The livre d'artiste in Twentieth-Century France

Abstract

Il n'est d'explosion qu'un livre Stéphane Mallarmé Until the end of the nineteenth century, the descriptive or imitative model — Horace's ut pictura poesis — predominated in the practices and accounts of book illustration. Priority was given to the text, the illustrator, usually a professional engraver, providing a visual equivalent of a theme or episode of the narrative. Traditional illustration has been considered as a ‘meta-text […] a means of “writing” upon another text that makes it legible in different ways’, translating or paraphrasing the text.2 This logocentric conception of the illustrated book began to break down with Rimbaud and Mallarmé (‘Je suis pour — aucune illustration’)3 in poetry, and Cézanne in painting. Freed from the constraints of textual linearity and the imperatives of pictorial representation, poet and painter explored new concepts of poetic space and pictorial autonomy, and as a consequence dependence on a text or image was replaced by the poem or image's freedom to cohabit, alternate or clash with the other medium. Professional illustrators were replaced by painters as ‘alliés substantiels’ (René Char) of the poets.4 ‘Pour collaborer, peintres et poètes se veulent libres. La dépendance abaisse, empêche de comprendre, d'aimer’, writes the poet Paul Éluard.5Parallèlement, with poems by Paul Verlaine and lithographs by Pierre Bonnard, published in 1900 by Ambroise Vollard, art-dealer turned publisher, is generally considered the first modern collaboration between an artist and a poet. Produced on fine papers with original engravings, these books revive fine printing techniques such as stencilling and lithography. They are generally unbound (en feuilles), cased or boxed. Resisting the industrialization of the book, they are usually limited editions (20–50 copies). Occasionally, however, artists and poets privilege mechanical reproduction (for example, Blaise Cendrars and Ferdinand Léger's La Fin du monde filmé par l'ange N.D., Sirène, 1919, 1225 copies). François Chapon, former director of the Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet, who has written extensively on the subject, uses the bibliophile term livre illustré or grand livre illustré to designate these luxury publications. He singles out the art historian and gallery owner Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884–1979) who transformed the traditional illustrated book into ‘la rencontre du peintre et du poète’ on equal terms, bringing together avant-garde artists and poets in about 80 books published under his imprint Éditions de la Galerie Simon.6 W.J. Strachan uses the term livre d'artiste to distinguish the twentieth-century book from its earlier realizations. Michel Butor also uses the term to designate his own production, more than 500 books produced in collaboration with artists.7 Art historian Yves Peyré prefers the term livre de dialogue, which he defines as ‘l’égalité de deux expressions dans le surgissement d'une forme nouvelle'.8 Peyré's term livre de dialogue has the advantage of giving equal importance to the two collaborators (in contrast with livre illustré, livre d'artiste or livre de peintre which might suggest a hierarchy); moreover, it encompasses books by a single artist, such as Max Ernst's collage-novels or Joan Miró's Le Lézard aux plumes d'or (1971). The principal studies in the field are essentially historical, presenting a chronicle and inventory of the livre d'artiste.9 It is noteworthy that the publisher is often given the central role, both in these historical accounts and in exhibitions of the livre d'artiste.10 Considered as ‘architecte du livre’ (Chapon), ‘bâtisseur’ (Peyré) or ‘maître d'œuvre’ (Pierre Berès), the publisher forms a ‘colloque des trois’ (Michel Leiris) with the poet and painter.11 Publisher and artist Gervais Jassaud (Collectif Génération, Paris) goes further, underscoring the active role of the publisher, who creates the concept of the book, and ‘marries’ the author with the artist.12 Breaking with the bibliophilic tradition of the (grand) livre illustré, the artists book is designed as a ‘democratic multiple’.13 Conceived, produced and often published by the artist (for example, Jacques Clauzel, Luis Casinada, Pierre Lecuire), it uses technological printing innovations (offset, facsimile, photocopy) and favours photographic images. Originating with Fluxus (Dieter Rot) and conceptual art (Ed Ruscha, Art and Language), the