See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/31035746

The livre d'artiste in Twentieth-Century France

Article  in  French Studies · April 2009

DOI: 10.1093/fs/knp061 · Source: OAI

CITATIONS READS

4 79

1 author:

Elza Adamowicz
Queen Mary, University of London
35 PUBLICATIONS   56 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Elza Adamowicz on 15 July 2021.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

French Studies, Vol. LXIII, No. 2, 189 – 198
doi:10.1093/fs/knp061

ÉTAT PRÉSENT
THE LIVRE D’ARTISTE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY FRANCE

ELZA ADAMOWICZ

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/63/2/189/524221 by guest on 15 July 2021

Il n’est d’explosion qu’un livre
Stéphane Mallarmé

A recent exhibition at the British Library, Breaking the Rules (2007– 08),
explored early-twentieth-century avant-garde journals and books as a space
of experimentation and subversion. The exhibition highlighted the creation
of a new aesthetics juxtaposing visual and verbal elements, from Guillaume
Apollinaire’s calligrammes and Futurist poem-paintings to Dada and construc-
tivist journals, surrealist book objects and livres d’artistes. The term livre d’artiste
will be used here to designate various forms of the twentieth-century book in
France as a collaboration between poets and painters or texts and images.
Given the multiple origin of the livre d’artiste, critical studies are situated at
the intersection of several disciplines: the history and technique of the book,
art history and criticism, literary studies and semiotics. Three key issues
dominate critical debate on the livre d’artiste, relating to its definition (limits
and legibility) and historical development (from the livre illustre´ to the livre
objet); its production (the material book); and its interpretation (relations
between words and images).1

Definitions: from ‘livre illustre´’ to ‘livre objet’

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
1
The principal studies on the livre d’artiste in France include: Walter J. Strachan, The Artist and the Book in
France: The 20th Century ‘livre d’artiste’ (London, Owen, 1969); Ségolène Samson-Le Men, ‘Quant au livre
illustré . . . ’, La Revue de l’art, 44 (1979), 85 – 106; Michel Melot, L’Illustration: histoire d’un art (Geneva,
Skira, 1984); François Chapon, Le Peintre et le livre: l’âge d’or du livre illustre´ en France 1870 – 1970 (Paris, Flammar-
ion, 1987); Walter J. Strachan, ‘The Livre d’artiste 1967 –1980’, in Le Livre d’artiste: A Catalogue of the
W. J. Strachan Gift to the Taylor Institution (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum and Taylor Institution, 1987),
pp. 31 – 61; Yves Peyré, Peinture et poe´sie: le dialogue par le livre 1874 – 2000 (Paris, Gallimard, 2001); The
Dialogue between Painting and Poetry: livres d’artistes 1874 – 1999, ed. by Jean Khalfa (Cambridge, Black Apollo,
2001).
2
Renée Riese Hubert, Surrealism and the Book (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988), p. 23. For a
discussion of different types of illustration, see for example Eric Haskell, ‘Visibilité / lisibilité et la poı̈étique
de l’illustration’, in Poı¨e´tique (Paris, Poı̈ésis, 1991), pp. 236 – 41; Ségolène Samson-Le Men, ‘Iconographie et

# The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for French Studies.
All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
190 ELZA ADAMOWICZ

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. Pro-
fessional 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

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/63/2/189/524221 by guest on 15 July 2021

Éluard.5 Paralle`lement, 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 industri-
alization 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 filme´
par l’ange N.D., Sirène, 1919, 1225 copies). François Chapon, former
director of the Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet, who has written exten-
sively on the subject, uses the bibliophile term livre illustre´ or grand livre illustre´
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 illustre´, 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 Le´zard aux plumes d’or (1971).

illustration’, in L’Illustration: essais d’iconographie, ed. by Maria Teresa Caracciolo and S. Samson-Le Men
(Paris, Klincksieck, 1999), pp. 9– 17.
3
Stéphane Mallarmé, Œuvres comple`tes (Paris, Gallimard, 1945), p. 878.
4
R. Char, Œuvres comple`tes (Paris, Gallimard, 1983), p. 671.
5
Éluard, Œuvres comple`tes, i (Paris, Gallimard, 1968), p. 983.
6
Chapon, Le Peintre et le livre.
7
Strachan, The Artist and the Book in France; Michel Butor, ‘L’Art et le livre’, in L’Art et le livre, ed. by Jean-
Pierre Foulon (Mariemont, Musée royal de Mariemont, 1988), pp. 19– 35.
8
Peyré, Peinture et poe´sie, p. 21.
 THE LIVRE D’ARTISTE 191
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 ‘maı̂tre 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

