ars libri ltd.
rare and scholarly books
on the fine arts
ars libri ltd.
rare and scholarly books
on the fine arts
Catalogue 130-N: Modern Art: Rarities of the Avant-Garde
302
TEODORESCOU, VIRGIL
La provocation. 8pp. 4to. Self-wraps. (little chip at top front corner). Contents loose, as issued. Unnumbered edition of 500 copies.
Bucarest (Collection Surréaliste Infra-Noir), 1947. $750.00
Ilk K507
303
THE TETRAD PAMPHLETS.
Vol. 1, Nos. I-X. 10 fascicles, each (4)pp. (single sheet, folding). Each 305 x 255 mm. (12 x 10 inches). Sm. folio. Publisher’s clamshell box with printed label. All contents loose, as issued. Contents as follows: "23rd Light Poem for Larry Eigner" by Jackson MacLow, with screenprint by Ian Tyson; "Poem Nov: 1968 by Larry Eigner with Image by Derrick Greaves"; "Correspondence" by Roy Fisher and Tom Phillips; "The Directions: Poem by Jerome Rothenberg with Images by Tom Phillips"; "Knights Eminence" by Ian Tyson; "Mask Masque" by Ian Tyson; "Sweet Pictorial Reason" by Derrick Greaves; "Lesbia Waltz" by Tom Phillips; "The Alphabet Twice" by Richard Pinkney, "A Verse from ‘The Death of a Guiser’ by Richard Pinkney, Petre M. Andreevsky (transl. Graham Reid). This is one of 50 sets fully signed by the collaborators in the colophons, from the limited edition of 500 numbered copies in all. A fine set.
London (Tetrad Press), 1969-1971. $1,500.00
391. Editor: Francis Picabia. 19 issues published in all, as follows: Nos. 1-4, 25 January - 25 March 1917 (Barcelona); Nos. 5-7, June-August 1917 (New York), No. 8, February 1919 (Zürich); Nos. 9-19, November 1919 - October 1924. Format varies. "‘391,’ the longest running dada magazine, spans seven years, from the closing of ‘291’ to the founding of ‘La révolution surréaliste’ in 1924. It reads like an itinerant history of Dada written from a highly persuasive and prejudiced viewpoint, and demonstrates the most telling characteristics of its editor, Francis Picabia: a dread of repetition far stronger than any desire to create a school of whatever kind, a complete lack of respect for anyone and anything, and an inventive genius that is as much verbal as visual" (Ades). Its widely various (and fragile) issues are extremely rare.
The following issues, all from the Paris phase, are available:
304
391. NO. 9.
Paris Novenbre [sic] 1919. (4)pp. Tabloid folio. Self-wraps. Glassine cover. Cover drawing by Ribemont-Dessaignes ("Continent," a mechanical drawing very similar to those of Picabia). Texts by Ribemont-Dessaignes ("Salon d'Automne: C'est Napoléon qui fit le portrait de David," "Aller transe retour"), Tzara ("Aa paye et meurt," "Carnage abracadabrant," "ll était ministre," "Calendrier 16") and Picabia ("Tombeaux et bordels"). Ades has called attention to Picabia's ironic use of typeface here (as in the New York issues of "391"), where Ribemont-Dessaignes' attack on the Salon d'Automne is set in a pretentious Régence face which underscores the derisory tone of the piece. Front cover somewhat browned; two folds, slight creasing.
Paris, 1919. $3,500.00
Dada Global 164; Ades p. 151; Gershman p. 54; Chevrefils Desbiolles p. 316; Almanacco Dada 160; Motherwell/Karpel 86; Sanouillet 257; Verkauf p. 183; Dada Artifacts 99; Düsseldorf 245; Milano p. 647
305
391. NO. 11.
Paris. Février 1920. (4)pp. Tabloid large folio. Self-wraps. Glassine cover. Cover drawing by Picabia (''Cynisme sans échelle"). Texts by Tzara ("Calendrier cinéma du coeur abstrait"; "Unique Eunuque, par Francis Picabia"), Breton (two poems, one entitled "A Francis Picabia"), Ribemont-Dessaignes ("Non-Seul Plaisir"), Picabia ("L'Amphithéâtre Chemise," "Carnet du Docteur Serner"), 'Cyprien-Max’Jacob ("Poème à M. Picabia") and Pierre-Albert Birot ("Poème vert"). Picabia's mechanomorphic drawing had appeared in his "Poèmes et dessins de la fille née sans mère" under the title "Mâle," while Tzara's text on the cover, "Calendrier cinéma," was later to be revised as part of his "Cinéma calendrier du coeur abstrait." Two added folds, as usual. An exceptionally fine copy.
