Category Archives: Artists’ books

Artists’ books

Julio Plaza and Augusto de Campos

Julio Plaza (1938-2003), Objetos Serigrafias Originais; Augusto de Campos Poema (São Paulo: Julio Pacello, 1968-69). Illustrated book with poem and ten cut-and-folded screen prints. Copy VI of 30 ex. FC (outside the trade). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021-in process

 

In the late 1960s, the Brazilian artist Julio Plaza began experimenting with cut and folded paper. “There was the idea of breaking with plastic form and advancing into space,” he remembered. Various models were developed working on stiff white paper, which would eventually be screen printed in bright primary colors.

Augusto de Campos was brought in to write a critical essay as the forward to whatever this book project was going to be but instead, he chose to write concrete poetry integrated into Plaza’s moving shapes. Published as Objetos, these were in fact the first poemóbiles. Plaza and de Campos continued to work on various projects throughout the 1970s and 1980s, including Caixa Preta and many editions of Poemóbiles.

 

 

 

The pages of Objetos are folded and placed inside a colorful slipcase, allowing for the exhibition of individual sheets alone or in multi-layer groups. Although they are usually photographed as perfectly symmetrical geometric forms, they can be seen at a variety of stages of opening or closing, from a variety of angles.

Other projects in paper architecture include Abracadabra by Werner Pfeiffer, Dieter Roth’s Book AC 1958-1964 and various projects by the Dutch graphic artist and resistance fighter Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman, all available in the Graphic Arts Collection at Princeton.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Purvis Young, “People Whit Something To Do”

“Perhaps the most famous painter to ever come out of Florida,” writes Deirdra Funcheon, Washington Post 1/8/2020, “Young had depicted the struggles and joys of Miami’s poor black community and was branded an ‘outsider artist’.” When he died in 2010, he left 1,884 works of art.

Photograph by David A. Raccuglia

It is no longer correct to classify the African American artist Purvis Young (1943-2010) as an Outsider Artist. His work is owned and exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, along with dozens of other major collections, public and private, around the world. In 2018 the artist was posthumously inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.

Self-taught might be a better term, although Young credits the Florida public libraries and their collections of art books as his teachers. And so it is appropriate that one of his unique artists’ books be added to the Graphic Arts collection in Firestone Library. Like his paintings, the volume is made of found material–a repurposed book–crammed with multi-colored pages, collaged drawings, and personal symbolism. A handwritten title reads: People Whit Something To Do, with various pages dated 1981-1988.

 

A wonderful full-length documentary Purvis of Overtown was produced by the Souls Grown Deep Foundation in 2012 and can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/50659708. On March 5, at 12:00 noon EST, Raina Lampkins-Fielder, curator at Souls Grown Deep will deliver the 2021 Griffin Memorial Lecture at Princeton University (through zoom) and tell us more about the Atlanta-based nonprofit that documents, preserves, and showcases art by African-American artists of the American South. Register for the event here: https://libcal.princeton.edu/calendar/events/soulsgrowndeep

 

 


“I been drawing all my life, but I taught myself to paint in the early seventies. I seen people protesting. I seen the war going on. Then I found out how these guys paint their feelings up North, paint on walls. Wall of Respect. That’s when I start painting like that. I didn’t have nothing going for myself. That’s the onliest thing I could mostly do. I was just looking through art books, looking at guys painting their feelings. The first things I painted were heads with halos around them.”

“I started out about 1971 in Goodbread Alley. I wanted to express my own feeling. I wanted the peoples to see it. I put my paintings on a lot of fronts of abandoned buildings. They was fixing to tear them down and build an expressway. I knowed when I was making the art that one day it was going to go. Nothing’s going to last forever.”– Taken from interviews with Purvis Young by William Arnett and Larry Clemons in 1994 and 1995.

 

 

GRRR

In our continuing effort to broaden Princeton’s collection of books by the Chilean-born visual poet Guillermo Deisler (1940-1995), who was imprisoned in 1973 under the Pinochet government before being exiled, the Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired GRRR.

