Le Septième chant. La Mort d’Isidore Ducasse
With *Le Septième chant. La Mort d’Isidore Ducasse*, Alain Jouffroy composes an incantatory elegy to the tutelary figure of Lautréamont. Issued in 1974 by the Société internationale d’art du XXe siècle, the book is enriched with four original etchings and aquatints by André Masson. The frontispiece, printed in red, sets a fiery, visionary, corporeal tone. Large in scale, issued as loose leaves in wrappers with chemise and slipcase, it belongs to the grand tradition of the livre d’artiste. The encounter between Jouffroy’s ardent prose and Masson’s suggestive line is exemplary. For the bibliophile this is a finely balanced conversation between text and image, executed with care and anchored by a strictly limited edition.
Quantity
Jouffroy, Alain
Masson, André
Le Septième chant. La Mort d’Isidore Ducasse
1974 | Paris | Société internationale d’art du XXe siècle
A rare and exact duet of word and image in which a key modern figure is made to glow anew. This copy combines signatures, numbering and excellent condition with striking graphic force. A benchmark piece for any collection of the French livre d’artiste.
With *Le Septième chant. La Mort d’Isidore Ducasse*, Alain Jouffroy composes an incantatory elegy to the tutelary figure of Lautréamont. Issued in 1974 by the Société internationale d’art du XXe siècle, the book is enriched with four original etchings and aquatints by André Masson. The frontispiece, printed in red, sets a fiery, visionary, corporeal tone. Large in scale, issued as loose leaves in wrappers with chemise and slipcase, it belongs to the grand tradition of the livre d’artiste. The encounter between Jouffroy’s ardent prose and Masson’s suggestive line is exemplary. For the bibliophile this is a finely balanced conversation between text and image, executed with care and anchored by a strictly limited edition.
€750
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
Petit in-Folio
Edition Particulars
One of 100 copies without the separate suite, signed by the author and the illustrator.
Print Run
210
Copy Number
No. 80
Paper
vélin d’Arches
Inscription
Signed by the Author,Signed by the Illustrator
Product DETAIL
Jouffroy addresses Isidore Ducasse, known as Lautréamont, as a pivot of modern imagination. In dense fragments he shifts between praise, critique and dream, giving the rhetoric of insubordination and metamorphosis a liturgical cadence. Ducasse’s death becomes not an end but a source from which visions of violence and tenderness rise. Ample typography lets the plates breathe, so that images act as echoes and portents throughout the reading. The result is a hybrid form—a poetic essay nourished by art history and by the nocturnal side of language. The text reads like a rite guiding the reader from Maldoror’s shadows toward a precise new attention.
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