L’Alleluiah
First edition with original drawings of Fautrier.
A beautiful and rare copy.
4° of 68 pp., in sheets, cover.
280 x 210 mm.
Bataille, Georges. Fautrier, Jean. L’Alleluiah (Catéchisme de Dianus).
Paris, Librairie Auguste Blaizot, 1947.
First edition.
18 lithographs of Jean Fautrier printed in purple, one of which is reproduced on the cover and 100 lithographs also in purple.
92 copies, this one 1/20 on Auvergne (no. 15) including a suite of 18 etched etchings and 9 original drawings by Jean Fautrier executed with pen and charcoal on Chinese paper mounted in the work, in red ink for some (4) and black for the others (5).
In a series of love precepts, Georges Bataille tries, under the name of Dianus, character and pseudonym that he used several times, to draw a double portrait without shadow of pleasure and desire. Each part, entitled "Fragment I-IX", seems to be an answer that the author gives to the absent questions asked to him by Diane Kotchoubey de Beauharnais (1918-1989), his second wife, at the time of their meeting.
The absence of questions accentuates the fragmentary side of the text, and at the same time quickens each of its fragments, giving it a sharp, striking character.
It is not a question of teaching peace or rest, but of this bare-bones which, through the obscenity revealed, and in question the world and oneself. The aim is this extreme where opposites coincide and cancel each other out: desire and disgust, horror and joy, disappointment and infinity, laughter and death.. (Dictionnaire des œuvres)
A rare and attractive copy.
R.M. Mason, 170-187 ; Peyré (Y.), Peinture et poésie, Gallimard, 2001, pp. 32, 135-136, 238, n° 49, ill. n° 108 ; Mason (R. M.), Jean Fautrier. Les estampes, Genève, Galerie Tendance, 1986, pp. 73-87, n° 170-187, pp. 179-180 ; […], Fautrier. 1898-1964, Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1989, pp. 174, 183-187 et 190-191 ; Peyré (Y.), Fautrier, ou les outrages de l'impossible, Regard, 1990, pp. 361-370 ; Bataille (G.), Œuvres, NRF, La Pléiade, 2004, pp. CXVII-CXIX.