This is a reissue of Deisler’s artists’ book made in Antofagasta (Chile) in 1969, under the imprint Ediciones Mimbre (1963-1973). The current edition is produced by Naranja Publicaciones: “after 50 years of its first publication, 500 copies were made that maintain the narration of the original and different printing techniques such as risography, letterpress, screen printing and stamping have been mixed.” Naranja is a book store, publisher, and specialized collection of artists’ books located in Santiago: https://www.naranjapublicaciones.com/whats-naranja/?lang=en

See other publications by Deisler: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2020/09/01/guillermo-deisler-and-the-peacedream-project/

 


Guillermo Deisler, GRRR (Santiago, Chile: Naranja Publicaciones, 2019). One of 500 copies. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2021- in process

DIGNIDAD


Maria Veronica San Martin, DIGNIDAD, 2020, performance, 07:48 mins. Watch below:

Maria Veronica San Martin is a Chilean-born artist that has resided in the United States since 2010. Her work and her art interests lie primarily in orienting the collective memory of the Chilean population towards the injustices committed under various Chilean regimes, particularly the Pinochet regime and the cruelties committed towards those living in Colonia Dignidad (renamed to Villa Baveria in 1991). San Martin’s art consists of archival works, photographs, etchings, lithographs, and more in a broader pursuit for political progress. She hopes that one day Chile and the Chilean people will unite as one against the injustices they’ve faced. One of the vehicles to get there, especially to Maria Veronica San Martin, is through the use of art as a tool for activism. Through art, she seeks to shed light on human rights abuses and broaden people’s understanding of what it is that has historically happened and has continued to happen in Chile.–https://booklyn.org/maria-veronica-san-martin/

“Dignidad is an artist’s book that documents a two years research-based project on Colonia Dignidad, which highlights the human rights violations committed in an isolated settlement established in the 1960s by Nazis in Chile before and after the dictatorship of Pinochet.”


“‘Everything will be remembered’, a palimpsest” by Ravikumar Kashi

Ravikumar Kashi, ‘Everything will be remembered’ a palimpsest. Bangalore, India, 2020. Unique edition. Etched copper plate filled with printing ink, copper wire. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection is honored to acquire Ravikumar Kashi’s ‘Everything will be remembered’ a palimpsest, one of four finalist for the 2020 Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) Prize, selected by juror Betty Bright from 158 submissions sent from 18 countries. “Established in 2009, this biennial award is meant to represent the diversity of approaches to book art, honoring one winner and four finalists for their unity of form, material, and content.”

Born in Bangalore, India, Ravikumar Kashi (ravikashi.com) studied painting, printmaking, and papermaking under masters in India, Scotland, and Korea. He received a National award from Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi in 2001 and two awards from Karnataka Lalita Kala Academy 1990, 1999 and one from Karnataka Shilpa Kala Academy for his works in 2000. He has also received first prize in ‘Ventipertrenta’, International Festival of Digital Art 2017, from Museo Internazionale Dinamico de Arte Contemporanea, Italy.

 

Note: “The type face of the second layer of the text is an English font called Samarkan, designed to look like a Sanskrit text, and is intended to act as a visual marker for the Indian right-wing practice of quoting ancient texts to gain validation. It is also a simulation of ancient handwritten palm leaf text manuals from India.”

 

Here is a portion of his artist statement for MCBA, beginning with the background for the work:

On 30th May 2019, the Indian right wing party BJP led by Mr. Narendra Modi formed the central government for a second time. Its election campaign was replete with anti- Muslim rhetoric and sloganeering. That same year, on the 12th of December, the Government of India enacted the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). In the weeks following, nationwide protests calling for the repealing the CAA and the foregoing of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which was supposed to precede CAA, were held….

In early 2020, following speeches given by BJP leaders inciting their followers to attack and shoot anti-CAA protesters, riots occurred in North-Eastern Delhi. Beginning on 23 February, and caused chiefly by Hindu mobs attacking Muslims, there were multiple waves of bloodshed, property destruction, and rioting. Of the 53 people killed in three days, two-thirds were Muslims who were shot, beaten, or set on fire in the Indian capital’s deadliest Hindu-Muslim riot since 1950. …


The Work Concept:

My work is a combination of copper plates used historically for documentation and the idea of palimpsest.
Copper plates: In the Madras Museum, located in southern part of India, a series of copper plates from as early as 4th century AD have been preserved and displayed. These copper plates recorded various events of their time for posterity.
Palimpsest: a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing; something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.

In the light of anti-CAA protests and Delhi riots, I wanted to create a copper plate palimpsest for my time , so that the erasure of our constitutional values will not be forgotten.

