Sans nom d'éditeur

Autograph letter dated and signed, one page by Roger Caillois addressed to Thierry Maulnier (19 lines in black ink on a leaf) from his Parisian residence.
Central folds inherent to postal folding.
Roger Caillois expresses his joy at meeting Thierry Maulnier soon according to his arrangements: "Je vous dois la visite traditionnelle... Je crois qu'entre nous les sujets de conversation ne manqueront pas... Aussi sentez-vous tout à fait libre d'agir à votre guise... Un simple coup de téléphone suffira éventuellement pour me fixer rendez-vous." (I owe you the traditional visit... I believe that between us subjects of conversation will not be lacking... So feel quite free to act as you please... A simple phone call will suffice eventually to arrange an appointment with me.)

Later printing of a black and white photograph from the 1930s showing Bette Davis seated in an armchair with crossed legs.
Handsome copy.
Autograph signature of Bette Davis in the upper margin of the photograph.
Provenance: from the collection of the great autograph collector Claude Armand.

Original typescript in German signed by Bertolt Brecht, 22 lines on one leaf. One typewritten correction. Slight traces of folds, and a few parts shadowed.
Published in Brecht's correspondence (GBA, Briefe 3).
Important definition by Brecht of his famous Verfremdungseffekt, the the­atrical distancing or "alienation" he coined and popularized, for audiences to reach an intellectual level of under­standing of theater, instead of being trapped in an illusory narrative world. The playwright sets out the political and aesthetic mission of these dra­matic effects for French audiences. A rare theoretical writing in private hands, the majority of his papers be­ing at the Akademie der Künste in Ber­lin (Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv).
On the occasion of his last visit in Paris, Brecht sent this Verfremdung manifes to theater journalist Henry Magnan. The text reflects France's renewed interest in his revolutionary approach: "From June 20 to 24, 1955, the Berliner Ensem­ble performed The Caucasian Chalk Cir­cle as part of the 2nd International Festi­val of Dramatic Arts in Paris; Brecht took part despite health problems. Audience interest surpassed the first 1954 Parisian performance. Every performance was sold out. Its political references were sometimes problematic to critics but the staging was unanimously acclaimed." (Noah Willumsen, Brecht: Interviews 1926-1956, 2023).
The text was published with an inter­view Brecht gave to Magnan for the French paper Le Monde ("Déclarations de M. Bertolt Brecht", June 25, 1955). However, a part of this typed state­ment was cut against Brecht's wishes, whose "only demand (oh what a man!) was that we transcribe the letter ex­actly", the article ironically states. The French translation had even complete­ly changed the meaning of the second sentence, deleting the negation present in our original version: "Actually, it is al­ways alienation effects when in art the illusion that one is facing nature itself is [not] maintained". Probably an un­intentional omission, that nonetheless reversed the very definition of his the­atrical project based on Verfremdung.
Like the socialist Shaw before him, Brecht openly wanted to change the minds of his audience. In other words, make people think about the old and established ways, and instead of accep­tance, aim for novelty. What was most radical about Brecht's work was that his politics did not just shape the content of his theatre but its form, as well. This is the great paradox of Brechtian theater, whose famous effects are, in fact, quite old:


