The phantasmagoria of Valentine Penrose 's images and poems, by the clever and marvel of her writing, by the naive objectivity of her collages, make me gain confidence in myself and in the virtues of truth given.In these words Paul Eluard evokes the work of Valentine Penrose (1898-1978) in Dons des Féminines, from which he wrote the preface. The poetess and surrealist collagist had multiple lives : in England with her husband, the photographer Roland Penrose, in Spain, where she mes a guru, in India where she went to live in an ashram with the painter Alice Rahon Paalen, in Algeria where she wassent in 1944 after enlisting as 3rd class soldier. Woman of character with a beauty appreciated by the surrealists, Valentine Penrose celebrates womanish, sometimes flirting with racy eroticism.
There are few recognized women painters in the first part of the 19th century. Hermine David (1886-1970) is among those who were able to establish themselves. Born in Paris, the painter and engraver, whom real name was Lionnette Cartan, grew up with her mother who always said she was the daughter of a Hapsburg prince. After leaving the family bosom at age 16, she take classes at Julian and, in 1906, participated in the first exhibition of women painters. Her good quality work soon provided her the status of a recognized artist. In 1906, she also met Jules Pascin and got involved with the group of the School of Paris. The Berliner became his mentor and lover. But, Pascin pursued, in parallel, an affair with Lucy, a model for Albert Marquet. Yet, when in 1914 the war forced Pascin to leave France, it is Hermine David who followed him to the United States. The two painters got married in New York in 1918. In 1920, marked by the escapades of Pascin, the couple returned to France and eventually broke up. Pascin resumed his affair with Lucy, now married to the painter Per Krogh. Hhe still supported the work of Hermine David who went from exhibition to exhibition : the Salon d'Automne, the Salon des Independants, an exhibition at the gallery Weil.
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| Frontispice de F. Rops |
AT LAST!Life is a long battle for money, sex and power, for light and inspiration... to end irrevocably as à moneyless, sexless, powerless corpse in dark earth, inspiring nothing but worms and chrysanthemums. Free at last...
The futility of human striving, the irony of results being the negatives of our goals, has been Swarte's inspiration for this portfolio.
On this lines, begins the Joost Swarte's portfolio published in 1981 by Futoropolis. The Dutch comic artist, best known for his clear line style of drawing (characteristic of Hergé's work) was discovered in France in the early seventies thanks to Willem and via Charlie, a monthly magazine of the Editions Du Square.
In 1949, in a pamphlet entitled Flagrant Délit, André Breton denounced and came back on one of the funniest literary fakes of the twentieth century. On 19th May of the same year, the editor Le Mercure de France, under the leadership of Maurice Saillet and Pascal Pia, published a lost manuscript of Arthur Rimbaud : La Chasse Spirituelle. In the preface of the book, Pascal Pia put forward the parallels between the previous work of the young poet and these pages. Breton was the first to rose up and demonstrated that those writings were misleading and parody :Even if the abuse of trust lasts only a second, there is an injury to the innocence - innocence without which there can be no emotional apprehension of a art work and that leaves us with the suspicion of a trap.Le Mercure de France withdrew the book from sale and gave the profits to the Rimbaud Museum. The perpetrators of this fraud, the actors Nicolas Bataille and akakia Viala, finally came forward and explained their motivation : the theatrical show they had created in 1948, an adaptation of Une Saison En Enfer, was demolished by the critics and they wanted to trap their detractors.
Allen Ginsberg calls me out in the street. After ten years without getting in touch, I hardly recognize him. He takes me to his apartment on the 11th Street, in the poorest sector of the Puerto Rican neighborhood. Tea boils in a dented pan and he serves it in glasses which aspire to become coffee's ashtrays. He tells me about his trip to India and corpses that are cremated near the Ganges. When we go out into the street children shout : "Es el profeta!"
Moly-Sabata is an artist colony founded by Albert Gleizes (1881-1953) and his wife Juliette Roche in 1927, on the banks of the river Rhône, in the district of Sablons. Robert Pouyaud (1901-1970), one of the first students of the cubist painter, moved with his wife in the region and help Gleizes to rehabilitate a former convent, first rented and then bought in 1938, that became a place of refuge and creation for the protesters who wanted to escape the machinist society of that time. Among the residents most invested were the sculptor Anne Dangar (1886-1951), the composer César Geoffray (1901-1972). It is with the latter that Robert Pouyaud created and published Suite de sons et de couleurs pour piano (Collection of sounds and colors for piano). The 3 stencils that illustrate the book are typical of the Cubist style that favor plan, volumes, multiple points of view. Robert Pouyaud and his family left soon after the adventure and moved to the city of Asnières-sous-bois, in Burgundy. Moly-Sabata remains an artist residency that welcomes creators and writers.