There are two layers of text in the work. In the partially erased layer seen beneath, is the preamble to the Indian Constitution, declaring its claim to secure justice, liberty, and equality to all citizens, and promote fraternity to maintain unity and integrity of the nation. That layer is being eroded, and replaced with textual details of Delhi riots, narrating the incidents of murder and rampage. There are Slogans of violence like “We will enter the house and beat you up” or “Shoot the traitors”.

…The title for the work ‘Everything will be remembered’ comes from the title of the poem written by anti-CAA activist Aamir Aziz, lines of which were also recently recited by [Roger Waters] of Pink Floyd:



A section of “Everything will be remembered” by Amir Aziz.

Tum Raat Likho Hum Chand Likhenge,
Tum Jail Mein Dalo Hum Deewar Phand Likhenge,
You could write the night, but we will write the moon.
If you put us in jail, we would jump over the walls and still write.

Tum FIR Likho Hum Hain Taiyar Likhenge,
Tum Humein Qatl Kar Do Hum Banke Bhoot Likhenge,
Tumhare Qatl Ke Sare Saboot Likhenge,
If you would lodge an FIR against us, we are all set to write about the injustice we are suffering from.
If you murder us, we will come as the ghosts and still write. We will write mentioning the proofs unveiling the murders you have committed.
We will write mentioning the proofs unveiling the murders you have committed.

…Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega, Sab Kuch Yad Rakha Jayega,
Aur Tumhari Laathiyon Aur Goliyon Se,
Jo Qatl Huwe Hain Mere Yaar Sab,
Unki Yaad Mein Dilon Ko Barbaad Rakha Jayega,
We will remember everything. We will not forget it at all.
The dearest friends of mine who you murdered with lathis (or sticks) & bullets;
In the remembrance of them, we will keep our hearts broken-down. …

Additional reading: Indian antiquary. Bombay, Popular Prakashan [etc.]
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo.31924079325662

Ein Deutsches Wörterbuch

Robert Andrew Parker, Ein Deutsches Wörterbuch (A German Dictionary) (Cornwall, CT: Robert Andrew Parker, 2011). A./P. (artist’s proof). 28 hand colored plates unbound as issued and housed in a cardboard and wood box fabricated by the artist, with “Wörterbuch” stenciled on the cover. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process.

Robert Andrew Parker’s resume includes “hand double” in 1956 for Kirk Douglas’s Vincent van Gogh drawing and painting the art in Lust for Life. An accomplished jazz drummer, Parker not only performs but he wrote and illustrated a biography on jazz musician Art Tatum, Piano Starts Here.

Parker illustrated over 90 children’s books, poetry books, and literary classics. Princeton’s special collections holds around two dozen of these books, beginning with Marianne Moore (1887-1972), Eight poems, written by Marianne Moore; with drawings by Robert Andrew Parker hand-colored by the artist (New York: Museum of Modern Art, [1962]). Edition: 195. Rare Books PS3525.O5616 A17 1962.

Our most recent acquisition is Parker’s German alphabet book, editioned in only 10 copies. An adult alphabet, each letter is matched with a German word and ominous image. T is for Toten Kopf-Husaren (Death’s Head Hussars), other letters hold suggestions of war and pain. In his Print magazine profile “Robert Andrew Parker on Life and Illustration,” Michael Dooley notes:

The German series, originally produced as monotypes in the mid-1980s, is part of Parker’s lifelong preoccupation with war. Born in 1927, he was already sketching combat scenes by the age of ten. And it was his pictures of imaginary battlefields, published in “Esquire” in 1960, that first brought him to national attention. —https://www.printmag.com/post/robert-andrew-parker-on-life-and-illustration

 

Parker is a prolific fine artist and illustrator, with work in hundreds of books and magazines, including the New Yorker, Life, and Forturne (above). Play the wonderful episode of Virtual Memories, no. 283 to hear an interview with Parker:

…based on Elias Canetti’s ‘Auto da Fé’

Ronald King and George Szirtes, The Burning of the Books. A poem sequence by George Szirtes based on Elias Canetti’s novel ‘Auto da Fé,’ illustrated by Ron King. Artist edition (London: Circle Press, 2008). No. 4 of 30. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

Writer George Szirtes and artist Ronald King collaborated on this sequence of 14 poems and 15 etchings, inspired by Elias Canetti’s famously grotesque yet marvelous novel Auto da Fe set in pre-war Vienna. Quoting from the prospectus:

“Back in 1971 Ron King at the press in Guildford tried to obtain permission from the publishers to illustrate Elias Canetti’s great novel Auto da Fé. Permission was denied to him, as to all others who had requested it, as the author did not wish his work to be illustrated or made into a play or film. In 1981 the novel won Canetti the Nobel prize for literature but still the writer would not release his tight grip on the copyright. Canetti died in 1994 and ten years later King took it on himself to persuade George Szirtes winner of the Eliot prize for poetry 2004, to make a book with him on the theme of Auto da Fé. Within a short time poem after poem of a powerful sequence directly related to or inspired by his re-reading of the book, the poems living as it were, in the crevices of Canetti’s text, arrived at the press from Szirtes.”

