L'antitête: Monsieur Aa l'antiphilosophe (1 of 3 v.)

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L'antitête: Monsieur Aa l'antiphilosophe (1 of 3 v.)

Artist Max Ernst French, 1891-1976

Publisher Bordas [Paris], 1949

Author Tristan Tzara French (born Romania), 1896-1963

Date1949

DimensionsSlipcase: H: 6 11/16 in. (170 mm); W: 4 15/16 in. (125 mm); Depth: 4 1/8 in. (105 mm).
Book: H: 6 1/16 in. (154 mm); W: 4 9/16 in. (116 mm); Depth: 1 3/8 in. (35 mm).
Page (untrimmed): H: 5 1/2 in. (140 mm); W: 4 5/16 in. (110 mm).

MediumEtchings

ClassificationBooks

Credit LineGift of Molly and Walter Bareiss

Object number

1984.949A

Not on View

Collections

Works on Paper

Published Referencescf. Garvey, Eleanor M., The Artist & the Book, 1860--1960, Boston, 1961, no. 298.

cf. Johnson, Robert Flynn, Artists' Books in the Modern Era 1870--2000: The Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books, San Francisco, 2001, nos. 57, 125.

Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, Splendid Pages: The Molly and Walter Bareiss Collection of Modern Illustrated Books, Feb. 14--May 11, 2003.Label TextThe first volume of L'Antitete covers 1920 to 1922. Monsieur Aa is a persona of the poet, an irrepressible non--stop voice that mocks everything and everyone, including himself and the book that he (that is Tzara) is writing. Ernst's etchings are inspired by Tzar's vocabulary and by his portrait of Monsieur Aa as the embodiment of Dada. The imagery is made up of birds, fish, or masks against against patterns of speckles, dots, or crisscross lines. These images reflect Tzara's emphasis on the tiny and the textural, such as eyebrows, pebbles, insects, "les microbes chauds" (warm microbes), "des nombrils d'oiseaux" (birds' bellybuttons). (Excerpt from Anne Hyde Greet's "Max Ernst and the Artist's Book," pages 106-108 in MAX ERNST : BEYOND SURREALISM, 1986.)