artists book developed primarily in the USA in the 1960s–1980s, but also in France with artists such as Robert Filliou, Annette Messager and Christian Boltanski.14 The medium of the book itself is central to the artists book, defined by Anne Moeglin-Delcroix, for instance, as ‘un livre qui est par lui-même une œuvre et non moyen de diffusion d'une œuvre’.15 The artists book thus also has a critical role as a reflection on the form and function of the book. While for Moeglin-Delcroix it preserves the sequentiality and seriality of the codex (as in Anne and Patrick Poirier's Les Paysages révolus, 1975), for others it constitutes a subversion of the book or ‘anti-book’ precisely thanks to its assault on the constraints of the codex.16 For example, Marcel Broodthaers, in Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard: image (1969), appropriates and blocks out Mallarmé's poem, thus radically questioning the limits and legibility of the text. Indeed, for one critic, the genre risks being a mere alibi in the face of ‘analphabétisme rampant’ among contemporary artists.17 Finally, the livre objet, as a limit-form of the artists book, both references and resists the form and function of the book.18 Through its shapes (Filliou's brick, Bertrand Dorny's pyramid, Gérard Duchêne's Livre-boule or Sylvia Echar's Livre sphérique) and materials (marble, cloth, gaufrette, plaster …), it raises questions similar to those generated by the artists book but often in a more radical mode, relating first to genre (object or book?) and second to aim (subversion or sublimation of the book?).19 Hence, for some art historians, book objects are a category of the object (Moeglin-Delcroix), linked to sculpture or installation art (Drucker), which might explain why they are often left out of histories of the book, as well as why they are often displayed in museums rather than libraries. For others, they belong resolutely to the category of the book (Peyré). As for their aim, as a reflection on the book the livre objet has been considered an object of ‘bibliophilie … ou biblioclastie’.20 Here, as a ‘livre détourné’ (Eric T. Haskell and Renée Riese Hubert) or a ‘livre dépravé’ (Gilbert Lascault), it encompasses both the destruction and renewal of the concept of the book.21 ‘Je veux les ouvrir à une parole nouvelle’, writes Max Sauze about his own livres objets, such as Livre brûlé et grillagé (1981).22 Definitions remain open to challenge, nevertheless. ‘Appelez ça comme vous voulez, moi je m'en fous’, protested Pierre André Benoit during a debate on the livre d'artiste.23 As the various definitions outlined above show, the livre illustré, livre de dialogue, artists book and livre objet have been considered both as distinctive categories and as overlapping modalities of the twentieth-century livre d'artiste. On the one hand, Moeglin-Delcroix proposes an exclusive definition of the artists book, limiting it to the 1960s–1980s (thus leaving out works such as Jean Dubuffet's 1948 Ler dla campane, although it has all the characteristics of the artists book – text and illustrations were produced by the artist, who published the book in his own imprint, L'Art brut). On the other hand, Noëlle Batt proposes a flexible definition of the livre d'artiste through the limits (‘les bornages’) of the genre, locating at one end of the spectrum the traditional livre illustré and at the other the livre objet.24 The diversity of definitions and boundaries suggests that the difference between the categories lies less in the nature of the work than in the subtleties of critical discourse, and that the livre d'artiste remains a proteiform genre, open to innovative forms. Focus on the material book has developed with more recent scholarship on materiality in the avant-garde (informed by art critics like Rosalind Krauss and Yves-Alain Bois), and with growing interest in genetic criticism. In contrast with logocentric concepts of the illustrated book, critical discourse in this category engages with books as corporeal objects: ‘tous mettent en scène le corps du livre’, claims artist and publisher Jassaud about his own production.25 ‘Un livre doit avoir toute la dignité d'une sculpture taillée dans le marbre’, wrote Miró in a letter to the publisher Gérald Cramer in 1948, underscoring both the making of the book as a creative process and its material reality.26 Strachan and Chapon are among the few critics to have focused on the technical aspects of book production. They give