George Szirtes, Introduction: “The sequence is titled ‘The Burning of the Books’ since that is what happens at the end of Auto da Fé. The scholar’s library burns in anticipation of the Nazi book-burnings to come. The poems are fuel for King’s visual symbiotic-organisms, joining them in a mutual homage-cum-conflagration.”

Elias Canetti (1905-1994), Auto-da-fé [Blendung]; translated from the German under the personal supervision of the author by C.V. Wedgwood (New York: Stein and Day, 1946). ReCAP, 3437.27.313.9

 

 

Originally formed by Ron King in 1967, the Circle Press, is both part of a tradition and a breaker of tradition. The stages of its life are marked not only by the individual natures of those whose books and prints it has published but also by the differing character of the decades through which it has passed. “The name Circle Press was chosen by Ron to suggest his vision of a group of like-minded persons working within a shared, supportive framework, a circle which over the period of time has enlarged to include over 100 artists and poet.” Its past history is documented in Cooking the Books – Ron King and Circle Press. See also: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41826501

 

 

 
George Szirtes, “What being bilingual means for my writing and identity,” The Guardian Mary 3, 2014. Hungarian-born poet George Szirtes writes in both English and his native tongue. He contemplates bilingualism and belonging:

Sometimes language seems no more than a piece of tissue paper carried on the wind: flimsy, semi-transparent, endlessly vulnerable, like a deflated talks-bubble, almost weightless. At other times it is a brick wall, or worse still a room with dense walls and no exit, with only the sense of voices beyond the wall, faintly audible and never clear enough, everything they say immediately becoming part of the wall. Always provisional, language appears this or that way to us according to our own disposition and relation to it. … https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/03/george-szirtes-bilingual-poetry-translation

Maple Leaf Rag

Scott Joplin (ca. 1868–1917) and Ellen Banks (1938-2017), Maple Leaf Rag (Atlanta: Nexus Press, 1988). One folded sheet; 35 cm in case 46 cm. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

Photo by Kalman Zabarsky for Boston University

 

After seeing her work, no one would be surprised to learn that one of Ellen Banks’ earliest influences was Piet Mondrian. In his essay, “Ellen Banks: The Geometries of the Score,” Graham Lock notes that she “paints nothing but music—not as heard but taken directly from the score and transformed, via a system of personal symbolism, into colors and shapes: ‘Music is my still life, my landscape, my nude.’ Banks is unique … in taking music as the sole subject of her art. Her approach is highly unusual too: her canvases are based not on the sound or performance of music but on musical scores.”

Although primarily a painter, Banks editioned this artists’ book [above] transferring her understanding of Scott Joplin’s notation into color and pattern. It is her visualization of sound in shape and embodiment of tone in hue.

Last two verses of The Maple Leaf Rag
Composition by Scott Joplin 1899; Lyrics by Sydney Brown 1903

The men were struck wit’ jealousy, the razors ‘gan to flash
But de ladies gathered ’round me for I’d surely made a mash
The finest belle, she sent a boy to call a coach and four
We rode around a season ’till we both were lost to reason

Oh go ‘way man, I can hypnotize this nation
I can shake the earth’s foundation wit’ the Maple Leaf Rag
Oh go ‘way man, just hold you breath a minute
For there’s not a stunt that’s in it with the Maple Leaf Rag

https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/4695627/Scott+Joplin/Maple+Leaf+Rag

Alisa Banks’ Fire

 

Alisa Banks, Fire (Dallas, Texas: A Bee Press, 2020). No. 1 of 4. Wool, silk, cotton, thread, paper, wax, ink, and dye with handwritten text. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

Visual artist Alisa Banks writes, “… my work addresses the quest for understanding identity and all it encompasses. … Each individual, quiet story coalesces to form a cultural memory that is shaped by experience, ritual, belief, places and relationships, and is called upon to explore connections. …It continues when stories that reference culture, the body, memory, and place are shared. It continues when an object relays an experience, either by paint, thread or paper. It continues.”

