La Septieme Face Du Dé
FIRST EDITION, THE PRINTER JACQUES GROU-RADENEZ’S COPY, WITH TWO LONG PERSONAL INSCRIPTIONS BY HUGNET. WITH COVER MY MARCEL DUCHAMP. ONE OF ONLY 294 COPIES IN THE EDITION; AN OUT-OF-SERIES COPY LABELED “EXEMPLAIRE NO. G.H.”.
“This is Georges Hugnet’s first volume of ‘poemes-decoupages.’ The title echoes Andre Mallarme’s Un Coup de Des N’Abolira Jamais le hazard (1895), and Hugnet’s poems, printed on the left-hand pages of the book, mirror the unusual spacing and various typefaces and sizes of Un Coup de Des. Hugnet had joined the Surrealists by 1932, and the collages on the right-hand pages, centered around nude images cut out of Paris Magazine, rehearse typical Surrealist themes... The cover by Marcel Duchamp spells out the title in letters containing the names of a whole Surrealist pantheon, including Sade, Freud, Rimbaud, Paracelsus, Swift, Heraclitus, Roussel, Chaplin, Jarry, Uccello, and Saint-Juste, and also a Man Ray photograph of DuChamp’s assisted readymade ‘Why Not Sneeze, Rrose Sélavy?’ consisting of 152 marble cubes the size of sugar cubes, a thermometer, and a cuttlebone inside a small cage” (Roth 101, p.92).
An extraordinary association copy, signed and inscribed twice by Hugnet:
On the half-title, Hugnet has written a warm inscription dated 1936 (the year of publication) thanking Grou-Radenez for his work on the book. Beneath that, in 1963, he added an additional inscription to the new owner of the book (the surrealist photographer Leo Dohmen) praising Grou-Radenez, who had been arrested and murdered by the Nazi’s for hiding Jewish children and aiding the French Resistance.
Paris: Editions Jeanne Bucher, 1936. Original photographically embossed wrappers hand-sewn (as issued); housed in beautiful custom box. Illustrated throughout with black-and-white photo collages, several hand-colored. Only mild wear to wrappers; remnants of paper at spine ends (we have not been able to confirm that there was originally a paper spine under the external sewing; all other copies we've seen have not had a paper spine). A beautiful copy.
Price: $28,000 .