Page 53 - Studio International - March 1973

here), and an index of themes that Matisse talks These works, and the mostly rather later
about. Here one can find every use that he makes paintings to which they relate, provide a crucial DADA, SURREALISM
in these texts of words that are central to his link between European Surrealism and REPRINTED IN FACSIMILE
thought: accord, for example, expression, ordre. American Abstract Expressionism. Masson's
There is also a biographical table and a detailed concept of the distinction between a visionary MAZOTTA EDITORE MILAN
addendum to the basic bibliographies. It is a 'descriptive imagination' and a more gestural, LACERBA No. 1-69 Florence 1913-16. 810 pages.
really valuable book. procedure-based 'plastic imagination' can 2 vols. Edition of 700 slipcased
£40.00
ANDREW FORGE usefully be related to what Pollock seems to LA VOCE FLORENCE 1914-15. 1,638 pages.
3 volumes. Edition of 500
£35.00
have meant when he spoke of expressing his LA RACCOLTA Bologna 1918-19. 146 pages.
feelings rather than illustrating them. There's a Edition of 500 £8.50
VALORI PLASTICI Rome 1918-21. 698 pages,
On paper considerable similarity between the works which Edition of 500 £25.00
Willem de Kooning Drawings by Thomas B. Hess. Masson painted during the early-mid forties DADA SWIZZERO
59 pp. plus I5 colour and 138 monochrome (many of them while he was in New York), and CABARET VOLTAIRE 1916.32 pages. DADA No. 1-8
Zurich. 104 pages. DER ZELTWEG Zurich 1919. 32
illustrations. A Paul Bianchini Book. Seeker & Pollock's 'mythological' works of the same date; pages. 3 Titles slipcased. Edition of 500
£20.00
Warburg. £10.50. this is probably more a matter of compatibility DADA AMERICANO
THE BLIND MEN No.1-2 New York 1917. 24 pages
André Masson Drawings. Introduction by of 'aims' than of direct influence, though RONGWRONG New York 1917. 8 pages. NEW YORK
Michael Leiris. 18 pp. plus 90 illustrations. Pollock could certainly not have avoided seeing a DADA New York 1921. 6 pages. THE RIDGEFIELD
GAZOOK New York 1915. 4 pages. 4 Titles slip-
Thames and Hudson. £10.50. good number of Massons. cased. Edition of 500
£7.50
But it's not hard to isolate the kind of DADA GERMANICO
The de Kooning book is very much the better European characteristics in Masson's drawings CLUB DADA Berlin 1918. 16 pages. DER DADA
No. 1-3 Berlin 1919-21. 30 pages. DADAMETER
value of these two : the text is longer and not to which the Americans must have responded Cologne 1920. 32 pages. DADACO Monaco 1920.
quite so bad; there are more illustrations; far with something less than adulation. Even in the 16 pages. 4 Titles slipcased. Edition of 500 £16.50
DADA FRANCESE
more has been demanded in terms of plate- best of the 'automatic' drawings there seems to CAN I BALE No.1-2 Paris 1920. 32 pages. LE COEUR
making technology; and there is far more to look be a kind of 'pictures-in-the-fire' sensibility at A BARBE Paris 1922. 8 pages. PROJECTEUR Paris
1920. 12 pages. Z1 Paris 1920. 8 pages. LA PO M M E
at and speculate about in the material work which ultimately encourages whimsical DE PINS St. Raphael 1922. 4 pages. 5 Titles slip-
£10.00
reproduced. The Masson drawings were interruptions of rhythm and procedure in cased. Edition of 500
originally issued by a French publisher favour of prestidigitation. There are occasional DADA ITALIANO
BLEU No. 1-3 Mantua 1920-21.24 pages slipcased.
(Hermann); the de Kooning book was first passages of darkly imaginative drawing in the Edition of 500 £5.00
published in Switzerland by Editions des true European surrealist manner (though in
Massons SA; the standards of layout and of many cases the drawings in question are ARNO PRESS NEW YORK
reproduction in the latter are equal to those in surprisingly late in date - often well into the ABSTRACTION, CREATION, ART NON-FIGURATIF
No. 1-5. 1932-36. 224 pages, 365 illustrations £25.00
Bianchini's previous publications on Oldenburg forties): the Fauteuil pour Pauline Borghese of ABSTRACT AND SURREALIST ART IN AMERICA.
and Lichtenstein, i.e. very high indeed. 1938, in which a Leda-like nude is both By Sidney Janis. 1944. 156 pages. 100 illustrations.