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/63/2/189/524221 by guest on 15 July 2021

Breaking with the bibliophilic tradition of the (grand) livre illustre´, 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 re´volus,
1975), for others it constitutes a subversion of the book or ‘anti-book’

9
Strachan, The Artist and the Book in France (1969); Chapon, Le Peintre et le livre (1987); Peyré, Peinture et poe´sie
(2001).
10
Recent exhibitions devoted to publishers of livres d’artiste include: Te´riade et les livres de peintres (Le
Château-Cambresis, Musée Matisse, 2002); Amitie´s cache´es: Pierre-André Benoit, cinquante ans d’e´dition avec les
peintres du XXe sie`cle (L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Musée Campredon/Maison René Char, 2004); De l’e´criture à la
peinture (Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Fondation Maeght, 2004).
11
Chapon, Le Peintre et le livre, p. 51; Yves Peyré, ‘Le Livre illustré, tangible entrelacs des extrêmes’, in Les
Peintres et les livres (Toulouse, ARPAP, 1990), p. 36; Pierre Berès, ‘Le Mythe du livre de peintre’, Bulletin du
bibliophile, 2 (1989), 347 – 68 (p. 362); Michel Leiris, ‘Préface’, in Joan Miró and Michel Leiris, Bagatelles
ve´ge´tales (Paris, Jean Aubier, 1956).
12See Debra Bricker Balken, ‘Notes on the Publisher as Auteur’, Art Journal, 52 (1993), 70– 71.
13
Johanna Drucker, A Century of Artists Books (New York, Granary, 1994), p. 195. It is also called artist’s
book, artists’ book, book art or bookwork, and livre d’artiste in French.
14
The Bibliothèque Nationale de France has a collection of more than 4,000 artists books, published since
the early 1960s, while the Bibliothèque Kandinsky (Centre Georges Pompidou) houses 3,500 artists books.
The first major exhibition in Paris was Livres d’artistes: l’invention d’un genre 1960 – 1980 (Bibliothèque Nationale
de France), curated by Anne Moeglin-Delcroix, whose doctoral thesis was published on this occasion, Esthe´-
tique du livre d’artiste 1960 – 1980 (Paris, Place/Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 1997). The substantial critical
literature on the subject focuses mainly on North American works: see Stefan Klima, Artists’ Books: A
Critical Survey of the Literature (New York, Granary, 1998). For a discussion of French artists books, see
for example: The Artist’s Book: The Text and its Rivals, ed. by R. R. Hubert (¼Visible Language, 25:2–3
(Spring 1991)); Guy Schraenen, D’une œuvre l’autre: le livre d’artiste dans l’art contemporain (Mariemont,
Musée royal de Mariemont, 1996); Pierrette Turlais, Livres d’artistes: l’invention d’un genre: 1960 – 1980 (Paris, Bib-
liothèque Nationale de France, 1997).
15
Moeglin-Delcroix, Esthe´tique du livre d’artiste, p. 51.
192 ELZA ADAMOWICZ

precisely thanks to its assault on the constraints of the codex.16 For example,
Marcel Broodthaers, in Un coup de de´s 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

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/63/2/189/524221 by guest on 15 July 2021

Livre sphe´rique) 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 (sub-
version 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 biblioclas-
tie’.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 brûle´ et
grillage´ (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
illustre´, 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

