À toute épreuve

This tiny first edition of À toute épreuve belongs to the most fragile objects of the surrealist book culture surrounding Paul Éluard. Published on 15 October 1930 by the Éditions surréalistes in Paris, the booklet feels less like a conventional collection than an intimate printed message. Its format, approximately eleven by seven centimetres, gives it the aura of a secret document, folded and preserved. This copy is printed on pink paper and remains unopened, preserving its original folded form and material vulnerability. The combination of first edition, coloured paper and intact unopened state makes it especially desirable for collectors of surrealist literature. It is a book whose rarity is not ostentatious, but quietly embodied in its fragile physical presence.

This large-format programme sheet for the Bal de la Grand Ourse is one of the most vivid survivals from the Parisian artistic scene of the mid-1920s. It was issued by the Union des Artistes Russes à Paris for the event held at the Salle Bullier on 8 May 1925, an occasion that was at once social, performative, and programmatic. The document announces not merely a ball, but a total event in which modern architecture, decorative arts, and stage design converged. Henri Laurens's contribution gives the sheet a direct connection to the international avant-garde and to the sculptural language of cubist and post-cubist Paris. The programme also includes a facsimile musical score and an additional illustration, bringing text, image, and rhythm together within a single printed object. Its full roster of participating artists reads like a snapshot of the École de Paris, with names such as Braque, Chagall, the Delaunays, Foujita, Man Ray, Marinetti, Matisse, Picabia, Picasso, and Zadkine. This copy also retains the accompanying slip Le 8 mai 1925. La Grande Ourse Bal, bibliographically and materially part of the same ensemble. That completeness makes the piece especially appealing to collectors of avant-garde ephemera.

Le Jeu de la Chouette is a pataphysical game-object by R. Gil, Régent de Catachimie, issued in 1976 as the second number of the Cymbalum Pataphysicum’s Otium series. The work is not a conventional book block, but a folder containing a folded illustrated game sheet: a readable object to be handled, viewed and interpreted at once. The title belongs to the ludic logic of the Cymbalum, where play, ritual, pseudo-science and bibliography constantly overlap. This record focuses on the purple copy bearing the manuscript indication “Le Christ d’Or”, one of the 52 deluxe copies on papier diurne under couverture crépusculaire, marked with the 52 figures of César-Antéchrist. That reference gives the Jarry connection particular force, since César-Antéchrist belongs to the early mythological and grotesque foundation of Jarry’s universe. The second copy present, the brown-orange variant, appears to belong to the 444 luxury copies on papier nocturne under couverture aurorale and forms a valuable comparison copy. Together, the two examples show how the pataphysical hierarchy of issue becomes part of the game itself.

A rare plaquette of *Le La*, where Breton’s late surrealist voice is pared to crystal. Printed at Alès by P.A.B. in 1961, in a small square format with a stark black wrapper. It includes an original lithograph by Jean Benoît, which condenses the ritual, talismanic mood of the text. The pairing of Breton’s concentrated note and Benoît’s image forms a miniature in which word and image mutually enchant. For bibliophiles this is a model of the French private-press ethos: clean typography, exact pitch, and a minute limitation. This copy is from the Arches issue and bears PAB’s signature.