From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Georges Bataille [1][2] (September 10, 1897 – July 9, 1962) was a French writer, anthropologist, archivist and philosopher, though he avoided this last term himself.

His brand of subversive surrealism is documented in Documents.

Denise Rollin-Le Gentil

On 2 October 1939, Georges Bataille meets Denise Rollin-Le Gentil, who is 32 and married with a young son, Jean Rollin. Michel Surya writes, ‘She was beautiful, a beauty that would be described as melancholy if not taciturn. She spoke little or, for long periods not at all’. She joins him at his flat in October; thereafter, Bataille will spend time in her flat at 3 rue de Lille.

In 1945, Maurice Blanchot commences an apparently largely epistolatory affair with Denise Rollin, which will continue until her death in 1978. -- adpated from Spurious [3] --WikiSysop 23:53, 8 April 2007 (CEST)

Influence on American modern art criticism

American modern art criticism as professed by Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Denis Hollier, and Hal Foster has been much influenced by Bataille. Although I should add that it has not only been Bataille who influenced American art and literary criticism; the whole of French theory has had an enormous — and by some much bemoaned — influence on postmodern American theory, much like German theory was influential in post-war France.

Blog entries

http://jahsonic.wordpress.com/2006/12/05/bretonian-and-bataillean-strains-of-surrealism/