16
See Anne Moeglin-Delcroix, ‘La Fin de l’illustration dans le livre d’artiste’, in L’Illustration, ed. by Car-
acciolo and S. Samson-Le Men, pp. 381 –94; Harry Polkinhorm, ‘From Book to Anti-Book’, in The Artist’s
Book, ed. by Hubert, pp. 139 – 49. See also: R. R. Hubert, ‘Readable — Visible: Reflections on the Illustrated
Book’, Visible Language, 19:4 (1985), 519 – 38; Jessica Prinz, ‘The “Non-Book”: New Dimensions in the Con-
temporary Artist’s Book’, in The Artist’s Book, ed. by Hubert, pp. 283 – 302.
17
Peyré, ‘La Connivance agonale, digression sur le livre illustré’, in Biennale du livre d’artiste (Uzerche,
Pays-Paysage, 1990), quoted by Moeglin-Delcroix, Esthetique du livre d’artiste, p. 24.
18
For an inventory and discussion of the book object, see for example: Livres d’artiste/livres-objets (Paris,
CERPM, 1985); L’Art et le livre, ed. by Foulon.
19
See for example the debate on ‘L’Art et le livre’, in D’un livre l’autre, ed. by A. Balthazar (Mariemont,
Musée royal de Mariemont, 1986); Drucker, A Century of Artists Books; R. R. Hubert and Judd
D. Hubert, The Cutting Edge of Reading Artists’ Books (New York, Granary, 1999).
20
See Biblioclastes . . . bibliophiles, ed. by Aimé Maeght (¼L’Art vivant, 47 (1974)).
21
Le Livre dans tous ses e´tats: livres d’artists, livres uniques, livres objets, livres de´tourne´s, livres peints, ed. by
E. T. Haskell and R. R. Hubert (Paris, Galerie Caroline Corre, 1988); Gilbert Lascault, ‘Livres dépravés’,
Chroniques de l’art vivant, 47 (1974), 6 – 8.
22
Sauze, in D’un livre l’autre, ed. by Balthazar, p. 81.
23
Biennale du livre d’artiste, p. 38.
 THE LIVRE D’ARTISTE 193
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 illustre´ 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

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/63/2/189/524221 by guest on 15 July 2021

critical discourse, and that the livre d’artiste remains a proteiform genre, open
to innovative forms.

The material book

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 pro-
duction.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, under-
scoring 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 inter-
views, other studies have explored in detail the production of individual
books, such as A toute e´preuve (1958), a collaboration between Miró, Eluard
and Cramer; Max Ernst’s collage books; or Butor’s collaborations with
Pierre Alechinsky.28

24
Batt, ‘Le Livre d’artiste, une œuvre émergente’, in Peinture et e´criture 2: le livre d’artiste, ed. by Montserrat
Prudon (Paris, La Différence / UNESCO, 1997), pp. 21 –34. In a similar spirit Henri Béhar has situated the
avant-garde book ‘entre la quête du Livre unique et le refus des livres’: ‘Panneaux muraux’, in Le Livre sur-
re´aliste (¼Me´lusine, 4 (1982)), 343 – 56 (p. 345).
25
G. Jassaud, ‘Faire parler le livre’, in Livres d’artistes de ‘Collectif Ge´ne´ration’, ed. by Gervais Jassaud (Paris,
AFAA and Générations, 1991), p. 64.
26
Anne Hyde Greet, Joan Miró, Ge´rald Cramer: une correspondance à toute e´preuve, ed. by Jean-Charles Giroud
(Geneva, Patrick Cramer, 2002), p. 29.
27
See also David Blundell and Amélie Blanckaert, ‘The Making of the ‘livre d’artiste’’, in The Dialogue
between Painting and Poetry, ed. by Khalfa, pp. 153 – 56.
28
See Anne Hyde Greet, ‘Miró, Eluard, Cramer: A toute e´preuve’, Bulletin du bibliophile, 2– 3 (1983), 232 – 42
and 346 – 68; Annick Ehrenström, ‘A toute e´preuve’, in Ehrenström, Un e´diteur genevois: Ge´rald Cramer: au fil de
ses archives de 1942 à 1986 (Geneva, Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire de Genève, 1988); Anne Hyde Greet,
‘Max Ernst and the Artist’s Book: From Fiat Modes to Maximiliana’, in Max Ernst beyond Surrealism: A Retro-
spective of the Artist’s Books and Prints, ed. by Robert Rainwater (New Canaan, CT, New York Public Library,
1986), pp. 99 – 156; Michel Butor and Michel Sicard, Alechinsky dans le texte (Paris, Galilée, 1984).
194 ELZA ADAMOWICZ

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 exhi-
bition catalogue Le Surre´alisme 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:

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/63/2/189/524221 by guest on 15 July 2021

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
Such approaches, when they give priority to the tactility of the material book
over the abstraction of reading, sometimes bypass the role of language, trans-
forming the material book into a poetic space: ‘[l]e corps du livre est un corps
poétisé’, writes Gérard Dessons.31

