Arrière-histoire du poème pulvérisé

Some Los Angeles Apartments is one of Ed Ruscha’s iconic early artist’s books, devoted to the banal architecture of Los Angeles. Instead of monuments, drama or urban glamour, Ruscha shows ordinary apartment buildings, coolly photographed and without visible sentimentality. This second edition of 1970, printed in 3,000 unnumbered copies, confirms the wider circulation of his conceptual book form. The small format, sober wrappers and original glassine wrapper make it an essential Ruscha object.

What makes this copy especially memorable is not only its tiny limitation but the way it fixes three friendships at once: that between Char and Braque, that between Char and PAB, and that of all of them with the image that outlives them. The eight original photographs are not an illustrative supplement but the true bearers of presence; they preserve gazes, workspaces, and silences. The fact that PAB and Mariette Lachaud signed this copy gives it an almost confidential status, as though the circle of makers were still present within the book. In such editions, bibliophily becomes more than rarity alone: it becomes a form of shared memory.

L’emploi du temps is a modest yet notably appealing poetry book from the late 1960s. Paul Mari’s text is given particular weight by the presence of Henri Goetz, whose signed original colour engraving moves the volume into the field of the modern artist’s book. Published by Éditions Chambelland in 1969, it appeared in a limited issue on pur fil paper. This copy, number 22 of 50, belongs to the deluxe variant with original print. It is made more distinctive by Paul Mari’s autograph presentation inscription to Susy Solidor, a figure with her own charged place in twentieth-century artistic and social culture. The combination of small limitation, signed print, inscription and avant-garde context makes the book relevant to The Hidden Page, even if Mari is less canonical than his illustrator.

This first edition brings together three war episodes omitted from Les Croix de bois: La Boule de gui, Permissionnaires, and Le Prisonnier bénévole, formerly titled L’Ennemi des vieux. Published in 1922, it is also the first illustrated issue of these texts. André Dunoyer de Segonzac accompanies Dorgelès’s front-line prose with 42 reproduced drawings and five original drypoints hors texte, including the frontispiece. His nervous, direct line closely matches the stories’ hard observation and comradeship. This copy, number 401 on tinted Lafuma paper, belongs to the regular yet still limited issue of 519 copies on this stock. Devauchelle’s exceptional artist’s binding translates trenches, crosses, and explosions into a forceful modern design, turning the volume into a distinctive bibliophile object.