accounts, for example, of the role of engravers and printers, such as Féquet et Baudier for wood-engraving process, Leblanc and Lacourière for copper-engraving, Mourlot for lithographic printing.27 Drawing on letters, studies and interviews, other studies have explored in detail the production of individual books, such as A toute épreuve (1958), a collaboration between Miró, Eluard and Cramer; Max Ernst's collage books; or Butor's collaborations with Pierre Alechinsky.28 Bindings, in single copies or limited editions, enhance the book as a material object, appealing not only to the eyes but also to the sense of touch. The recurrent image of the hand on Paul Bonet's bindings for surrealist books, for instance, underscores the tactile quality of the book. The cover for the exhibition catalogue Le Surréalisme en 1947 (Galerie Maeght), produced by Marcel Duchamp and Georges Hugnet, features a rubber breast with the caption ‘Prière de toucher’. While little critical attention has actually been given to bookbinding,29 the tactile qualities of the book have been celebrated by both critics and artists. In ‘L'Art et le livre’, Butor writes: Nous allons tourner autour du livre et donc du texte. Notre corps tout entier entre en danse. Le toucher importe […] Il y a quelque chose que j'explore d'un côté de l'oeil, de l'autre avec les doigts […] La manipulation du livre nous donne une expérience tactile extrêmement importante.30 ‘Perhaps the hardest thing about the artist's book is to find the right way to talk about it’, writes Dick Higgins.32 I have suggested that studies of the livre d'artiste have been largely taxonomical (definitions) or historical (chronological inventories). Because of its existence as a novel semiotic reality, combining two distinct yet related modes of expression, studies of individual collaborations have to date only tentatively contributed to a critical methodology of the livre d'artiste.33 As a consequence, critique of the genre is often largely metaphorical. Poets and artists refer to the encounters between texts and paintings as ‘illuminations’ (Miró and Eluard), ‘illunations’ (Camille Bryen and Laforgue) or ‘révélations’ (Ernst and Eluard), ‘un collage’ (Ernst) or ‘un mariage’ (Jassaud). Similarly, critics allude to the collaboration as ‘une configuration d'emmêlements’ (François Rouan), ‘un entrelacs des extrêmes’ (Peyré), ‘le lieu d'une musique complexe’ (Dominique Fourcade), or ‘une alchimie de l'écriture et de la peinture’ (Edmond Nogacki). Among recurrent images one encounters those relating to architecture, music and light (Samson-Le Men), but also weaving and alchemy. This type of rhetoric should not be dismissed as merely subjective, however; its frequency suggests it should be considered in a critical light. Indeed, Hugo Caviola goes so far as to argue that metaphors, structured on similarity and difference, have the ‘power to bridge discursively distinct universes’.34 The livre d'artiste, similar in structure to that of metaphor, invites a rhetorical discourse, which remains however an aesthetic category, lacking the precision of abstract language. A more objective, because historically grounded, approach has been to situate the livre d'artiste within its contemporary literary and artistic context. Work in this group identifies a common denominator such as a historical style or thematic or iconic analogies. Studies of cubist, Futurist or surrealist books, for example, have explored a common paradigm that unifies texts and images — cubism and collage, Futurism and simultaneity, surrealism and the disjunctive image.35 Analyses of Apollinaire and Derain's L'Enchanteur pourrissant (1909) have compared the texts and images through, for example, the poet and painter's shared symbolist aesthetic, or the concept of primitivism.36 Such inter-art comparisons seek to identify a unifying principle whereby text and image share a single creative principle or paradigm that transcends pictorial or textual specificity. As an example of ‘synchronic historiography that attempts to lay bare a period metaphor’,37 this type of approach synthesizes various disciplinary perspectives, glossing over the specificity of the media. Moreover, as an example of a homogenizing discourse, it contrasts with the aesthetics of difference, discussed below. Informed by Roland Barthes's ‘Rhétorique de l'image’, Alain-Marie Bassy elaborates a semiotic reading of the traditional illustrated book. Basing his analysis on an illustration of Jean de