Based in Paris for three years, Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) tries very quickly to get published. He presents his poems to La Nouvelle Revue Française, but his work is turned down by Jacques Rivière. The director of N.R.F. wrote on May 1, 1923 : "I regret not being able to publish your poems in La Nouvelle Revue Française. But I've taken enough interest to want to get to know their author."
Based in Paris, where he earns his living as a journalist, he begins his career as a writer by producing a stylish and fanciful poetry that appeals the literary and artistic circles of the time. He becomes friend with Guillaume Apollinaire, Louis Perceau, Gus Bofa or Raoul Dufy. Fleuret, an erudite, is also known for his pastiche work, notably by rewriting erotic poems of the Renaissance found at the National Library. Tired of his socialite life style, he settles in southern France. He marries the feminist Gabrielle Réval, 15 years his senior. Fleuret, eager to resume his bohemian life, finally returns in the capital. He nevertheless keeps a deep affection for Gabrielle Reval who supports him until the end. In 1935, Fleuret receives the Renaissance book prize for Echec au Roi, a historical novel that recounts the last 10 years of the reign of Henry IV. If his work is beginning to be recognized, the writer goes through many phases of depression and hallucinations. He sinks slowly into madness and is interned at St. Anne. He dies in 1945. Pascal Pia tells about him: "No trade has been more enjoyable or more productive than the company of Fleuret and his work . I should have said it earlier and I should have shown how, by an extraordinary encounter, erudition, humour and poetry made of Fleuret a character not so common to find, and as, perhaps, there had been none since Nerval."
Les Derniers plaisirs. Histoire espagnole. Paris, Gallimard, 1924, in-12. First edition. Limited to 1000 copies. One of the 30 not to sell copies on Lafuma-Navarre vellum paper. With a dedication of the author to his friend, the writer Pierre Mac Orlan.
Claude Terrasse (1867-1923) met the Bonnard family through the eldest son Charles, while doing civic service time. In 1890 he married Andrée Bonnard, also a musician. The couple moved to Arcachon where Terrasse is a piano teacher. He worked very early with his brother in law, the painter Pierre Bonnard. At that time, is published Petites Scènes Familières pour Piano (Familiar Little Scenes for piano). Pierre Bonnard takes pleasure in playing with the austere chromatic of lithography while Claude Terrasse already demonstrates his talent as a composer of light music with 'La fête au village" (the village party), set of four humorous partitions.
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Maurice Utrillo (1883-1955) grew up in the school of life, that of the Butte Montmartre in Paris. Disturbed and already alcoholic teenager, Utrillo was raised by his grandmother. Uncontrollable, he regularly stayed in a psychiatric clinic. His mother, Suzanne Valadon, earns his living as a model for Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec or Degas. She managed to make a career and become an artist herself. She introduced her son the art of painting and found a way to curb, at least, his misconduct.
Francois Coppée (1842-1908), poet who first knew success as a playwriter, lived during his lifetime recognition of his peers. Archivist at the Comédie Française, he entered the Académie Française in 1884. Mocked by the "poètes maudits" who denounced his classic, simple and populist style, François Coppée was nevertheless appreciated by the little people he liked to describe lives.
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Born in Narbonne, Joë Bousquet (1897-1950) was only 17 years old when he committed on the front of the First World War. He quickly became the most decorated officer of his regiment. But, in 1918, he is hit by a bullet which cut through his spinal cord. Incapacitated, he spends the rest of his life lied down, legs paralysed. He composes then numbers of poems in prose, develops an mystic and erotic aesthetic, literally using writing as a way of life. He exchanges long and fruitful correspondences and receives in his room, now a literary salon, his contemporaries : Surrealists, with whom he has a special relationship, André Gide and Jean Paulhan among others. Little-know figure for the general public, Joë Bousquet, however, was the advisor and confidant to an entire generation of artists.
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Born in 1962, Pascal Le Gras, born in 1962, studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Caen and does his first exhibition in 1981 as part of a collective of artists, Expression 14. Joël Hubaut supports his first solo show two years later. Painter and video artist, he is also known for his illustrations of music album covers, including those of post-punk group The Fall. His pictorial universe, influenced by the movement of Free Figuration, lets us see an unpretentious, simple and colourful phantasmagoria.
