Born in 1927, Alfred Leslie was a multidisciplinary artist by his late teens. Abstract painter, portrait painter, improvising sculptor; filmmaker (Pull My Daisy
with Robert Frank, 1959), photographer, novelist and graphic novelist,
he rejected the idea that he needed one style and a single point of
view. In 1988, he made a terrific series of road trip drawings while driving.
Leslie began the drawings for what is now Attacked by the Heart in the early 1960s, some of which were published in Artforum in 1962, and all of which were destroyed by a fire in 1966. In 1991, he redid and enlarged upon them.
Attacked by the Heart is one of 15 Leslie books available here,
most of which can be clicked through and read online. It opens with a
fine young man walking down a New York street carrying groceries a sack, like
John Travolta carrying a paint can as the opener of Saturday Night
Fever. Unlike Travolta, Leslie’s character is immediately felled by a
big pain in his chest.
Excellent Art in America interview with Judith E. Stein from January here.
Alfred Leslie is fabulous! My new hero.