"Alienation effects have been known in theater and other artforms for a long time [...] Thus, on the stage, the repre­sented world is already alienated by conventions of verse or by a very per­sonal style or by the abrupt change from verse to prose, or seriousness to comedy. I myself use alienation effects (including the old ones mentioned above) to make human society ap­pear as not so natural ("Of course, my dear, that's nature"), i.e. self-evident and indisputable. For a long time now, science has treated "forces of nature" (such as great plagues, meteorological horrors, the night, etc.) as stemming from nature, but by no means natural. Art is still powerless in the face of hu­man nature and thus in the face of so­cial catastrophes of both an individual and general nature (such as the lust for power, love, war, etc.). It behaves de­faitistically towards human nature. In some theoretical works, I have tried to prove we need a technique of alienation in the art of theater and why we need it - not necessarily my techniques, by the way". His non-realist innovations, which borrowed eclectically from Asian, Eliza­bethan, and Expressionist theatre, also represent a return to classical tradition.
As evidenced by the transcription er­rors and cuts in Brecht's original text, "Attempts to appropriate Brecht's new vocabulary was not immediately suc­cessful with French critics: deadlines and a certain journalistic omniscience often stood in the way of cautious con­ceptual work. In conversation with Mag­nan, however, the efforts Brecht made during his last trip to Paris to make his concepts accessible and understand­able become visible behind the cliché of his image as a secretive poet. Not only did he grant his critic [Magnan] an interview; he also sent a letter af­ter the conversation [this typed text]" (Noah Willumsen).
Famously praised by Roland Barthes, the "V-effect" had a great influence in both theater and film, including Arthur Miller's The Crucible, connecting the Salem trials with McCarthyism using the Brechtian technique of historicization.
Jean-Luc Godard's cinematographic aesthetic also owes much from his the­atrical effects.
Building a new society through theat­rical techniques - this is the lesson of Bertolt Brecht's theoretical testimony, written for the press a year before his death: "The Brecht we encounter here, in his interviews, is familiar, though practically unknown: savvy and skep­tical in his use of media, transnational in his interventions, evasive, yet indel­ible. Over the course of his career, he slowly transformed the interview from a vehicle for commentary into a modern form of oral literature. Scholars have of­ten overlooked its new possibilities [...] Since Brecht's death, the interview has become an essential part of the author's profession; his role in this develop­ment should not be forgotten" (Norman Roessler).
Provenance: Archives of Henry Magnan, poet, journalist (Le Monde, Combat, Les Cahiers du Cinéma, Les Lettres français­es). Author of an encyclopedia article about Brecht (Larousse mensuel, 1956).
 




 

Original portrait of James Joyce, signed and dated by Freund on the left and right of the mount, just below the image. With the monogrammed dry stamp "GF" in the corner of the print, and "Gisèle Freund All Rights Reserved" violet stamp on verso.
Large-format portraits of Joyce are extremely rare.
A striking photograph of James Joyce taken during his legendary photo shoot with Gisèle Freund to promote Finnegan's wake. The Kodak negatives were rescued from a taxi accident suffered by Freund on her way back from Joyce's house. Freund's color portraits would place her at the forefront of modernity.
In 1938, after two years of refusals and postponements, Freund had finally shot her first black-and-white portraits of the writer, taken on the spot and almost unbeknownst to the visually-impaired Joyce. The following year, Freund fought hard to photograph Joyce in color: "It was Sylvia Beach who found the trick. An Irishman who felt intimately linked to his novelistic characters, Joyce was also very superstitious. It just so happened that my husband's name was the same as one of the heroes in Ulysses", Freund wrote in her personal notebook. Thanks to the magical invocation of Blum's name (so close to Leopold Bloom) the writer overcame his aversion of color portraiture, a technique Freund was one of the first to master. The session happened over two days, March 8 and 9, 1939, and can easily be described as one of the most emotionally charged events of Gisèle Freund's young career, not to mention Joyce's. The first day ended with the infamous cab accident that Freund considered as supernatural intervention:

"I'm leaving at 5 a.m. - Taxi - crash - devices on the ground. I cry in despair. At home, I immediately telephone Joyce 'M. Joyce, you damned my photos - you put some kind of a sad Irish spell on them and my cab crashed. I was almost killed and your photos are ruined.' Hear Joyce gasping over the phone. So I was right - he had wished me bad luck. Silence. then [he said] 'come back to-morrow' "

The negatives emerged unscathed from the cab accident. This portrait was undoubtedly shot on first day of the session before the accident, showing an anxious Joyce carefully avoiding the camera's gaze. The event was meticulously documented by Freund, who devotes more pages to it in her notebook than to the hundred or so other subjects she photographed between 1938 and 1940:

"He had donned a red indoor jacket and his long, sensitive hands wore several rings. He seemed quite unhappy at the idea of being photographed, and gave me worried looks. His nervousness got the better of me: I began to drop objects, and the atmosphere became increasingly tense. [...] I pressed the shutter release and finished my film as quickly as possible, before promising the patient that this time, I'd really never bother him again. Clearly relieved, he kept me on for a few more minutes, and we talked about Finnegan's Wake, speculating on how it would be received by critics and audiences alike. By the end, my interlocutor's voice had become weak, exhausted; he spoke of death - his death - predicting that Finnegan's Wake would be his last book. I assured him that after years of intense work, all writers are depressed, exhausted; that he was still young (he was only 56)".

