Écritures
*Écritures* is one of the major artists’ books from Max Ernst’s later career and at the same time one of Le Point Cardinal’s most striking achievements. The volume brings together Ernst’s texts with one hundred and twenty images drawn from his own visual world, so that writing and image continually echo one another. The original lithograph on the cover immediately gives the book the status of an autonomous art object. In the artist’s copy, a signed etching used as frontispiece further elevates the whole into a luxurious and highly desirable bibliophilic edition. The publisher’s presentation, with the Leroux-designed case and its distinctive cobra spine, lends the book an almost sculptural presence. For that reason, this edition holds an eminent place within the postwar French artist’s book.
Quantity
Ernst, Max
Écritures
1970 | Paris | Le Point Cardinal
A landmark of Ernst’s late surrealist book art, where text, image, and object become perfectly one.
*Écritures* is one of the major artists’ books from Max Ernst’s later career and at the same time one of Le Point Cardinal’s most striking achievements. The volume brings together Ernst’s texts with one hundred and twenty images drawn from his own visual world, so that writing and image continually echo one another. The original lithograph on the cover immediately gives the book the status of an autonomous art object. In the artist’s copy, a signed etching used as frontispiece further elevates the whole into a luxurious and highly desirable bibliophilic edition. The publisher’s presentation, with the Leroux-designed case and its distinctive cobra spine, lends the book an almost sculptural presence. For that reason, this edition holds an eminent place within the postwar French artist’s book.
€2,450
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-8 (Octavo) approx. 20 × 26 cm
Edition Particulars
Artist’s copy, justified by the publisher Jean Hughes, with a signed Max Ernst etching as frontispiece in addition to the original lithographic cover.
Print Run
100
Copy Number
Artist Copy J.H. (John Hughes)
Inscription
No inscription
Product DETAIL
The book forms a hybrid space between poetic notation, visual thinking, and autobiographical montage. Ernst does not arrange texts and images according to a conventional linear logic, but through associations, shifts, and unexpected echoes. In this way, *Écritures* reads as an extension of his visual practice, where language is granted the same freedom as collage or frottage. The one hundred and twenty illustrations are not mere decoration, but an integral part of the book’s rhythm and meaning. The result is a dense, meditative, and playful publication in which memory, dream, and imagination flow into one another.
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