Larbaud Valery (1881-1957), only son of a pharmacist who owns the sources of Vichy Saint-Yorre, lost his father at age 8 and is raised by his mother then his aunt. Bachelor of Letters he published anonymously in 1908 a first book, Poèmes par un riche amateur. Leading a dandy life despite his fragile health, he travelled a lot, nourishing his culture. Fermina Marquez, his first novel, is published in 1911. Renowned translator, he introduced in France authors as James Joyce, William Faulkner. In Ce Vice impuni la lecture - Domaine Anglais, famous essay published in 1925, Valery Larbaud explained his consuming passion for books. He leaned on his experience of a compulsive but also critical reader to describe the steps that lead to the status of "fine scholar". A magazine asked him what his favorite English book was. In response, Valery Larbaud sent a photograph of the English department of his personal library with the comment : "Certainly I do not like them all equally, but there is not one I want to get separated. I assume that this room is British territory in the same manner as a consulate." In 1935, stricken by a cerebral hemorrhage, Valery Larbaud became hemiplegic and aphasic. He was forced in 1948 to sell his property and ceded his library of fifteen thousand volumes to the town of Vichy.
Marie-Jean-Léon Le Coq, Baron d'Hervey de Juchereau, Marquis de Saint-Denys (1822 – 1892), sinologist, published anonymously in 1867 a singular book : Les Rêves et les moyens de les diriger (Dreams and how to direct them). Avant-garde, the Marquis de Saint-Denys described dreams in which the dreamer is conscious of dreaming and he suggested techniques to control these dreams. At the age of 13 years, the author began to keep a diary. He noted deficiencies in the conduct of his dreams. After six months of monitoring, he managed to fill holes in his dreamlike memory. For him, images of our dreams come from snapshots of memories, memory functioning as a camera. The spirit then recombines, during sleep, these snapshot souvenirs. In practice, the Marquis de Saint-Denys managed to control his "lucid"dreams.
In 1927, following Paul Eluard and with André Breton, his two friends from Surrealism, Louis Aragon joined the Communist Party. In 1930, he went to the USSR, to represent the Surrealists Congress of Revolutionary Writers in Kharkov. Vladimir Mayakovsky, critic of the new regime, has just committed suicide. The Communists of strict obedience suspect the surrealists to drift to Trotskyism and anarchism. Aragon took sides and, on his return to France, published a poem, Front Rouge, which broke with surrealism aesthetic. His tone is provocative [Pliez les réverbères comme des fétus de pailles / Faites valser les kiosques les bancs les fontaines Wallace / Descendez les flics / Camarades / descendez les flics / Plus loin plus loin vers l'ouest où dorment / les enfants riches et les putains de première classe/ Dépasse la Madeleine Prolétariat/ Que ta fureur balaye l'Élysée] and, in 1931, Aragon is charged for inciting to murder.
Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse (1859-1938) grew up surrounded by artists and man of letters. His widowed mother remarried the poet Théodore de Banville, then in the top of his celebrity.
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JUST LOVE
Born in 1910, Dorothea Tanning left his family in 1930 to follow the course of the Academy of Arts in Chicago. She then moved to New York and lived from advertising works. She is strongly impressed by the 1936 exhibition "Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism" and, in 1942, she joined the New York surrealism's group led by André Breton in exile. She met Max Ernst, who is then married to Peggy Guggenheim. She became, in 1946, the fourth wife of the German artist, during a double ceremony which also united Man Ray to the dancer Juliet Browner. In 1953, Ernst and Tanning settled in France. Two years after the death of Max Ernst in 1976, Dorothea Tanning returned in New York.
Born in Chartres, Lucien Boucher (1889-1971) studies at the School of Ceramics in Sèvres and makes his debut as a cartoonist for the magazine Le Rire. He also works for the magazine Fantasio. After the First World War, he participates in the revival of the illustrated book by working for the publisher Marcel Seheur. Thus appears La Batrachomyomachie (1920) or Boutiques de la Foire (1926) by Pierre Mac Orlan, author for whom he illustrates many first editions. He pursues a parallel career as a poster for the film and fashion industry. He is known for his long collaboration with Air France, a company for which he produces posters and world maps.
[Boucher (Lucien)] - Homère. La Batrachomyomachie. Poème attribué à Homère. Translaté du grec en français par Mario Meunier, orné de bois gravés par Lucien Boucher. Paris, Chez Marcel Seheur, 1920, in-8, covers. Limited to 525 copies. One of the 100 coloured up copies , with originals wood engravings by Lucien Boucher with a suite in black on Holland paper.
