Le Bestiaire, ou Cortège d'Orphée

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Le Bestiaire, ou Cortège d'Orphée

Artist Raoul Dufy (French, 1877-1953)

Author Guillaume Apollinaire (French, 1880-1918)

Publisher Deplanche, Éditeur d'art, Paris, 1911

Printer text: Gauthier-Villars, Paris (M. Renauld) prints: M. Ducrot, [s.l.]

Date1911

Dimensionsslipcase: 14 3/16 x 11 in. (361 x 279mm)
book: 13 1/8 x 10 1/8 in. (333 x 257mm)
page (variable): 13 1/8 x 10 1/8 in. (333 x 257mm)

MediumOriginal prints: 30 woodcuts and 5 woodcut ornaments Text: letterpress Paper: Imperial japan paper

ClassificationBooks

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1988.9

Not on View

Label TextDufy's LA BESTIAIRE is one of the chief masterpieces of twentieth--century French poetry, graphic art, and book production. The text by the avant -garde poet Apollinaire (1880-1918) is about Orpheus, the musician in classic legend whose music charmed both beasts and men. The 30 succinct poems, each accompanied by a stinking illustration, feature an array of animals, including the tortoise, the horse, the goat, the snake, the lion, the camel, the elephant, the caterpillar, the octopus, and the peacock. Each image pulsates from Dufy's fanciful and vivid patterning. Working in close collaboration with poet Guillaume Apollinaire after Picasso had abandoned the project, Raoul Dufy made 30 full-page woodcuts, one for each of Apollinaire’s poems. Typography and images were conceived together by poet and painter under the influence of Medieval and Renaissance bestiaries (illustrated collections, often moralizing, of both real and mythical animals) and more recent popular illustrated manuals of natural history. The contrasting velvety blacks and radiant whites combine with the intricate arabesques and decorative patterning to create seemingly traditional yet sophisticated and witty designs. Apollinaire’s poem on the page displayed was translated by poet X.J. Kennedy: Squirting his ink to the sky, Sucking his lovers’ blood, Like Benson’s etching of a sandpiper nearby, his depiction of a lone Greater Yellowlegs shorebird has a spareness and use of empty space that recalls Japanese images. Finding the taste of it good, This inhuman monster is I. Though this book contains a collection of poem by French modernist poet Guillaume Apollinaire, it takes the medieval bestiary as its point of departure. Bestiaries were a primitive form of natural history book, which contained desc riptions of animals and birds (some of them mythical) along with ore and legend associated with them. In his boldly designed images, artist Raoul Dufy was inspired by the medieval woodcut illustrations that accompanied the text in a bestiary. Below is a translation of Apollinaire's poem about the owl: The Owl My sad heart is a hoot owl nailed, Torn loose and then again impaled. Its blood and ardor end their days. All those who love me, those I praise. Le Bestiaire is one of the chief masterpieces of 20th-century French poetry, graphic art, and book production. Working in close collaboration with avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire after Picasso had abandoned the project, Raoul Dufy made 30 full-page woodcuts, one for each of Apollinaire’s poems. Typography and images were conceived together by poet and painter under the influence of Medieval and Renaissance bestiaries (illustrated collections of both real and mythical animals, often with a moral lesson) and more recent popular illustrated volumes of natural history. Inspired by Medieval woodcuts and the current interest in folk and peasant art, Dufy’s woodcuts for Le Bestiaire proved so dynamic that revolutionary fashion designer Paul Poiret hired Dufy to produce fabric designs based on the prints.Published Referencescf. Wheeler, Monroe, Modern Painters and Sculptors as Illustrators, New York, 1946, p. 101 cf. Ray, Gordon N., The Art of the French Illustrated Book, 1700 to 1914, vol. II, New York, 1982, no. 393. cf. Garvey, Eleanor M., The Artist & the Book, 1860--1960, Boston, 1961, no. 91 cf. The Frank Crowninshield Collection of Modern French Illustrated Books, New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries, 1943, no. 209 cf. Johnson, Robert Flynn, Artists' Books in the Modern Era 1870--2000: The Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books, San Francisco, 2001, no. 15Exhibition HistoryToledo, Toledo Museum of Art, Don't Feed the Books: Birds, Bugs, and Bestiaries Featuring the Molly and Walter Bareiss Collection of Modern Illustrated Books, 2001, repr. p. 9. Toledo Museum of Art, European Expressionist and Cubist Works on Paper: 1900-1930, December 2, 2011-March 11, 2012 (University of Toledo Student Exhibition). Toledo Museum of Art, Looks Good on Paper: Masterworks and Favorites, Oct. 10, 2014-Jan. 11, 2015.

Toledo Museum of Art, Drawn from Classicism: Modern Artists’ Books, September 9-December 10, 2017.