Lot n° 108
Estimation :
15000 - 20000
EUR
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Result
: 35 750EUR
André BRETON.
Magic Art. Enquête. July-October 1955.
Preparatory file totalling 380 pages, mainly in-4 (including 161 autographs) and 44 envelopes, in 9 folders.
Important working file compiled by André Breton with a view to publishing L'Art magique: it contains the 75 replies to his survey, duly classified and presented, which are reproduced at the head of the book.
Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, André Malraux, Georges Bataille rub shoulders with personalities from a wide range of backgrounds as well as a few artists close to the Surrealists, such as Pierre Molinier, Leonora Carrington, Wolfgang
Paalen or, among the ethnologists, Claude Lévi-Strauss.
The questionnaire for this survey was sent to 215 people "with a particular qualification to answer it: sociologists, ethnologists, philosophers, art historians, art critics, psychologists, esotericists, magicians, poets". It is presented in the form of a double printed sheet entitled Forms of Art, illustrated with eleven reproductions.
The responses have been classified into nine groups, each preceded by a few lines of introduction. Many of the contributions are accompanied by letters or notes and envelopes, carefully preserved by their addressee.
The replies received gave rise to a meticulous work of analysis, as shown by the autograph notebook kept at the Jacques Doucet Library.
It took Breton nearly four years of assiduous work and the close collaboration of Gérard Legrand to complete the project. It was in May 1957 that L'Art magique was to inaugurate the Formes de l'Art collection, a series of five volumes intended by the Club français du Livre for its most faithful readers.
Composition
- List in alphabetical order of the 215 people contacted with postal addresses in Breton's handwriting on blue paperback. 7 pp. in-4
- 9 folders containing the replies arranged in nine groups and preceded by a few introductory lines: 1. "Some of the best qualified minds of this time"; 2 ½ typed pages, 6 ½ autographed pages:
Martin Heidegger (typed reply on Breton's introductory sheet); André Malraux, Maurice
Blanchot, Georges Bataille; 2. "But others have pretended to hear nothing of the notion of the sacred"; 8 pages in-4 typewritten, 2 autograph notes signed, 1 envelope:
Jean Paulhan, the Italian theologian Enrico Castelli; typewritten replies, signed, with 3 autograph corrections by Jean Paulhan; 3. Ethnologists and sociologists; 8 ½ autograph pages, 17 ½ typescripts, 1 envelope:
André Breton's autograph introduction (1 ½ page in-4); Hubert Read, Claude Lévi-Strauss (5 autograph pages, 3 of which are unpublished), Evelyne Lot-Falck, Jean Guiart, Viviana Pâques, Robert Jaulin (2 autograph pages bearing Breton's note "to be cut after typing"); 4. "Connoisseurs without Rationalist Exclusivity of a Given Mythology"; 4 typed introductory lines, 6 1/2 typed pages, 2 signed autograph letters, 1 photo, 3 envelopes: Jean Herbert, professor of Oriental mythologies at the University of Geneva, Milo Rigaud, Haitian poet; 5. "Professional Psychologists"; 14 typed pages, 1 autograph page, 2 envelopes, 1 autograph note signed: Jean Vinchon, psychiatrist; Luis A. Guerra, psychiatrist and professor of mental hygiene at the University of Lima (reply in Spanish, translation in André Breton's handwriting), Dr. André Bouvet (not Maurice, as reported in Breton's OEuvres complètes IV), neuropsychiatrist; 6. Artists; 3 autograph pages, 15 ½ typed pages, 2 envelopes:
Leonora Carrington (one page autograph manuscript with additions and corrections, one typewritten poem not part of the survey), René Magritte (2 typewritten pages with an autograph addition and an autograph note to André Breton), Wolfgang Paalen (with a beautiful autograph letter of 2 pages in-4), Pierre
Molinier, Julius Evola (typed with autograph corrections in Breton's hand and some passages crossed out in pencil); 7. "Poetry and Modern Philosophy"; 80 autograph pages, 70 typewritten pages, 21 envelopes: Roger Caillois (typescript with note in André Breton's hand at head "int. (though hostile to the spirit of the enq.)"), François le Lionnais, Pierre Auger, Jean Wahl ; Aimé Patri, Stéphane Lupasco, Juan Eduardo Cirlat (typed in Spanish, text in French in Breton's hand), Michel Carrouges, Michel Butor, Pierre Klossowski (7 autographed pages with two passages of a personal nature crossed out in pencil), André Coyné, poet and professor at the University of Lima, Julien
Gracq (3 autograph pages), Pieyre de Mandiargues (5 autograph pages), Gabriel Bounoure (11 autograph pages),
Malcolm de Chazal (3 autograph pages), Charles Flamand, Radova
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