I
apologize for the gap in blog entries, but I have been assiduously working on the edition of La Prose and am now almost done with 106
copies, 30 of which are for the underwriters and for Atelier Coloris. That
means that there are 74 more copies to make, which will take another nine
months to a year. We plan to return to a more regular schedule of blog entries
once we return from our trip to the Oak Knoll Book Fest and from our travels to
view more originals of La Prose, two in Pennsylvania and two in Boston.
If
you wish to make your own tour of originals in the United States, you can
consult the list I have compiled below. There are 13 copies in public
institutions and at least two in private hands that I know of. Wouldn’t it be a
miracle if we could organize an exhibition of several of them to be hung
side-to-side for comparison? That’s what I have been doing virtually through
photographs I have taken at various institutions over the past several years,
when allowed. You can compare the intensity of the colors, the different
folding schemes, the signing of the books, and look at the most complicated
areas to determine if they are different enough to be done by different hands.
This video shows my facsimile alongside the Legion of Honor copy:
And here, you can see my facsimile alongside the Getty Research Center copy:
List
of institutions holding an original copy of La Prose du Transsibérien in the
United States (this is an update to my census published in this blog last year;
all copies are on simili Japon except one):
1.
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA, #124, glued and folded into 21
panels, inscribed to Archipenko, vellum cover not attached
2.
Yale University (Beinecke Library), New Haven, CT, #131, glued and folded into 21 panels, vellum
cover attached
3.
Palace of the Legion of Honor (David and Reva Logan Collection), San Francisco,
CA, unnumbered, on Japon (the only one in the US on Japon in a public
collection)), glued and folded into 22 panels, vellum cover not attached
4.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, #139 (note that #139 was
also assigned by Blaise Cendrars to the copy donated by Sonia Delaunay to the
Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne in Paris), glued and folded into 22 panels,
inscribed to Chilean painter Manuel Ortiz de Zarate: Noël 1916, vellum cover
attached
5.
New York Public Library (Spencer Collection), New York, NY, #47 (note that #47
ws also assigned by Blaise Cendrars to the copy in l’Hermitage in St.
Petersburg, Russia), unglued and unfolded, inscribed to M. Jean Decloux, 21
June 1938
6.
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, #97, glued and folded into 21 panels but
now framed under glass, vellum cover detached
7.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, #38, glued and folded into 20
panels, signed by both Blaise and Sonia, vellum cover not attached, cover has
snaps on front and back cover
8.
Allentown Museum of Art, Allentown, Pennsylvania, unnumbered, four pages unglued
and unfolded, vellum cover is surely a maquette with dark blue lines drawn everywhere
as the pattern for painting the oil colors, cover is non-rectangular trapezoid,
never folded
9.
Harvard University (Houghton Library), Cambridge, MA, unnumbered, four pages
unglued and unfolded, vellum cover not attached
10.
University of Texas (Harry Ransom Center), Dallas, TX, #41, folded and glued,
cover attached
11.
MoMA, New York, NY, #150, glued and folded into 21 panels, inscribed to Louis
Brun, cover not attached (see Inventing Abstraction exhibition catalog, exhibit
shown 2012-2013)
12.
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota, MN, #130, glued and folded into 21
panels but now framed under glass), cover still attached
13.
Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Miami Beach, FL, #147
In
private hands in the U.S.:
#111
in Massachussetts (note that #111 was also assigned by Blaise Cendrars to the
Victoria & Albert Museum in London)
#29
in Louisiana on Japon, folded and glued, inscribed to Mr. Kaplan, vellum cover
attached
I
have assembled a list of books held outside the U.S. in institutions, which
still needs to be updated since last year: (many books on my earlier list show
evidence of existence, but I don’t yet know where they are, so they are not
listed here; all are on simili Japon unless noted))
#4
Muséo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain, (vellum copy)
Tate
Modern, London, unnumbered (vellum copy), maquette
#11
Jean Bonna Collection, Switzerland (Japon copy)
#16
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France (Japon copy)
#34
Jacques Doucet Library, Paris, France (Japon copy)
#47
l’Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
#51
Bibliothèque Nationale, Switzerland
#57
Foundation Martin Bodmer, Geneva, Switzerland
#71
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France
#110
Zadkine Museum, Paris, France
#111
Victoria & Albert Museum
#119
Biblioteca Marío de Andrade, São Paulo, Brazil
#137
National Gallery, Canberra, Australia
#139
Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne, Paris, France
Jacquet
Doucet Literary Library, unnumbered (quite faded)
Musée
d’Art et Histoire, Geneva, Switzerland, unnumbered (maquette painted by Sonia
Delaunay)
British
Library, London, England, unnumbered (“epreuve d’artiste”, artist proof with
note to pocheurs)
Private
Collection:
#9
South Africa, four pages on Japon, unglued and unnumbered, vellum cover not
attached
Additions
and corrections to the list are most welcome. Note that another census was
published in the catalog for the exhibition at the Foundation Jan Michalski
last November which I still need to correlate with my census. More to come.
Besides
making books and trying to sell them, I have written a new long article, to be
published later this year in The Codex Papers, with my latest theories about
where the pochoir was done and why the edition was not completed, and more
information about the type styles used by Blaise Cendrars and about Sonia
Delanunay’s painting vocabulary. I also plan to have a table at Codex next
February and hope to see you there.