Interpretation of the ‘livre d’artiste’

‘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 (chrono-
logical 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 method-
ology 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

29
See however John Anzalone and Ruth Copans, ‘Covering the Text: The Object of Bookbinding’, in The
Artist’s Book, ed. by Hubert, pp. 257 – 69.
30
Butor, ‘L’Art et le livre’, p. 26.
31
G. Dessons, ‘Tératologie du livre d’artiste’, in Peinture et e´criture 2, ed. by Prudon, pp. 35 –43 (p. 41).
32
Higgins, ‘Preface’, in Artists Books: A Critical Anthology and Source Book, ed. by Joan Lyons (Rochester,
Smith, 1985), p. 12.
33
See for example Samson-Le Men, ‘Quant au livre illustré . . .’; R. R. Hubert, Surrealism and the Book;
Thomas Jensen Hines, Collaborative Form: Studies in the Relation of the Arts (Kent, OH, State University
Press, 1991).
 THE LIVRE D’ARTISTE 195
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

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/63/2/189/524221 by guest on 15 July 2021

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 primiti-
vism.36 Such inter-art comparisons seek to identify a unifying principle
whereby text and image share a single creative principle or paradigm that trans-
cends pictorial or textual specificity. As an example of ‘synchronic historiogra-
phy 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
34
Caviola, ‘The Rhetoric of Interdisciplinarity’, in Text and Visuality, ed. by Martin Heusser and others
(Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1999), pp. 45 –55 (45).
35
Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist Movement: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre, and the Language of Rupture (Chicago
University Press, 1986); Eleanor Garvey, ‘Cubist and Fauve Illustrated Books’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 63
(1964), 37– 50; Gérard Bertrand, L’Illustration de la poe´sie à l’e´poque du cubisme, 1909 – 1914 (Paris, Klincksieck,
1971); R. R. Hubert, Surrealism and the Book.
36
Jane Lee, ‘L’Enchanteur pourrissant’, Revue de l’art, 82 (1988), 51 –60; Eric de Chassey, ‘Sur L’Enchanteur
pourrissant de Derain’, L’Œil, 485 (1997), 68– 75; see also Anne Hyde Greet, Apollinaire et le livre de peintre
(Paris, Minard, 1977).
37
Caviola, ‘The Rhetoric of Interdisciplinarity’, p. 45.
38
Barthes, ‘Rhétorique de l’image’, Communications, 4 (1964), 40 – 51; Bassy, ‘Du texte à l’illustration: pour
une sémiologie des étapes’, Semiotica, 11:4 (1974), 297 –334.
196 ELZA ADAMOWICZ

study of Supports en surface (1972), a work which combines Robert Rauschen-

berg’s lithographs with Alain Robbe-Grillet’s manuscript text. Perrol argues
that text and image share similar structures, such as mise en abyme, intertextual-
ity, 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 irreduci-
bility of seeing and saying, showing and telling, display and discourse.40 In
more poetic terms, Peyré raises the question of the ‘androgynous’ nature of

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/63/2/189/524221 by guest on 15 July 2021

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 comp-
lementary 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 Gesamtkunst-
werk, 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 diffe´rance:
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

