St. Ghetto des Préts
Paris: O.L.B. 8vo (9 x 11 ½ in.) in wraps. 121 pp. 47 illustrations. Good, with weakened hinge and some shelf-wear. Two final leaves are uncut on the top edge. Item #ANT197
The magnum opus of the Gabriel Pomerand (b. 1925 – d. 1972), a poet and artist whose brief star waxed under the sign of the Lettrist movement in the 1950s.
In this book, Pomerand uses the techniques of lettrism to translate his poems into graphic scores, and indeed, each page features his dynamic illustrated signs on one side of the page, with the poems in french on the other. Deriving his technique from memories of "old grimoires and luxurious incunabulums" Pomerand created what is, to our mind, one of the great intermedia works of the century, a moving tribute not just to the time it was created, but to that great flowerings of avant-garde culture of a place, Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Pomerand's introduction, translated by M. Kasper, states the following:
“I want it understood that only the avant-garde of intelligence preoccupies me, and not all the schools this avant-garde fits into.
I dread the day when the name of the invention–which is a phenomenon of commodification–overshadows the reals search for transgression.
I love perpetual effort and risk of every kind, whether it is fighting against rules or against the nature of things.
Throughout my life, I have had no other goal than to be an extremist, at that battlefront which alarm clocks suggest even as they lure us into the traps of life.”.
Price: $800.00