A rare variant of Joyce's portrait published on the cover of Time Magazine, following the publication of his last masterpiece Finnegan's Wake (1939).
Quotes from Gisèle Freund's notebook and diary are from Monique Sicard, "Photographier James Joyce", Genesis, 40 | 2015.

Rare daguerreotype of a young girl, named Pauline after an indication on the verso.
The date 1847 appears on newspaper clippings glued to the verso, serving as mounting paper.
The black-painted glass with gold leaf fillets has no deep cardboard bevel, as was the case in pre-1850 examples of this process - the glory days of daguerreotypes soon to be replaced by reproducible and less costly photographic techniques.
An aesthetic portrait produced in the early days of photography, an interesting pendant to Lewis Carroll's portrait of Annie Rogers (catalog number X) - illustrating the constant evolution in the aesthetic of early girlhood portraits in 19th-century photography.

Extremely rare first edition of the exhibition catalog of paintings and photographs by Kalifala Sidibé and drawings by the Czechoslovak artist Václav Fiala at the Krasoumná Jednota Gallery in Prague.

[With:] 3 original 1930's German cigarette cards depicting 3 Sidibé paintings in color: "The Judgment of Pâris", "On the banks of the Niger River" and "Elephant Hunt". These are very rare reproductions of Sidibé's paintings, which have all but disappeared today. Each card is numbered and includes a short biography of the painter on verso.
Two of the paintings featured on the cards to our knowledge have never been reproduced in the rare illustrated press articles on Sidibé - Der Querschnitt, n°IX, Cahier 12, 1929, p. 890; La Lumière, November 2, 1929, p. 11; Der Cicerone, n° XXII, Cahier 2, 1930, p. 54-55; Omnibus, 1931, p. 32; Comœdia, March 7, 1931, p. 3. A poor-quality black-and-white reproduction of "Elephant Hunt" was published in La Liberté, October 19, 1929, p. 1.
These colorful objects of popular culture keep a visual record of the work of an unjustly forgotten and trailblazing artist. This type of illustrated vignette used to stiffen soft packets of cigarettes was essentially a marketing device intended to promote sales by encouraging people to acquire complete sets - in this case, the series "Die bunte Welt" (The Multicolored World), to be housed in special albums, known as "Sammelalbums", as indicated on the card's verso.
Prague Exhibition catalog of paintings by Sidibé
The booklet lists twenty of Sidibé's paintings, with titles and sale prices; the last line also indicates a set of 24 of his photographs, with its price crossed out and corrected.
An exceptional document recording the presence and reception of artworks by Sudanese (present-day Mali) painter and precursor of modern African art Kalifala Sidibé, in Prague's most important avant-garde exhibition gallery in the inter-war years.
Considered the first African painter working on canvas, Sidibé was "discovered" by French banker Henri Hirsch, during a visit to French West African colonial territories. In 1929, Hirsch sent portraits of the artist and photographs of his work to his friend Georges Huisman. Within a few months, Huisman attracted the interest of gallery owner Georges Bernheim who exhibited Sidibé's paintings for the first time in 1929. The event enjoyed a great success with connoisseurs and rave reviews from leading figures in the art world: Le Corbusier, Michel Leiris, Roland Dorgelès. After the first show in Paris, Sidibé's paintings soon toured Europe and were exhibited in Prague from May 8 to 25, 1930. Most of his artworks created during his short career – Sidibé died at the age of 30 a mere months after this exhibition – has now been lost. The only surviving works are now part of prestigious European collections, including the Le Corbusier Foundation and the Michael Graham-Stewart collection.