Paris, 1920. $3,500.00
Dada Global 165; Ades pp. 145, 152; Gershman p. 54; Chevrefils Desbiolles p. 316; Almanacco Dada 160; Motherwell/Karpel 86; Sanouillet 257; Verkauf p. 183; Dada Artifacts 100; Zürich 396; Milano p. 648
306
391. NO. 13.
Paris. Juillet 1920. "Ce numéro est entouré d'une dentelle rose." (4)pp. Tabloid large folio. Self-wraps. Glassine cover. Cover drawing by Picabia ("Far-niente beau parti," a poem-cum-mechanical drawing in the style of "Poèmes et dessins de la fille née sans mere"). Texts by Ribemont-Dessaignes ("Manifeste selon Saint-Jean-Clysopompe"), Tzara ("Monsieur Aa l'Antiphilosophe nous envoie ce manifeste") and Picabia ("Extrait de Jesus-Christ Rastaquouère"). Illustrations after Duchamp (his "A regarder d'un oeil, de près, pendant presque une heure," a painted glass construction study for the lower right quadrant of the "Large Glass") and Man Ray ("Lampshade"). Slightly chipped at the intersection of the two folds; in general a fine copy.
Paris, 1920. $3,500.00
Dada Global 167; Ades pp. 146, 153; Gershman p. 54; Chevrefils Desbiolles p. 316; Almanacco Dada 160; Motherwell/Karpel 86; Sanouillet 257; Verkauf p. 183; Düsseldorf 248; Zürich 396; Milano p. 648
307
391. NO. 14.
Paris. Novembre 1920. (8)pp. Tabloid large folio. Self-wraps. Glassine cover. Cover with "Copie d'un autographe d'lngres" and "Dessin dada" by Picabia (the first an actual document re-signed "Francis Ingres," the second an unaltered betting ticket from the racetrack here assuming the character of a ready-made) with chaotically set texts surrounding these on all sides. Texts within by Tzara (excerpt from "La deuxième aventure céleste de Monsieur Antipyrine," "Monsieur Aa fait des signes sténographiques à Monsieur Tzara"; a full-page dada typographic composition entitled "Une nuit d'échecs gras" consisting entirely of advertisements for dada publications; and a scurrilous mock "Interview de Jean Metzinger sur le cubisme," imputing to him all sorts of outrageous remarks), Margueritte Buffet ("Ménagerie consultée un soir de 7bre"), Eluard, Ribemont-Dessaignes ("Salon d'Automne"), Picabia ("Jésus-Christ Rastaguouère," "Notre-Dame-de-la-Peinture," and the fictitious "Carnet du docteur Aisen," in which Picabia nonsensically reports on the purchases of various Citroèns by modern artists, including himself; Docteur Aisen was an American neurologist and a member of the Arensberg circle), Arp ("Extrait de 'la couille d'hirondelle,' his first literary contribution to "391"), Dermée, Arnauld, and Marie de la Hire. Small splits and chips at back fold, and very light wear; in all a fine copy.
Paris, 1920. $4,000.00
Dada Global 168; Ades pp. 146, 153; Gershman p. 54; Chevrefils Desbiolles p. 316; Almanacco Dada 160; Motherwell/Karpel 86; Sanouillet 257; Verkauf p. 183; Dada Artifacts 102; Düsseldorf 249; Milano p. 648
308
[391. NO. 15.] LE PILHAOU-THIBAOU.
Supplement illustré de "391." (16)pp. Tabloid folio. Self-wraps. Glassine cover. Contributions by ‘Funny Guy’ Francis Picabia, Jean Crotti, Ezra Pound, Guillermo de Torre, Cocteau, Duchamp (as Rrose Sélavy: "Si vous voulez une règle de grammaire," being extracts from a letter to Picabia of January 1921, using puns to ridicule grammatical rules), Georges Auric, Céline Arnauld, Pierre de Massot, Clément Pansaers, Gabrielle Buffet, Paul Dermée, et al. "‘Le Pilhaou-Thibaou’ (Editor: Funny Guy) was announced as an ‘illustrated supplement of "391"’ but the only illustration it contains is an extremely rudimentary drawing by Picabia (from ‘Poèmes et dessins de la fille née sans mère’) on the back cover: ‘Monument à la bêtise latine.’ Picabia considered it as no. 15 of the ‘391’ series, temporarily changing the name because of ‘391’s close association with Paris Dada. It is less aggressive in both tone and appearance than the preceding ‘391’s; the typography is still very varied, and some pages look like posters, there are still banner headlines, aphorisms running round the page and texts facing in different directions but the over-all look is more static.
