The Love Life of the Spumifers

This English translation is published in conjunction with Georges Hugnet: The Love Life of the Spumifers, an exhibition at Ubu Gallery. The Love Life of the Spumifers, or La Vie Amoureuse des Spumifères, is the text edition that accompanies Hugnet’s illustrations, gouache “beasts,” added to early twentieth-century vintage photo postcards of nudes. Each text—sprinkled with made-up words like bowoodling, friskadoodling and alabamaraminating—is dedicated to a different imaginary creature, describing how it woos, teases, gropes, and molests its intended love conquest. The book is typeset in Poetica with a heavy use of the font’s ligatures, evocative of the Spumifer creatures. A limited edition box, lined with fake fur tuffs, was designed to hold this English translation along with the French illustrated edition. Published by Ubu Gallery, 2011, perfectbound on gold stock, 68 pages, 24.5 × 18 cm