La Fontaine's Fables, he identifies two poles: ‘image emblématique et allégorique’ (corresponding to Barthes's relais) and ‘l'illustration des temps modernes’ (ancrage).38 Rather than providing a ‘relay’ or ‘anchorage’ for the text, however, the image in the modern livre d'artiste is both interlinked with and independent of the text. Whereas inter-art comparison links poem and painting through analogy, semiotic analysis proposes homological links between verbal and pictorial elements, grounded on similar or parallel structures. In this approach the object of study is the ‘text’, whether linguistic or iconic, and its objective is to give an account of the relations between two distinctive yet interrelated semiotic systems. This is the case, for example, in Véronique Perriol's 2002 study of Supports en surface (1972), a work which combines Robert Rauschenberg's lithographs with Alain Robbe-Grillet's manuscript text. Perrol argues that text and image share similar structures, such as mise en abyme, intertextuality, quotation, collage.39 Such an approach respects the specificity — visual, verbal — of each of the elements correlated. The important literature in critical theory on the opposition between poetry and painting, from Lessing to Foucault and Deleuze, underlines the irreducibility of seeing and saying, showing and telling, display and discourse.40 In more poetic terms, Peyré raises the question of the ‘androgynous’ nature of the livre de dialogue. Are we dealing with two realities or a single reality? Is the double being created metaphorical or literal? Are words and images complementary or hybrid?41 What, finally, is the nature of this monster, asks Dessons, ‘entité tératologique: objet à deux têtes, deux corps, quatre mains’?42 While traces of the nineteenth-century concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, unifying poetry, painting and music, are still visible in the metaphorical language of present-day critics (in images such as weaving or alchemy), avant-garde aesthetics tends to focus on the principle of heterogeneity of the visible and the readable. Word and image both collude and collide on the page, in an encounter grounded on the Foucauldian principle of difference and différance: Mais le rapport du langage à la peinture est un rapport infini […] Ils sont irréductibles l'un à l'autre: on a beau dire ce qu'on voit, ce qu'on voit ne loge jamais dans ce qu'on dit, et on a beau faire voir, par des images, des métaphores, des comparaisons, ce qu'on est en train de dire, le lieu où elles resplendissent n'est pas celui que déploient les yeux, mais celui que définissent les successions de la syntaxe.43 Critics often develop an organic metaphor of the generative process in this context to account for the close relations, within difference, between two heterogeneous modes of expression. In her discussion of Parler seul (1948), for example, R. R. Hubert argues that Tzara's text ‘détermine ou génère chez Miró des gestes […] le texte met en branle le geste du peintre’.47 Similarly, Georges Raillard uses the term appropriation when referring to a text written by André Breton to accompany Miró's gouaches Constellations: enthused by his fascination for these gouaches, Breton is shown to be pursuing his own heady poetic and erotic trajectory, referring only indirectly to the pictorial stimulus that initially gave to his The poet thus less a than a the original pictorial This type of is also by who pictorial or the own verbal or pas le que du de je ne pas le mais la production. dans les pas de la The livre d'artiste as a genre to as by the book as the du livre en in by the Bibliothèque in as well as the of as who one or two books a the critical the livre d'artiste has been and definitions and analysis of individual collaborations a of questions relating to the field remain questions relating to the material is the role of the the engraver, the the in the production of the the material specificity of the work its the by display techniques the of the livre a of by the of and image on the remain to be explored for example, to of collage and to a critical analysis of the livre Finally, on a more the in the and the has a from the of to a growing interest in for a more is also for example the recent Le Livre et Le et le which together from the of book art and literary as well as artists and the critical field still remains largely an of distinct of as yet only tentatively

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