers, and interactions that I have observed in the art world over the years.  But it also seeks to show the ways in which we all conform to regulated patterns of behavior in order to be admitted into the high spheres of the contemporary art scene. In the art world, we all are performers, and here I tried to describe some parts of our unspoken script".

Pablo Helguera has presented his work at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, El Museo del Barrio, the Bronx Museum, the Havana and Liverpool Biennials, and in many other museums and galleries internationally. He worked as head of public programs at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (1998-2005). He is the recent recipient of the Creative Capital Grant, for which he presented his project The School of Panamerican Unrest (www.panamericanismo.org), a ground inter-continental journey from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. He has written a dozen plays, monologues, and performances, including The Circorama of Operistic Nostalgia (1994), The Memory Palace of Matteo Riccci (1995) The Palace (and other Pilsen Ghost Stories) (1996), From the Vocal Archives of Florence Foster Jenkins (2000), Mock Turtle (2001), Theatrum Anatomicum (or, How to Dissect a Melodrama) (2002), Parallel Lives (2003), The First  Imaginary Forum of Mental Sculpture (2004) and The Foreign Legion (2005). He is also the author of the novella Babel (1993), and the essay Endingness (2005). He is represented by Enrique Guerrero Gallery in Mexico City.


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…An artist who dares to look at the big picture ...[Helguera] has a savvy understanding of art history and art audiences, enough to know that a little humor and a bit of irony are sometimes the best tools in an artist arsenal.

--Barbara Pollack, artist and writer

 

 

 

 

 

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BOOKS IN TRANSLATION

Coleccion Economia y Finanzas

Virtuoso Teams

El Poder de la Actuación

El Hombre que Inventó a Fidel

Winterhart

The Manual of Conteporary Art Style


Recompensas Para Niños

Through the Years and Far Away

Seeds of Silence

The Conversation

El Niño en la Letra

Gloria Contreras

The Five Laws to Foresee the Future

Ashes of Orchids

Along the Shore of Dreams

Conversations with Great Economists

Memory and Dread or the Memory of Childhood

A True Story


 

RELATED LINKS

 

Commentaries:

-- James Elkins

-- Rebeca Spence

-- Barbara Pollack

AUTHOR'S LINKS

-- Pablo Helguera Archive