VERVE
AN ARTISTIC AND LITERARY QUARTERLY
Vol. 1, No. 1: December 1937
E. Teriade [Directeur]
E. Teriade [Directeur]: VERVE: AN ARTISTIC AND LITERARY QUARTERLY APPEARING IN DECEMBER, MARCH, JUNE AND OCTOBER. Paris [6e]: 4 Rue Ferou, 1937 [Volume 1, Number 1; December 1937]. First English edition [texts translated by Robert Sage]. A very good perfect bound soft cover magazine with thick printed wrappers and minor shelf wear including a sunfaded spine and age toning. Contents have separated from the cover. Slight staining on the FEP -- bleeds through to the contents' first page, but does not occlude the text. American distributor's gold star-shaped sticker on the title page. MISSING the second page of "Four Pages of Colored Reproductions: Watteau, Detroy, Corot, Delacroix, Courbet, David" [NO Courbet or David]. Otherwise, interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print.
Cover specially composed for Verve's first issue by Henri Matisse. Typography and process color work: Imprimerie des Beaux-Arts. Heliogravure in colors: Draeger Freres. Heliogravure in Black and White: Neogravure. Lithography: Mourlot Freres.
10.25 x 14 perfect-bound magazine with well-illustrated pages. Verve proposes to present art as intimately mingled with the life of each period and to furnish testimony of the participation by artists in the essential events of the time. It is devoted to artistic creation in all fields and in all forms. . . . The luxuriousness of Verve will consist in the publication of documents as fully and as perfectly as possible.
Contents
The Four Elements, Water -- Lithograph by Fernand Leger
A Few Reflections on the Disappearance of the Subject in Sculpture and Painting by Andre Gide
The Four Elements, Air -- Lithograph by Joan Miro
Henri Matisse's Aviary in His Paris Studio: Photographic Documents by Brassai
Celestial Tresses: Photographs by Man Ray, Blumenfeld and Cartier
Van Gogh as Prometheus by Georges Bataille
Le Bal des Sauvages: Fragments of a Fifteenth Century Tapestry
Reality in Eighteenth Century painting by Rene Huyghe
Four Pages of Colored Reproductions: includes Watteau, Detroy, Corot, Delacroix, Courbet, David [These pictures were shown at the Exhibition of the Masterpieces of French Art at the Palais National des Arts, Paris, 1937.] -- SECOND PAGE IS MISSING, NO Courbet or David
The Blood of the Martyrs by Maurice Heine: Documents relating to the assassinations of Marat and Le Pelletier, reproductions of two portraits drawn by David and of the only existing copy of the engraving executed from the destroyed picture of David representing Le Pelletier after his assassination
The Birth of Lucifer by Roger Caillois
The Four Elements, Fire -- Lithograph by Rattner
Fire by John Dos Passos
Murder by Federico Garcia Lorca
Guernica by Picasso: Photographed by Dora Maar in Picasso's studio
The Museum of Marvels by Jose Bergamin
The Four Elements, Earth -- Lithograph by Bores
Psychology of Art by Andre Malraux: Trans. From French by Stuart Gilbert
Sixteen pages of heliogravure reproductions of photographs by Bovis, Gil, Man Ray, Gos, Eli Lotar, Cartier, Makowska, Florence Henri, Nora Dumas, Brassai, Blumenfeld, Zucca
Chinese Portrait by Henri Michaux
Photographs: Eight pages of heliogravure reproductions of hitherto unpublished photographs by Louis Guichard
Why Build Only Square Houses? Documents relative to C. N. Ledoux, French Architect of the eighteenth century
The Impulse of Personality by E. Minkowsky
Reflections on the Subject of Painting by Ambroise Vollard
Divagations: Reproductions of a Series of Drawings by Henri Matisse on the theme of revery [5 pages with 5 line drawings]
Four Pages of Colored Reproductions: Nude by Henri Matisse, Still-life by Andre Derain, Interior by Bonnard, Four Studies by Maillol [These pictures were shown at the Exhibition of the Masters of Independent Art at the Petit Palais, Paris, 1937]
Sixteen pages of Heliogravure Reproductions: Aristide Maillol, Marly-le-roi 1937, Photographs by Brassai and Blumenfeld
Maillol and his model by Judith Cladel
Exposition 1937: Text and Drawings by Fernand Leger [1 page with 6 line drawings]
Epitome of French Art from the Earliest Times to the Future by Maurice Raynal
Letters Written by Cezanne as a Youth to Emile Zola: Hitherto unpublished letters and drawings by Cezanne
Equivalences by Elie Faure
Four Large Plates in Color and Gilt, full-size heliogravure reproductions of paintings taken from manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris: Love's Game of Chess, The Triumph of Love, End of the Tournament at Bruges, The Virtues and the Vices -- some foxing on the pages with description, but NOT on the Plates [These illuminations were shown at the Exhibition of the Most Beautiful French Manuscripts from the Eighth to the Sixteenth Centuries at the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 1937. The four plates are presented by Emile A. Van Moe
Heliogravure is praised by connoisseurs . . . because of the incomparably rich palette of blacks and shades of gray, the breadth of tonal range, and its exquisite expressiveness. Despite these qualities, Heliogravure has pretty much disappeared over the last fifty years: the costly and time-consuming traditional heliogravure technique has been abandoned in favor of cheaper, faster modern industrial printing methods, such as offset and rotogravure.
Heliogravure belongs to the same family of intaglio printing techniques as engraving, etching and aquatint. As such, it requires an especially good quality of thick paper, one that can draw out the ink from the furthest recesses of the etched copper. In like manner, the plate embosses the finished prints, for its form is impressed into the dampened paper as they pass together through the rollers. Printed by hand in limited quantities, each heliogravure is considered an original, and its value is accordingly assured.
Excerpted from the website for DTMAGAZINE [Magazine of the Week: Paris and the Art World of the Late 1930s in Verve magazine by Rick Gagliano, 10/12/06]. "When it comes to quality in the magazine process, possibly no other magazine can match the work of publisher Efstratios Teriade (born in Greece as Efstratios Eleftheriades) and his seminal publication, 'Verve' -- once called 'the most beautiful magazine in the world' by one of its backers - which first burst onto the streets of Paris in December of 1937 . . . . Teriade, an ex-law student with more zeal for the art world and publishing than the law worked variously with fellow countryman Christian Zervos on Cahiers d'Art (1926-31), as art critic for the newspaper L'Intransigeant (1928-33), artistic director of Minotaure (1933-36) and co-founder (1935-36) of La Bete Noire before founding Verve with the financial assistance of David Smart, publisher of Esquire and Apparel Arts. . . . The magazine, a quarterly review of arts and letters, was lavish in design and challenging in content. Teriade's view of the world of art and literature was personal, bold and compelling. The 38 issues that proceeded through Europe's war-torn years and ended abruptly in 1960 were a promenade of covers and interior art by Chagall, Bonard, Matisse, Picasso, Braque, and other distinctive artists of the Paris School. Photographs by Man Ray, Dora Maar, Matthew Brady, Brassai, Cartier-Bresson, Blumenfeld graced many pages and accompanied articles and prose by luminaries of none less identity than John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Andre Malraux, Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Gide, Albert Camus and others of note, often the presented artists themselves."