Jésus-Christ rastaquouère Collection Dada | Paris [1921] 16,5 x 23,5 cm | in original wrappers in a chemise and slipcase
First edition, one of 1000 numbered copies, only print after 10 China and 50 on pur-fil paper.
Spine and joints remarkably restored, skilful paper restoration to the lower margin of the two pages 29 and 31, without affecting the text.
Our copy is enriched with an exceptional full-page drawing in black pencil with the following presentation “à Germaine Pittet très sympathiquement Francis Picabia 25 mars 1940 Golfe Juan” “to Germaine Pittet very sympathetically Francis Picabia 25 March 1940 Golfe Juan” in the top right.It also contains autograph aphorisms signed by the painter addressed to this enigmatic young lady:
– On the half-title page in black-coloured pencil:
“Life dominates and masters knowledge / boundaries are torn off / everything that existed no longer exists / this horrendous war will prove it."; "Do not forget your promise, you must not open this book before 1942."; "FIAT VERITAS PEREAT VITA. [truth endures, life ends]
but that is not certain...” – On the title page in black-coloured pencil:
“What unites me to love is life and this alliance will forever associate my name with love”; “Men are sick: they are sick because the problems they carry in them are pure problems of hysteria. Francis Picabia” – On the page presenting the two quotations at the beginning of the volume, in pencil:
“I think I know better than anyone how to love because no-one can reach the unusual raptures of my life. F.P.”We have found another portrait of the dedicatee, produced the same year and auctioned on 9 October 1986. However, it has not been possible for us to identify the mysterious Germaine to whom is addressed this incredible copy of a collection dedicated “to all young girls” and deeply imprinted with Nietzscheism.
In this context of World War II, the painter poet enriches his thinking and delivers unpublished aphorisms to Germaine that echo those of this surrealist collection and confront the surrealist message with these terrible times.
Self-proclaimed nietzschian prophet, Picabia denounces human madness, from which he detaches himself, even refusing to read the book, closed by two adhesive tapes, before the supposed end of the war in 1942.
Nietzschean thinking, present since Picabia's literary beginnings, will never leave him and will soon spread the important correspondence with one of his life's greatest passions, Suzanne Romain. Our copy, on which he draws in capital letters the motto “Fiat veritas pereat vita”, is one of the most important testimonies of his obsession with the philosopher.
The two fragments of glue remaining on the last endpaper and having left traces on the half-title page are the work of Picabia himself, as evidenced by one of the instructions left by the painter:
“Do not forget your promise, you must not open this book before 1942.” An eminently Dadaistic gesture of a gifted book that cannot be read and that – unsealed – reveals a last aphorism:
“I think I know better than anyone how to love because no-one can reach the unusual raptures of my life. F.P.” Picabia Committee Certificate attached.