£7.50
The French have made so much of so many gripped by and amalgamated into an ART OF THIS CENTURY edited by Peggy Guggen-
indifferent artists over the last three decades anthropoid armchair; or L' Academie de Dessin heim. 1942. 156 pages. 72 illustrations £6.00
AXIS No. 1-8. Edited by Myfawny Evans. 272 pages.
that there's nothing to wonder at in the star of 1940, where a chair-leg becomes a human leg 176 illustrations
£15.00
treatment being thus accorded to Masson. into which the wooden cross-piece is inserted DADA: DOKUMENTE EINER BEWEGNUNG 1958.
£5.00
Certainly Masson's drawings of the twenties (the resultant wound doubles as vagina; 124 pages. 73 illustrations
FANTASTIC ART. DADA, SURREALISM by Alfred
and thirties have long deserved some serious this may have become one of the more standard Barr. 1936. 284 pages. 222 illustrations
£9.00
consideration and publication, but I doubt surrealist devices, but Masson's graphisme - like HISTOIRE DE L'ART CONTEMPORAIN edited by
Rene Huyghe. 1935. 536 pages. 661 illustrations
that the present volume will satisfy the needs Pollock's - makes for a high degree of 'plastic' £38.00
either of the art historian or the connoisseur, integration of disparately emotive elements, so LA REVOLUTION SURREALISTE No. 1-12 edited by
Andre Breton 1924-1929. 516 pages. 219 illustra-
containing as it does too much trivia to justify that the device comes to seem 'normal', rather tions £60.00
the extravagant format and too little material of than hackneyed, in terms of the imagery as a LE SURREALISME AU SERVICE DE LA REVO-
LUTION No. 1-6, directed by Andre Breton 1930-
art-historical interest to justify any other. whole). 1933. 360 pages. 83 illustrations
£30.00
Leiris's introduction is embarrassingly But for all the exhibition of items from a L'ART D'AUJOURDHUI No. 1-6. Edited by Albert
Morance 1924-1929. 1,140 pages. 464 illustra-
continental — as if the best way to introduce an post-Freudian repertoire, Masson's drawings tions £87.50
artist's work were to justify a conviction of evoke an essentially late-Romantic literary MODERN ART: BEING A CONTRIBUTION TO
A NEW SYSTEM OF AESTHETICS 1908. 2 vols.
the fertility of his imagination by means world (like so much European surrealist art; 1,162 pages. 294 illustrations. Index
£35.00
of an exhaustive display of the paucity of one's after all, the movement had some of its strongest MINOTAURE. No. 1-13 published by Albert Skira.
1933-1939. 1,010 pages, 700 illustrations. Index
own. Anything but concise prose. 'The line roots in the literary traditions of neurotic £175.00
presses onwards, as if compressed through a Romanticism). There's a listless Rococo PLASTIQUE No. 1-5. Edited by Hans and Sophie Arp,
1937-1939. 152 pages. 67 illustrations
£7.50
narrow bottleneck all along its course, a thin sensibility at work, as in the Chinoiseries of SOCIETE ANONYME INC. 1920-1944. 790 pages.
£40.00
spurt of wine extending the slender, Saint-Aubin and Pillement. Even Masson's 318 illustrations
SURREALISM by Julian Levy, 1936. 192 pages.
crystalline spout from which it springs - Massacres, spiky drawings of rapes and Illustrations £6.50
probably like the seed of life itself' You can't stabbings (with evident reference to a body of SURREALISM: A STATE OF MIND. 1924-1925.
1966. 64 pages. Illustrations
£3.50
blame that on the translator. subject matter which includes Raphael's THE ISMS OF ART by Lissitsky and Arp 1925. 64
£4.00
There's not a great variety in the drawings - drawings for the Massacre of the Innocents and pages. 74 illustrations
291. No. 1-12. 1915-16. 48 pages
£45.00
many of them obviously pretty inconsequential - Pollaiuolo's Fighting Men), fail to release much THIS QUARTER: SURREALIST NUMBER. 208
£4.00
pages
though they span a period of 36 years (1925- energy or dexterity. They are mostly THE ARTS. 1920-1931. 17 volumes. 5,000 illustra-
1961). Generally speaking, the earlier the inconsequential; somewhere between Thurber tions £480.00
better (though there are two beautiful, and the Vollard Suite. Compare the energy
uncomplicated drawings of harvest in Poitou, released in de Kooning's conglomerate figure
done in the late forties); the so-called 'automatic' drawings of 1945-50, or in Pollock's frenetic
drawings of 1925-26 are like nothing else that works on paper of 1944-46. Both Pollock and IDEA DISTRIBUTION
was done at the time; a rhythmic, romantic de Kooning seem to have had to 'fill in' the 18 Endell Street, London WC2
01-836 0911
counterpart to Ernst's obsessive frottages. surrealist 'dream space', in order, perhaps, to
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