Far Rockaway
Far Rockaway is a rare first edition by Pierre Alechinsky published by Fata Morgana, a press especially attuned to the meeting of literature, image and bibliophile restraint. The title refers to Far Rockaway, a place-name both concrete and almost dreamlike, as though a geographical point had become a mental edge-zone. Alechinsky, shaped by Cobra yet always independent in his writing of line and sign, brings together here his world of travel, memory, margin and graphic rhythm. The 1977 edition belongs to Fata Morgana’s refined small-scale objects, where paper choice and typographic restraint heighten the relation between text and image. This copy is especially desirable because it belongs to the tirage de tête: one of only 30 numbered copies on Ingres d’Arches. Number 26 therefore stands clearly above the ordinary issue. For a collector of Alechinsky, it is a small but important bibliophile object from his mature period.
Quantity
Alechinsky, Pierre
ILLUSTRATORS
ILLUSTRATORS
ILLUSTRATORS
Far Rockaway
1977 | Fata Morgana
This copy of Far Rockaway is distinguished by its place in the rare head issue on Ingres d’Arches. It brings together Alechinsky’s mature graphic poetics with Fata Morgana’s restrained bibliophile production. As number 26 of 30, it is a small but strong acquisition for a collection devoted to Cobra, artist’s books and the postwar avant-garde on paper.
Far Rockaway is a rare first edition by Pierre Alechinsky published by Fata Morgana, a press especially attuned to the meeting of literature, image and bibliophile restraint. The title refers to Far Rockaway, a place-name both concrete and almost dreamlike, as though a geographical point had become a mental edge-zone. Alechinsky, shaped by Cobra yet always independent in his writing of line and sign, brings together here his world of travel, memory, margin and graphic rhythm. The 1977 edition belongs to Fata Morgana’s refined small-scale objects, where paper choice and typographic restraint heighten the relation between text and image. This copy is especially desirable because it belongs to the tirage de tête: one of only 30 numbered copies on Ingres d’Arches. Number 26 therefore stands clearly above the ordinary issue. For a collector of Alechinsky, it is a small but important bibliophile object from his mature period.
€300
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-12 (Duodecimo) approx. 17 × 22 cm
Edition Particulars
One of 30 numbered copies on Ingres d’Arches, belonging to the head issue.
Print Run
30
Copy Number
No. 26
Paper
Ingres d’Arches
Inscription
No inscription
1
Edition Particulars:
We welcome private inquiries, collaborations with institutions, and acquisition requests. Each message is treated with discretion and respect. We welcome private inquiries, collaborations with institutions, and acquisition requests.
1
Print Run:
Condition Report:
1
Copy Number:
Condition Report:
1
Paper:
Condition Report:
1
Signed:
Condition Report:
Product DETAIL
Far Rockaway is not a conventional narrative work, but a compact artist’s and author’s book concerned with place, memory and displacement. The title evokes a real location on the edge of New York, but in Alechinsky such a place-name becomes above all a point of departure for association. The book likely moves between note, image, impression and graphic presence rather than between characters and events. Its core lies in the way a name, a landscape or a travel impression is transformed into writing and sign. The reader therefore approaches the work as a lyrical and visual fragment, not as a narrative construction. Its atmosphere connects with Alechinsky’s interest in margins, detours, maps, traces and spontaneous line.
Ferry, Jean
L’Afrique des impressions. Petit guide pratique à l’usage du voyageur
L’Afrique des impressions is Jean Ferry’s pataphysical guide to Raymond Roussel’s imaginary Africa, published by the Collège de ’Pataphysique in 1967. Its title openly plays on Roussel’s Impressions d’Afrique, yet transforms exegesis into travel writing, scholarship into itinerary and reading into expedition. Ferry approaches Roussel not as an outside commentator, but as an initiate of verbal machinery, secret procedures and comic precision. This copy belongs to the rare group of 166 “exemplaires capitaux” on Authentique Papier Tropical du Ponukélé, and it duly contains the original drawing and autograph material required for that deluxe issue. Its dedication to Raphaël Ossona de Mendez places it within the living network of the Collège rather than in a merely external provenance. The accompanying manuscript note on codes, letters and the number 472 further heightens its Roussellian resonance. As a bibliophile object, it is at once guidebook, homage, private signal and pataphysical field instrument.
Book
€750
Pissarro, Lucien · Ricketts, Charles
De la typographie et de l’harmonie de la page imprimée. William Morris et son influence sur les arts et métiers
De la typographie et de l’harmonie de la page imprimée is a refined fin-de-siècle publication devoted to the art of the printed page. Lucien Pissarro and Charles Ricketts place William Morris at the centre as a reformer of the book, printing and the applied arts. The work belongs to the circles in which the Arts and Crafts movement, private press ideals and the renewed valuation of typography meet. The title makes clear that typography is not treated as a technical accessory, but as an harmony of type, margin, paper and page design. The edition appeared in 1898, in London from Ricketts and in Paris from Floury, standing between English private press culture and French bibliophile reception. This copy belongs to the issue of 250 copies on Arnold handmade laid paper within a total edition of 256 copies. The present errata slip and only slight corner wear make it bibliographically attractive and complete.
Book
€750
Cocteau, Jean
La Noce massacrée
La Noce massacrée belongs to Jean Cocteau’s early, sharply modernist phase, shortly after Parade and in close proximity to Raymond Radiguet. The book appeared in 1921 with À la Sirène, a publisher closely connected with the Parisian artistic avant-garde and literary modernism. The presence of a vignette after Picasso reinforces that context, although this is not an illustrated artist’s book in the strict sense. Cocteau writes from a milieu in which literature, theatre, ballet, visual art and social polemic constantly intersected. The printed dedication to Radiguet also makes the book a witness to a decisive friendship and intellectual alliance. This copy, n°XIX, belongs to the first 40 copies on vergé d’Arches, the most desirable form of the edition.
Book
€850
Bataille, Georges
La littérature et le mal
La littérature et le mal is one of Georges Bataille’s most penetrating books on the moral and metaphysical stakes of literature. In these essays he examines how major writers approach the boundary between law and transgression, guilt and sovereignty, eroticism and destruction. The volume brings together Emily Brontë, Baudelaire, Michelet, Blake, Sade, Proust, Kafka and Genet in a radical reading of literature as an experience of the forbidden. For Bataille, the literary work is not a polite mirror of morality, but a place where human beings encounter their most dangerous freedom. This copy is remarkable for its paper issue: one of only 25 on vélin pur fil Lafuma-Navarre, the sole large-paper issue.
