Xylophonie contre la grande presse et son petit public
Xylophonie contre la grande presse et son petit public belongs to the militant and polemical printed works of Antonin Artaud’s final years. This brief 1946 publication, co-signed by Henri Pichette, has the sharp force of a pamphlet directed against the press and its public. The text should be understood against the background of Artaud’s post-war return to Parisian literary life, where his voice was being rediscovered, celebrated and misunderstood at once. Its austere physical form — an in-8 pamphlet issued loose in wrappers, only eight leaves long — perfectly matches the cutting directness of the intervention. The printing was extremely small: 53 copies on heavy vélin fort, comprising 50 numbered copies and 3 nominative A.P.L. copies. Copy XXI therefore belongs to the series of 50 numbered copies and preserves the full rarity of that original issue.
Quantity
Artaud, Antonin
Pichette, Henri
Xylophonie contre la grande presse et son petit public
1946 | Paris | Imprimerie Davy
This exceptionally scarce publication captures Artaud’s late polemical energy in its most direct and fragile form. As numbered copy XXI from the series of 50 on heavy vélin fort, it is both bibliographically precise and remarkably rare.
Xylophonie contre la grande presse et son petit public belongs to the militant and polemical printed works of Antonin Artaud’s final years. This brief 1946 publication, co-signed by Henri Pichette, has the sharp force of a pamphlet directed against the press and its public. The text should be understood against the background of Artaud’s post-war return to Parisian literary life, where his voice was being rediscovered, celebrated and misunderstood at once. Its austere physical form — an in-8 pamphlet issued loose in wrappers, only eight leaves long — perfectly matches the cutting directness of the intervention. The printing was extremely small: 53 copies on heavy vélin fort, comprising 50 numbered copies and 3 nominative A.P.L. copies. Copy XXI therefore belongs to the series of 50 numbered copies and preserves the full rarity of that original issue.
€950
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-8 (Octavo) approx. 20 × 26 cm
Edition Particulars
One of 50 numbered copies on heavy vélin fort, from a total printing of 53 copies, the remaining 3 being nominative A.P.L. copies.
Print Run
53
Copy Number
No. XXI
Paper
vélin fort
Inscription
No inscription
Product DETAIL
This publication is a short polemical text in which Artaud and Henri Pichette turn against the major press and the mechanisms of public reception. The piece takes the form of an attack: compact, direct and combative. At its centre lies a rejection of journalistic distortion, cultural superficiality and the reduction of living art to consumable opinion. There is no plot in the traditional sense, but rather a sequence of assertions, blows and provocations. The text should be read as a public intervention within a specific cultural climate in post-war Paris. In tone and structure, it shows above all how Artaud uses the printed pamphlet as an instrument of resistance.
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