"Neither Ribemont-Dessaignes nor any of the ‘Littérature’ group, naturally, appear, but Picabia gathered new adherents like Ezra Pound and Pierre de Massot. The two poems by Pound were the first to be translated into French.... ‘Pilhaou-Thibaou’ also contains the first mention of Jean Crotti’s movement ‘Tabu,’ restricted to himself and his wife Suzanne Duchamp. ‘And besides DADA has no importance because I am TABU-DADA or DADA-TABU,’ to which Picabia was party as he was all for sowing maximum confusion round Dada" (Ades). An unusually fresh copy.
Paris, 1921. $4,500.00
Ades pp. 146f., 153; Gershman p. 54; Almanacco Dada 160; Chevrefils Desbiolles p. 316; Motherwell/Karpel 86; Sanouillet 257; Verkauf p. 183; Düsseldorf 250; Zürich 396; Milano p. 648
309
TOYEN
Les spectres du désert. Accompagné des textes de Henri Heisler. (26)pp. 12 full-page plates of drawings by Toyen, with text beneath. Lrg. 4to. Wraps. Edition limited to 300 hand-numbered copies in all, printed on buff-colored card stock. Translation from the Czech by Benjamin Péret, with Jindrich Heisler. "It is in Toyen’s three great drawing cycles, ‘The Spectres of the Desert’ (1937-38), ‘The Rifle-Range’ (1939-40), and ‘Hide Yourself War!’ (1944) that the psychological and emotional power of the fragmented or violated image is combined with a sustained vision of a reality now at the mercy of the forces of unreason.... As the image of intellectual and artistic freedom cultivated first by the Devetsil group and then by the Czech Surrealists gave way to overwhelming despair, Toyen turned to an anguished interrogation of the idea of human liberation... ‘The Spectres of the Desert,’ printed in Prague under an imprint of Albert Skira’s obtained through the intervention of Benjamin Péret, is a relentless examination of the precise forms assumed by the specters that had first appeared in her painting during the 1930s and that now haunted her mental landscape, a landscape that would become ever more severe and forbidding in subsequent cycles of drawings. As the world around her crumbled into war, Toyen began to assert a terrifying precise clarity in her drawings that begins to suffocate all vestiges of life around her, freezing birds and animals into cracked shells from which all life and vitality has long since been extruded" (Whitney Chadwick). A fine copy. Rare.
Paris (Editions Albert Skira), 1939. $2,000.00
Chadwick, Whitney: Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, p. 230; Biro/Passeron p. 406; Marseille: La planète affolée, p. 238; Jean p. 263; Houston p. 82; Centre Georges Pompidou: Styrsky, Toyen, Heisler (1982), p. 93
310
TRIBÜNE DER KUNST UND ZEIT
Ein Schriftensammlung. Herausgegeben von Kasimir Edschmid. Nos. 1 - 27 (of 29 published in all), lacking Nos. 15, 21, 23, 24. No. 9 was never published. Dec. wraps. Contents as follows: 1) Edschmid, Kasimir: Über den Expressionismus in der Literatur und die neue Dichtung. 2. Aufl. 2) Hausenstein, Wilhelm. Über Expressionismus in der Malerei. 3) Däubler, Theodor. Im Kampf um die moderne Kunst. 4) Müller-Wulckow, Walter. Aufbau-Architektur! 2. Aufl. 5) Goll, Iwan. Die drei guten Geister Frankreichs. 2. Aufl. 6) Bekker, Paul. Neue Musik. 7) Krell, Max. Über neue Prosa. 8) Schickele, René. Der neunte November. 2.-5. Aufl. 10) Masereel, Franz. Politische Zeichnungen. 11) Wolfradt, Willi. Die neue Plastik. 12) Benn, Gottfried: Das moderne Ich. 13) [Schickele, René, et al.] Schöpferische Konfession. 14) Hartlaub, Gustav. Die neue deutsche Graphik. 16/17) Hiller, Kurt. Geist werde Herr. 18/19) Colin, Paul. Fluch dem Siege. 20) Michel, Wilhelm. Der Mensch versagt. 22) Arcos, René. Abendland. 25) Sternheim, Carl. Tasso oder Kunst des juste milieu. 26) Kolb, Annette. Westliche Tage. 27) Huebner, Friedrich Markus. Die Belebung des Nichts.
Berlin (Erich Reiss), 1919-1923. $1,000.00
Raabe 159; Raabe/Hannich-Bode 60.84; Perkins 163
311
TROST [DOLFI]
La connaissance des temps. (36)pp. 7 full-page plates ("pantographies") in text. Sm. 8vo. Wraps. One of 500 numbered copies from the limited edition of 520. Covers faded at extremities.
[Bucharest] (Surréalisme), 1945. $1,500.00
Ilk K 510, illus. p. 106