The Graphic Arts Collection acquired our first book in Banks’ elemental series. “Part autobiography, part auto-biology, elemental focuses on aspects of identity in relation to the elements Earth, Fire, Air and Water. In each, the viewer is invited to dig through layers that are sometimes easily accessible and sometimes not.”

Fire is the last of this series.

 


 

Based in Dallas, Texas, Banks produced each book in an edition of only four copies. Fire is fashioned of wool, silk, cotton, thread, paper, wax, ink, and dye with handwritten text. Pamphlet cover with pockets containing an envelope with a scroll, inner envelope, and paper rock. The artist notes, ”Fire – orange to red, to blue, to white – is both intimate and universal. Fire catches and holds on to matter, consuming it until it is transformed into something else, an essence. Fire is mesmerizing, in turn lulling and igniting fervor. In religion and mythology, it is the element that represents awareness and consciousness.”

 

 

“Fire features stories of the transformative power of action, understanding, and experience. A fabric envelope features text about fire and transformation. The envelope is opened to reveal a scroll that features an account of desegregating an elementary school. The story unfolds to reveal another fabric envelope featuring an account of the transformative power of motherhood. Inside the envelope is a paper rock that speaks to the unboundedness of love.”

 

https://www.alisabanks.com/news

https://www.alisabanks.com/body

 

 

 


Poésie pour pouvoir

Henri Michaux (1899-1984), Poésie pour pouvoir. Text and frontispiece by Michaux. Design and linocuts by Michel Tapié (Paris: René Drouin, 1949). Copy XII of 46, signed by Henri Michaux et Michel Tapié. Teak wood portfolio printed with the title and fitted with 34 steel nails. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process. Provenance: Collection of Geneviève and Jean Paul Kahn.

Is there a way to release the magic of poetry stagnating within conventional printed literature? Can you make a book with the power to exorcise a condition or complaint? These are some of the questions that led to Poésie pour pouvoir, with poetry by Henri Michaux (1899-1984) integrated into pictorial linocuts by Michel Tapié (1909-1987) and published in February 1949 by Galerie René Drouin in Paris.

Only a handful of copies of this singular “book-object” as Michaux and Tapié conceived it with the nailed wood cover were completed, in fact only two others can be found in North America besides the one now held in the Graphic Arts Collection at Princeton University.

A seminal work of post-war Paris, the story of Poésie pour pouvoir’s production is also magical. It began in the late 1930s with Michel Tapié’s involvement in “Les Réverbères,” a neo-Dada group, which led to his collaboration with Aline Gagnaire on the hand-printed publications Le Cheval de 4 and Deda L-E. Tapié eventually joined René Drouin’s gallery as artistic advisor, focusing on the promotion of a wide circle of artists that included Henri Michaux.

 

In 1947, Henri Michaux and his wife traveled to Egypt, where the magical power of hieroglyphics inspired the poems, “Je rame” and “À travers mers et desert.” These texts went unpublished until Tapié proposed to “put them into a space in the form of a book-object.”

Using the crisp, quick black and white technology of linoleum block printing that Tapié perfected while working with the Réverbères, he designed and cut Michaux’s words so they fluctuated between white text on black shapes and black text on white pages incorporated with his own abstract figures. The majority of the 46 copies were produced with only a paper cover.


A full recounting of the year leading up to February 1949, when the final work was exhibited at Drouin’s gallery, can be found in Tapié essay “Commentary on an exorcism,” Les Cahiers de la pléiade 1950.

“…. Mon projet de départ était de graver ce texte sur lino, le lino étant la technique la plus brutale et la plus directe des violentes oppositions de noir et de blanc, et de présenter l’ensemble des tirages dans une couverture de bois clouté, l’ensemble du travail étant jour par jour suivi et approuvé par Henri Michaux; L’esprit d’aventure qui préside aux activités de René Drouin poussa celui-ci à accepter le risque d’édition avec enthousiasme, et il mit l’équipe de sa galerie à notre disposition pour une rapide réalisation. Rapide en effet il le fallait; Michaux nous avait bien prévenus: si nous n’allions pas vite, le poème, lui, irait plus vite que nous et se retournerait contre nous… je pus assez vite graver tous les éléments n nécessaires à l’édification de la maquette complète.