As in France, "primitive art" had entered Czechoslovakia with the dissemination of Cubist aesthetics. In 1913, "Negro sculpture" appeared alongside artworks by Braque, Picasso, Derain, Cézanne and Juan Gris at the third exhibition of the Cubist movement's Groupe des Beaux-Arts in Prague. This first exhibition remains famous for displaying no original works from Africa: only including a single African statuette which turned out to be a fake, since attributed to the artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, mixing the aesthetics of Cameroonian statues and Oceanian wooden reliefs from Palau. It also included photographs of African sculptures from the collection of the French art dealer Kahnweiler. The following year, five statuettes from the Belgian Congo and Cameroon made the journey to Prague also displayed with photographs of other non-European works of art. The aim was to demonstrate the universality of art bringing together classical and folk art, the European and the ethnographic. The result in these avant-garde exhibitions was a seemingly incoherent melange of European and non-European artworks of different periods and styles, in an attempt to find formal parallels to associate with a new canon Cubist artists were then creating.
Except for Sidibé's exhibition, African art in Czechoslovakia was only about fetishes, masks and statuettes, which certain great Czech artists, such as Josef Čapek would progressively add to their aesthetic influences and artistic theories. This vision would also continue in the 1930s, with the exhibition of works by avant-garde painter Emil Filla accompanied by businessman Joe Hloucha's collection from sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, pre-Columbian America and Asia (Emil Filla - Černošská a tichomořská plastika ze sbírky Joe Hlouchy, February 5-26, 1935, Prague).
In 1930 Prague, Sidibé's exhibition radically differed from the usual non-European mélange of art, where anonymous creations were displayed with no apparent connection between them. The exhibition of Sidibé was organized by the Krasoumná Jednota, Prague's most important association for the promotion of contemporary and avant-garde art founded in 1850. In the 1920s, it exhibited the great names of Czech painting as well as Paul Klee and Emil Nolde. The year before Sidibé's exhibition, the gallery featured works by Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault and Auguste Rodin. The Jednota gallery made Sidibé the headliner of this unprecedented event in the history of the Czech avant-garde, having already created a sensation at Bernheim in Paris. Few traces of the Prague event survive today. The exhibition is not listed in the extensive database of Art Exhibitions in the Czech Lands, 1820-1950. This catalog is one of the few surviving sources for understanding the European reception of Sidibé's work: the attraction of the exotic which still largely prevailed, is reflected in the soaring prices of his paintings, between 2,500 and 6,000 Czech crowns - an average of $12,000 today. Sidibé shared the gallery space with Czech artist Vaclav Fiala, academic painter and illustrator who exhibited more drawings for a much lower average price ($800 today). This exhibition remains a unique event in the early 20th-century Czech art world: the few exhibitions of African art held between 1910 and 1930 were confined to primitivist comparisons between modern art and the indigenous cultures of America, Africa and Oceania.
Due to his premature death and a limited number of artworks, Sidibé was soon forgotten despite the honors he received from the most prestigious modern art galleries and leading centers of artistic avant-garde. Perhaps his marouflaged canvases - antithesis of dark wooden fetishes - didn't fulfill European preconceived ideas of African art.
The story of Sidibé and his work illustrates the ambivalent reception of modern African art in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century: praised by avant-garde critics, the painter was nevertheless forbidden to leave French Sudan to attend his first Parisian exhibition. This small booklet is probably the only documentary record of Sidibé's artworks and their journey to Eastern Europe, where they were exceptionally displayed as the creations of a contemporary artist in his own right.

Bronze Cast of the Marquis de Sade's Skull
2012 | 20 x 13.5 x 15 cm | bronze
Bronze cast of the Marquis de Sade's skull by the master founder Avangini. One of a unique numbered edition of 99 bearing a reproduction of Sade's signature.
Also included is a certificate of authenticity signed by the Comtesse de Sade, with the family's wax seal.

Provenance: family archives.

