Eluard paul

1939 · 31 — <p>Rare and extraordinary double-sided Surrealist binding by Georges Hugnet executed for his own library.<br /><br />He later gave it to Robert Altmann.<br /><br />At the beginning Georges Hugnet mounted a long autograph note offering first-hand details about his production of Surrealist bindings:<br /><br />"This 'book-object' invented for the personal copy of Chanson complète that Paul Éluard had given me is the last I ever made in my workshop on rue de Buci with the help of my bookbinder assistant Louis Christy who died in October 1940. Since then I have never executed any others; the Nazi occupation extinguished this vein in me.<br /><br />Here is the list of 'book-objects' that I still have in my library:<br /><br />Comte de Lautréamont Les Chants de Maldoror 1934<br />G.H. Onan 1934<br />Paul Éluard Défense de savoir 1934<br />André Breton L'Air de l'eau 1935<br />Paul Éluard Facile 1935<br />Hans Bellmer Die Puppe 1935<br />Hans Bellmer a collection of original black-and-white and colour photographs of Bellmer's dolls<br />Raymond Roussel Locus Solus 1937<br /><br />In total between 1934 and 1939 I composed around twenty 'book-objects' which at the time were housed in the libraries of Mme Lise Deharme and Peggy Guggenheim Messrs. Paul Éluard André Breton Robert Valançay P. Bomsel etc. as well as in my own. My 'book-objects' exist only in a single copy with the exception of Défense de savoir which I reproduced in order to offer it to Paul Éluard who desired it and another set of original photographs of Hans Bellmer's dolls commissioned from me after seeing my copy by Robert Valançay.<br /><br />Paris 25 October 1964<br />Georges Hugnet<br /><br />I am happy that the only 'book-object' I can still dispose of enters your library my dear Robert Altmann."<br /><br />Extraordinary "book-object" by Georges Hugnet in one of the 20 copies of Chanson complète illustrated with four lithographs by Max Ernst.<br /><br />Chanson complète is the fourth collaboration between Max Ernst and Paul Éluard following Répétitions Les Malheurs des immortels and Au défaut du silence. It was produced at a time when Éluard had recently been excluded from the Surrealist group by Breton due to his Stalinist positions and several critics have seen in it an act of solidarity by the painter.<br /><br />The volume contains fourteen poems and four lithographs. These are frottage-based works in which the artist's familiar universe reappears: birds animals vegetal forms and female bodies particularly eroticised in the third plate.<br /><br />For this final binding of his invention intended for his personal library Georges Hugnet deployed his full talent in the field. It is imbued with a diffuse eroticism. The hair-like fur framing the algae—or coral—on a pink ground inevitably evokes a female sexual form. One thinks of Étant donnés Marcel Duchamp's final work where a female body is similarly revealed within an ovoid black form.<br /><br />Georges Hugnet's extensive note highlights the rarity of the "book-objects" he created. "The bindings of Georges Hugnet—which are rather ghostly constructions around books—prepare and dress them for the greatest ball of their life" wrote Benjamin Péret in no. 10 of Minotaure Winter 1937.<br /><br />These creations represent both the culmination of "artistic" binding and its ironic subversion. The binding whose execution Hugnet entrusted to his friend Louis Christy a self-taught bookbinder close to the Surrealists who said he had 'made himself among masters who barely knew their craft' becomes a kind of "mental object." It is no longer decoration but the creation of a unique object "the book fulfils its purpose" as he said fully belonging to Surrealist production.<br /><br />Among the "book-objects" mentioned but not precisely listed in Hugnet's note one may also cite Herbe à la lune by Valentine Penrose.<br /><br />Robert Altmann to whom Hugnet gave this copy was the director of the Brunidor publishing house based in New York and later Paris specialising in illustrated books with engravings.<br /><br />Provenance: Jean-Paul Kahn collection.</p> Gallimard