FIRST PAPERS OF SURREALISM
Marcel Duchamp & André Breton et al.
Marcel Duchamp & André Breton et al.: FIRST PAPERS OF SURREALISM. New York: Coordinating Council of French Relief Societies, 1942. Original edition. Text in English and French. Royal octavo. Publishers stapled wrappers by Marcel Duchamp with 5 puched holes as issued. 52 pp. Outer leaves on green paper. Work from over 30 artists organised by André Breton fully illustrated in black and white halftone. Catalog of the first Surrealist exhibition held in the US in which Duchamp exhibited his famous 'mile of string.’ Iconic typo-foto wrappers very lightly worn to stapled edge. Upper edge of last few leaves very faintly dampstained and one page corner fully skinned with minimal loss. No text not artwork affected, thus a very good copy of this landmark catalog.
7.5 x 10.5 exhibition catalog with a foreword by Sidney Janus, an essay by R. A. Parker, some alongside antecedents, with amusing ' compensation portraits' of some artists supplied by Duchamp and various literary quotations scattered throughout.
A nice copy of this important and imaginative catalog for a show held at Reid Mansion between October and November of 1942—the first major exhibition of the group's work in the US, marking the migration of primary figures such as Breton and Duchamp to the States. Visitors to the exhibition itself were greeted by Duchamps's hanging 'mile of string' installation—a web that covered the vast space of the site; here, in playful reference to that piece he is credited as the 'twine' for the catalogue, whilst Breton is given responsibility for the 'hanging.’
For the catalog itself, Duchamp contributes the cover—on the one side a wall riddled with bullet-holes, on the other a close-up of some Swiss cheese—as well as the amusingly specious 'compensation portraits' of some of the featured artists, intended to represent rather than depict. Duchamp and Breton proposed that each artist should choose a "compensation portrait" - an image of someone else - to represent them in the catalog. The title of the exhibition is a joke about the immigration papers that exiled surrealists had to fill in, and the format of the pictures mocks a passport mugshot. Thus the blond dandy Max Ernst becomes a bearded old man, René Magritte an explorer in a pith helmet, Giorgio de Chirico a classical bust. And Duchamp turns out to be a heartbroken, emaciated woman.
Features artwork by William Steig, Hieronymous Bosch, Luis Buñuel, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, Brueghel, Marc Chagall, Roberto Matta, Pablo Picasso, Kurt Seligmann, Max Ernst, André Masson, Leonora Carrington, Giorgio De Chirico, Siegel & Shuster, David Hare, Henri Matisse, Victor Brauner, Morris Hirschfield, Joan Mirò, Kay Sage, Alexander Calder, Wifredo Lam, Richard Oelze, Robert Motherwell, and Gordon Onslow-Ford.
David Hopkins (in the Tate Papers no. 22) describes the exhibition's opening thus:
“. . . wealthy art patrons and members of New York's cultural elite milled around, attempting to make what they could of the strange web or net in which they were caught, peering through it to look at the paintings, while a number of children wove in and out of the guests, eventually carving out a space for themselves in the central area of the exhibition.
“From all accounts the group of children, led by the eleven-year-old Carroll Janis (son of the art collector Sidney Janis), consisted of six boys dressed in baseball, basketball and football attire, who threw balls among themselves, and six girls who played skipping games, jacks and hopscotch. They were under strict orders from Duchamp to carry on playing throughout the event, and to explain, if questioned, that they were playing on Duchamp's instructions.
“Duchamp, incidentally, was nowhere to be seen. As was his custom he had decided not to attend the opening.
“Much like Duchamp's own contribution to the show— his famous "Mile of String", which dominated the exhibit hall, partially obscuring many of the artworks—his catalog, with its five die-cut "bullet" holes in the front wrapper, is itself a small masterpiece of Surrealism, utilizing a slightly bizarre (especially to the average wealthy art patron of 1942) layout with interspersed "portraits" of the artists and cut-up montage techniques, undercutting the conventional function of the exhibition catalog to showcase and promote the work of individual artists, emphasizing instead the event as self-referential spectacle.”
A somewhat ephemeral item in the trade; copies seem to appear irregularly and to disappear quickly.