On Friday 2nd December 1814, Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade died at the Charenton asylum, at the age of 74.
Despite his final wishes, the Marquis had a religious burial in the cemetery at Charenton. In an ironic twist of fate, Sade would not stay in the bosom of the Church for long even after death, for a few years later, his tomb was “profaned” in the name of science by the asylum's doctor, Dr. L. J. Ramon. Having studied the enigmatic Marquis' skull, he passed it on to his German colleague Johann Spurzheim, a student of the famous Franz Joseph Gall, the founder of phrenology, very new and very popular at the time.
Spurzheim made a cast – today in the Anthropological Lab of the Museum of Mankind – of the precious skull and exhibited the original during his European conferences before mislaying it, apparently in Germany or America. What greater freedom could someone who had spent the best years of his life behind bars have hoped for?
The museum also preserves the notes from the very partial phrenological analysis of the “Marquis de Sade's cerebral structure” carried out by Spurzheim's assistant, which was nothing less than a new, posthumous, trial culminating in another guilty verdict, this time without appeal:
“Born from the most shameful passions and marked by feelings of opprobrium and ignominy, a world-view so monstrous – if it were not the brainchild of a lunatic – would render its creator unworthy of being called a man, and would blacken his reputation for good.”
We, however, prefer the more honest description provided by Dr Ramon in his Notes on M. de Sade: “Sade's skull, nonetheless, had not been in my possession many days before I examined it from the phrenological point of view, something I was very taken with at the time (as well as magnetism). What did this examination show me? A well-developed crown (Theosophy, goodwill); marked projection behind and underneath the ears (a conflict point – similarly developed organs in the skull of du Guesclin); mid-sized cerebellum, an elongated distance between one mastoid part of the temporal bone and another (indicating excesses in physical love).
In a word, just as I was unable to discover in Sade, as he walked along seriously and, I would even say, almost in a patrician way, the author of Justine and Juliette, my inspection of his head would have made me absolve him altogether of the charge of producing such works: his skull was in all respects comparable to that of a Church Father.”
A witness to the impenetrable secret of the Marquis and his intolerable freedom, this bronze skull, the only replica of the occiput that so mysteriously disappeared, seems to respond to the Shakespearean question with a sarcastic reformulation:

To be free or not to be!

[Petition of Women of the Third Estate to the King]
8-page pamphlet, under paper wrappers.

“Sire, At a time when the different orders of the state are occupied with their interests; when everyone seeks to make the most of his titles and rights; when some anxiously recall the centuries of servitude and anarchy, while others make every effort to shake off the last links that still bind them to the imperious remains of feudalism; women—continual objects of the admiration and scorn of men—could they not also make their voices heard midst this general agitation?”

A very rare letter of grievance from the women of the Third Estate addressed to Louis XVI, expressing their deep apprehensions a few months before the outbreak of the French Revolution.
They begin by painting a picture of the miserable condition of 18th-century women: neglected education, determinism based on physical beauty, prostitution, parents' disdain for their female offspring... before suggesting reforms: free schools for women, economic autonomy by prohibiting men from exercising "trades that are the prerogative of women", abolition of prostitution.
This claim ends with a commendable but perhaps ironic paragraph: “We ask to take leave of ignorance, to give our children a sound and reasonable education so as to make of them subjects worthy of serving you. We will teach them to cherish the beautiful name of Frenchmen; we will transmit to them the love we have for Your Majesty. For we are certainly willing to leave valor and genius to men, but we will always challenge them over the dangerous and precious gift of sensibility; we defy them to love you better than we do. They run to Versailles, most of them for their interests, while we, Sire, go to see you there, and when with difficulty and with pounding hearts, we can gaze for an instance upon your August Person, tears flow from our eyes. The idea of Majesty, of the Sovereign, vanishes, and we see in you only a tender Father, for whom we would give our lives a thousand times”
This precious document is one of the very few bearing witness to women's concerns of their place and role in this time of ferment and change within French society.
“In the Pétition des femmes du tiers état au roi, an anonymous text dated January 1, 1789, women called for the right to education and work [...]. Over the course of 1789, a few women writers made their voices heard in letters, brochures, libels and petitions sent to the Assembly. Women appeared on the political scene on a massive scale, taking part in the first riots that broke out in the summer of 1788 and the spring of 1789. They had always played a major role in frenzied revolts, but this time the context was different, and, like men, they were sensitive to political issues. After the opening of the Estates General on May 5, 1789, women appeared in the streets as well as in the galleries of the Salle du Jeu de Paume in Versailles, or in the gardens of the Palais-Royal in Paris, to listen to the predominantly male speakers. On July 14, 1789, when the Bastille was stormed, several accounts confirm that women fought alongside the men.” (Femmes et République, 2021)
Translations from The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Lynn Hunt, 1996, 60–63.