The book’s construction took place at the Drouin family farm, under the daily supervision of Michaux. René Drouin (1905-1979) chose the arrangement of the nails on the covers, Aline Gagnaire (Tapié’s former collaborator) pieced together the wooden cover, and Drouin’s son, Jean-Claude, cut the nails to be hammered into the cover (originally plywood and only later teak wood).

Tapié was almost done with his share of the printing when he became ill and could not finish, leaving it to Gagnaire to complete the book. So many things went wrong, they called it was a cursed project, fueling the myth of a magical book.


As for his part, Michaux wrote:

 “La force exceptionnellement opératoire de ce poème, jointe au fait de son élection unique, centrant justement sur ce texte toutes les intentions d’intervention-de pouvoir-de l’auteur, me donna une furieuse envie d’en faire une édition où je tenterais de forcer les usages du livre dans le même rapport d’échelle qu’Henri Michaux l’avait fait ici par rapport non pas seulement à la poésie, mais même, comme je ne le sentis d’ailleurs que bien plus tard, à l’usage, par rapport à ses plus efficients exorcismes. Le problème consistait à fabriquer un objet receleur de force supportant ce texte de sorte que sa vue, son contact, tant épidermique que musculaire provoque au maximum l’expansion effective de cette force, puisque magie il y avait.

 

It is a tragedy that OCLC no longer allows local notes. To find copies that include the rare nailed wood cover, a reader must log into every library in the world individually. Otherwise they would not know, for instance, that Houghton Library has copy no. V with “unbound sheets, as issued, laid into original printed paper covers; in original hinged wooden boards, with title printed on cover, decorated with metal studs. In burlap-covered board slipcase.”

It was Tapié’s idea to pound nails into the wooden binding using the same aggressive energy as Michaux’s incantatory texts. The action references the practices of the Romans, who manufactured defixion or curse tablets, as well as African practices of incorporating nails into power figures called nkisi nkondi. The physical hammering of the nails into Poesie pour pouvoir was meant to embed magical powers into the book, just as Tapié’s pictographs unleashed the power in Michaux’s words.

 


Galerie René Drouin closed in 1950 (later revived in a different format), Michel Tapié went on to promote Art informel, from which Michaux distanced himself, continuing to draw and write in his own personal style. No other magic book-objects were attempted.

 

For more on this and other works by Michaux, see Raymond Bellour’s Henri Michaux Ouvres Complete (Gallimard, “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade”, 1998), https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x004550124&view=1up&seq=1276&q1=%22poesie%20pour%20pouvoir%22

Henri Michaux (1899-1984), Commentaire d’un exorcisme ([Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1950?]). Beach 3269.96.325. Presentation copy to Sylvia Beach with inscription by Henri Michaux.

 Le Cheval de 4 (Paris: M. Tapié, A. Gagnaire, J. Jausion, H. Bernard, 1940). Graphic Arts Collection Q-000727. Issued in 4 fascicles. Each has a separate title: [no. 1] “Le Cheval de 4” (“tirage limité à 26 ex. hors commerce et 6 ex. de luxe”) ; [no. 2] “Dédal-e” (“Tirage limité à 28 ex. hors commerce et 3 ex. de luxe”) ; [no. 3] “Huit poèmes pour Cécile / Noël Arnaud” (tiré à 150 ex. environ dont 35 de luxe) ; [no. 4] “Expédition Tapié” (tiré à 27 ex.).

 

 

Also designed by Michel Tapié while at Galerie René Drouin: Francis Picabia (1879-1953), 491 (Paris, René Drouin, 4 mars 1949). Marquand Oversize ND553.P58 T36 1949e. “50 ans de plaisirs” par Michel Tapié. Catalog in newspaper format issued Mar. 4, 1949 for Picabia exhibition of 136 works dated 1897-1949.

 

A section of Poetry for Power in translation:
I row
I have cursed your brow your belly your life
I have cursed the streets your steps pursue
The objects your hand grasps
I have cursed the inside of your dreams

I have put a puddle in your eye and it no longer sees
An insect in your ear and it no longer hears
A sponge in your brain and it no longer understands

I have chilled you in the soul of your body
I have frozen you in the depth of your life
The air that you breathe suffocates you
The air that you breathe has an air of cellars
Is an air that has already been exhaled that hyenas have expelled

The dung of this air no one can breathe any longer

Your skin is moist all over
Your skin sweats the sweat of the great fear
Your armpits exhale from afar an odor of crypts
The animals halt when you pass
The dogs howl in the night their heads raised toward your house