Pierre Klossowski (August 9, 1905...August 12, 2001) was a French writer, translator and artist. He was the eldest son of the artists Erich Klossowski and Baladine Klossowska, and his younger brother was the painter Balthus.
Born in Paris, Pierre Klossowski was the older brother of the artist Balthazar Klossowski, better known as Balthus. Their parents were the art historian Erich Klossowski and the painter Baladine Klossowska. His father, Erich Klossowski, was a German-educated Polish noble of the Rola coat of arms. His mother, Baladine Klossowska, was born as Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro in Breslau, Prussia (now Wroc?aw, Poland). Although the family has denied any Jewish heritage, a Polish journal reported Baladine was born into an Orthodox Jewish family with Belarussian origins.
When he was 18, Pierre was André Gide's secretary and worked on the drafts of Les faux-monnayeurs for him.
Pierre Klossowski wrote full length volumes on the Marquis de Sade and Friedrich Nietzsche, a number of essays on literary and philosophical figures, and five novels. He translated several important texts (by Virgil, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Hölderlin, Franz Kafka, Nietzsche, and Walter Benjamin) into French, worked on films and was also an artist, illustrating many of the scenes from his novels. Klossowski participated in most issues of George Bataille's review, Acéphale, in the late 1930s.
His 1969 book, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, greatly influenced French philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard.
Klossowski also appeared in Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar as the avaricious miller who desires Marie, a character played by Anne Wiazemsky.
He was involved in :
- Raoul Ruiz's La vocation suspendue, 1977, 90' ;
- Raoul Ruiz's L'hypothèse du tableau volé, 1979, 66' ;
- Pierre Zucca's Roberte, 1979, 100' ;
- Alain Fleischer's Pierre Klossowski ou l'éternel détour, 1996, 106'.
His text on de Sade is mentioned in the bibliography at the beginning of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, and quoted several times through the film.
From 20 September to 19 October 2006 there was a display of Klossowski's drawings and life size sculptures made after them with sculptor Jean-Paul Réti along with the art of Hans Bellmer at the Whitechapel Art Gallery also presented at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne and the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris with a film retrospective.
Friedrich Sieburg, Défense du nationalisme allemand, Grasset (1933)
Friedrich Sieburg, Robespierre, E. Flammarion (1936)
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus suivi de Investigations philosophiques (1961)
Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche (1971)
Friedrich Nietzsche, Le Gai Savoir
Walter Benjamin, L'?uvre d'art à l'époque de sa reproduction mécanisée [in consultation with the author for the first publication of the essay in 1936]
Arnaud, A., Pierre Klossowski (Paris: Seuil, 1990) ISBN 9782020114950 In French.
Decottignies, J., Klossowski notre prochain (Paris: H. Veyrier, 1985) ISBN 9782851993779 In French.
Decottignies, J., Pierre Klossowski. Biographie d’un monomane (Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1997) ISBN 9782859395230 In French.
Faulkner, J., “The Vision, the Riddle, and the Vicious Circle: Pierre Klossowski Reading Nietzsche’s Sick Body through Sade’s Perversion.” Textual Practice. 21[1] (March 2007): 43—69.
Hill, Leslie, Bataille, Klossowski, Blanchot: Writing at the Limit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
James, Ian, Pierre Klossowski: The Persistence of a Name (Oxford: Legenda, 2000)
James, Ian and Ford, Russell (guest editors), Diacritics, Special Issue: Whispers of the Flesh Essays in Memory of Pierre Klossowski, 35[1] (Spring 2005).
Lugan-Dardigna, A.-M., Klossowski. L’homme aux simulacres (Paris: Navarin, 1986) ISBN 2-86827-044-1 In French.
Madou, J.-P., Démons et simulacres dans l’?uvre de Pierre Klossowski (Paris: Méridiens Klincksiek, 1987) ISBN 9782865631827 In French.
Marroni, A., Klossowski e la comunicazione artistica (Palermo: Centro Internazionale Studi di Estetica, 39, 1993)
Marroni, A., Pierre Klossowski. Sessualità, vizio e complotto nella filosofia (Milan: Costa & Nolan, 1999) ISBN 9788876483837
Bennett, Jill, "Kama and Eroticism", Body. The Art Gallery of New South Wales (1997).ISBN 0-9587206-0-6
Marroni, A. Laws of perversion and hospitality in Pierre Klossowski, "Journal of European Psychoanalysis", 25, 2007;
Marroni, A. L'arte dei simulacri. Il dèmone estetico di Pierre Klossowski, Costa & Nolan, Milan 2009, ISBN 9788874371242;
Spira, Anthony, & Sarah Wilson, Pierre Klossowski (Ostfilden: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2006) ISBN 3775717927. Exhibition Catalogue. Whitechapel Gallery London 20 September - 19 November 2006, Ludwig Museum Cologne 21 December 2006 - 18 March 2007, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris 2 April - 4 June 2007.
Ubilluz, Juan Carlos, Sacred Eroticism: Georges Bataille and Pierre Klossowski in the Latin American Erotic Novel (Bucknell University Press, 2006) ISBN 0838756255