W.J.T. Mitchell was among the first critics to elaborate a ‘critical ideology’
grounded on the resistance of icon to logos.44 In her 1979 analysis of Raoul
Dufy’s illustrations for Mallarmé’s Les Madrigaux (1920), Anne-Marie
Christin posited the radical alterity of illustration, ‘une différence créatrice’,
and raised the methodological question of difference and compatibility
between image and text: ‘A partir de quelles transformations ou de quels
facteurs positifs le heurt du texte et de l’image peut-il s’opérer? Comment
cette diffe´rence se transforme-t-elle en relais?’45 R. R. Hubert pursues this
approach, developing the concept of ‘une esthétique de la différence’ in surre-
alist collaborations.46
39
Perriol, ‘Traces suspectes en surface: un dialogue entre Robert Rauschenberg et Alain Robbe-Grillet’,
Nouvelles de l’estampe, 181 (2002), 7 – 16.
40
See Aron Kibédi-Varga, ‘Entre le texte et l’image’, in Text and Visuality, ed. by Heusser and others,
pp. 77– 92; Lauriane Fallay d’Este, Le Paragone: le paralle`le des arts (Paris, Klincksieck, 1992).
41
Peyré, ‘Le Livre comme creuset’, in Le Livre et l’artiste (Marseilles, Le Mot et le reste, 2007), pp. 33– 68.
42
Dessons, ‘Tératologie du livre d’artiste’, p. 35.
43
Foucault, Les Mots et les choses (Paris, Gallimard, 1966), p. 25.
44
W. J. T. Mitchell, Blake’s Composite Art (Princeton University Press, 1978); id., Picture Theory (Chicago
University Press, 1984).
45
A.-M. Christin, ‘Images d’un texte: Dufy illustrateur de Mallarmé’, Revue de l’art, 44 (1979), 69 –84; see
also Christin, ‘Le Poète-illustrateur: à propos du recueil Les Mains libres de Man Ray et Paul Eluard’, in
Ecritures II, ed. by Anne-Marie Christin (Paris, Le Sycomore, 1985), pp. 323 –45.
46
R. R. Hubert, ‘Miró et le livre surréaliste’, in Le Livre surre´aliste, pp. 227 –40 (p. 240).
 THE LIVRE D’ARTISTE 197
Critics often develop an organic metaphor of the generative process in this
context to account for the close relations, within difference, between two het-
erogeneous 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

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/63/2/189/524221 by guest on 15 July 2021

stimulus that initially gave rise to his text.48 The poet thus provides less a para-
phrase of, than a supplement to, the original pictorial act. This type of response
is also evoked by Barthes who shows how Cy Twombly’s pictorial signs or
vecteurs set off the viewer’s own verbal or graphic trajectory:
Je n’imite pas directement TW (à quoi bon?), j’imite le tracing que j’infère, sinon
inconsciemment, du moins rêveusement, de ma lecture: je ne copie pas le produit, mais la
production. Je me mets, si l’on peut dire: dans les pas de la main.49
The desire to imitate the act of production of the artist or poet thus results in a
text or image that has a performative function.50

Critical horizons for the ‘livre d’artiste’?

The livre d’artiste as a genre continues to thrive, as testified by the numerous
book fairs (such as the Salon du livre d’artiste(s) en Languedoc-Roussillon
launched in 2001 by the Carré d’art / Bibliothèque Municipale in Nı̂mes), as
well as the large number of petits e´diteurs (such as L’Entretoise) who
produce one or two books a year. Within the critical field, the livre d’artiste
has been (thoroughly) chronicled and inventoried, definitions (tirelessly) ques-
tioned, and analysis of individual collaborations (meticulously) elaborated. Yet
a number of questions relating to the field remain open. These questions
concern, first, issues relating to the material book: what is the role of the litho-
grapher, the engraver, the printer, the bookbinder, in the production of the
book? To what extent does the material specificity of the work inform its
meaning? How does the discursive framework provided by specific display
techniques inform the reception of the livre d’artiste? Second, a number of
methodological issues raised by the co-presence of word and image on the
page remain to be explored further: for example, to what extent can (post)mo-
dernist theories of collage and montage contribute to a critical analysis of the
livre d’artiste? Finally, on a more general level, since the 1990s academic
research, particularly in the UK and the USA, has undergone a shift from
the relative autonomy of disciplines to a growing interest in intermediality.
47
Ibid., p. 230.
48
G. Raillard, ‘Comment Breton s’approprie les Constellations de Miró’, Cahiers de Varsovie, 5 (1978), 171 – 80.
49
Barthes, ‘Cy Twombly: non multa sed multum’, in Barthes, L’Obvie et l’obtus (Paris, Seuil, 1982), p. 158.
50
See Elza Adamowicz, Ceci n’est pas un tableau: les e´crits surre´alistes sur l’art (Lausanne, L’Âge d’homme,
2004), Chapter 5.
 198 ELZA ADAMOWICZ

French academia, for a time more reticent, is also adopting cross-disciplinary

approaches: witness for example the recent conference Le Livre et l’artiste
(Marseilles, Le Mot et le reste, 2007), which brought together specialists
from the fields of book history, art and literary studies, as well as artists and
publishers. Yet the critical field still remains largely pluridisciplinary, an
accumulation of distinct fields of knowledge, as yet only tentatively
interdisciplinary.

QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY LONDON

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/63/2/189/524221 by guest on 15 July 2021

OF

View publication stats