Lot n° 199
Estimation :
6000 - 8000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 10 742EUR
Isidore ISOU.
Isou or the Mechanics of Women. Paris, Aux escaliers de Lausanne, no date [1949].
In-12: half black leatherette à la Bradel, smooth spine, vellum boards decorated with original pen-and-ink drawings with fragments of text by Isidore Isou, untrimmed, gilt head, cover and spine preserved, slipcase (Mercher, 1967).
First edition.
Edition of 1,500 copies: one of 500 numbered on various papers (nº 352, on vellum paper).
The copy is complete with the author's portrait in phototype pasted to the verso of the title page.
Long autograph letter signed: To Jean Petithory, my copy of isou ou la mécanique des femmes which, in principle, is accompanied by the "proofs" and a manuscript, of the unpublished texts of the work, destined for a second edition stopped, at the very moment it was to be started, by the "obscurantist forces" - or chickens - of the Mondaine
Isidore Isou 64
At the head, an original drawing of a draft cover of the book showing a nude woman with the title and the name of the publisher is bound in.
On the back, autograph note signed:
I certify that this drawing is made by Jean Cocteau; and that it was intended for a reprint of my book, a reprint interrupted, stopped, by the arrival of the police, the "worldly" brigade, which seized the "lead" of the work,
Isidore Isou 64
The meeting with Jean Cocteau was important. It was Cocteau who designed the poster for Traité de bave et d'éternité, the "chiselling" film that Isou screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1951 and which caused a scandal - a film whose influence on both the filmmakers of the New Wave and the avant-garde (Debord in particular) was to prove decisive.
A defender of Isou's film and work, Jean Cocteau had therefore planned to design the cover of the new edition of La Mécanique des femmes - as Isou explains in the unpublished manuscript of the preface to this new edition, described below.
At the end, we have bound:
- A colour photographic portrait of the author;
- 1 autograph page (1 p. in-4) with a note at the top: "For the reissue of Mécanique des femmes";
- Preface to the second edition: autograph manuscript of 6 pages and 4 lines in-4.
Raging text; it ends with a paragraph concerning the drawing bound at the top: "The cover is by Jean Cocteau, who never signs his erotic drawings. But I needed his signature as a visiting card and a cover "for police and social reasons" that are easy to understand. Like others, he left me his model the day before he left for Egypt. I found it impossible to convince him to fix this blank. So I signed it - with his name - myself, giving him back publicly what belongs to him. I apologize, but since I have been writing I have not been so indelicate";
- 2 press clippings: a text by Isou and an announcement of the lawsuits against Isou which are opposed by writers.
Remarkable binding decorated with original drawings on vellum by Isidore Isou.
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