Kiki Picasso

Kiki Picasso (b. 1950) — French graphic artist, painter, and founding member of the Bazooka collective, the Paris-based group whose work dominated the visual culture of the French punk underground from the mid-1970s onward. Operating through press, poster, record sleeve, and book design, Bazooka developed a graphic language of appropriation, media noise, and anti-respectable image culture that ran parallel to the literary and musical provocations of the period. Kiki Picasso’s adopted name — a theft and a provocation in itself — signals the register in which the work operates: interference, contamination, and cultural short-circuit.

Printed matter, artist books, and related documents from The New Rare.

  • Front cover of 1988 Kathy Acker Algeria French edition, Le Dernier Terrain Vague / DTV Compact Livre, Paris — full-bleed image by Kiki Picasso: saturated composite of fragmented urban photography, abstracted figures, and colour fields in yellow, green, orange, and blue; Kathy Acker in black diagonal type at lower left; ALGERIA in large bold black capitals; DTV logo at upper right; cover design functioning as graphic assault and media noise. Back cover of 1988 Kathy Acker Algeria French edition, Le Dernier Terrain Vague / DTV Compact Livre, Paris — full-bleed image by Kiki Picasso: dense field of small human figures rendered in warm amber, orange, and white tones against a glowing ground, figures repeated across the surface in a pattern suggesting mass, heat, and dissolution; TTC 69 F / ISBN 2-86219-035-7 printed vertically at left; compact livre logo in black square at lower right.

    Kathy Acker — Algeria (French edition), Le Dernier Terrain Vague / DTV, Paris, 1988

    Kathy Acker — Algeria (French edition), Le Dernier Terrain Vague / DTV, Paris, 1988