Signed autograph medical prescription for morphine chloride and opocalcium

Autograph medical prescription signed by the famous Docteur Petiot, written on his letterhead at 66 rue Caumartin and dated October 8, 1942. Stamped in red ink by the pharmacist Chapon, Boulevard de la Chapelle, Paris.
The infamous doctor prescribes morphine chloride and opocalcium guaiacol for his patient - a certain Henri Pain living at 66 rue des Flandres. We know of another prescription for heroin hydrochloride written for the same patient a few months earlier.
These two prescriptions closely spaced in time for heroin derivatives and morphine lead us to believe that they were fraudulent, since Dr. Petiot had in fact been convicted several times for helping drug addicts: "It is said that in certain bars in Montmartre and on the Champs-Elysées, a certain doctor in the Rue Caumartin writes prescriptions without difficulty, under the pretext of detoxification cures, from which pharmacists dispense drugs. [...] Petiot exposed himself to criticism because of his detoxification methods. Firstly, he doesn't eliminate the drug all at once. He continues to administer ever-lighter doses, mixed with painkillers. But drug addicts are tricksters. Many expose their good intentions to several doctors at once. This way of doing things enables them to maintain their artificial paradise by medical, and therefore legal, means." (Jean-Marc Varaut, L'Abominable Dr. Petiot, 1974)
A rare prescription by "Dr. Satan" at a time when he was already busy making his patients disappear, while also dabbling in a number of other illegal activities.

Exceptional set of 24 manuscript leaves by Louis-Ferdinand Céline from D'un château l'autre [Castle to Castle], mounted on boards under protective paper. Every page is numbered in Céline's hand in the upper left corner (from 632 to 634, 636 to 651 and 653 to 657), and written in blue ballpoint pen. They feature the usual characteristics of Céline's manuscripts: stains, traces of paper clips... important variations to the published text, crossed-out lines and words, modifications, and repetitions.
Bound in full black shagreen.“Céline began writing D'un château l'autre in the summer of 1954 and finished it in the spring of 1957. [...] At Gallimard, we were kept informed of the manuscript's progress: 'I am at the 1300th page, 50th draft...I can think without foolish optimism that I will soon reach the end (about a month).' A few weeks later, the book was nearly complete: 'My 'masthead' is here, it's fine lacework.' Completed in March, the book went on sale on June 20, 1957.” (F. Gibault, Céline. 1944-1961 – Cavalier de l'apocalypse). This manuscript is one of these numerous “drafts” and was not chosen in the final version of the text. It is most likely one of the earliest versions written before 1955.
It contains a long unpublished passage about the “shivering” Nazi-sympathizing Frenchmen (“collabos”) exiled in Sigmaringen. Although he was among them, Céline paints a very harsh portrait of the thousand French collaborators who took refuge in the former Hohenzollern castle. He reworked the passage extensively, erased it, and wrote it again. This violent excerpt will ultimately be left out of the published novel altogether. Céline describes the lavish apartments of Baron Commandant von Raumnitz. In the Gallimard published version, Raumnitz's “secret rooms” will be cut short and very much toned down. Some of the pages stray from the storyline and evoke present-day events: in the grip of paranoia, Céline gives derogatory nicknames to the most prominent figures of French intelligentsia, namely Jean-Paul Sartre (“Tartre”), and Louis Aragon renamed “Larengon”. Some “characters” appear in our version under their real names, especially Jean Paulhan who will be nicknamed Norbert Loukoum in the published version after a quarrel between the two writers. This new name will appear in early 1955.
Remarkable unpublished manuscript draft of D'un château l'autre.