Louis Icart — The Book Presents Itself: Carnival Figures with Pantagruel 1936
$ 36.96
Description
Louis Icart — The Book Presents Itself: Carnival Figures with Pantagruel 1936. Year: 1936. Le Vasseur's 1936 edition is the definitive illustrated Rabelais of the Art Deco period — a luxury bibliophile production printed by Draeger Frères in color heliogravure using multiple etched copper plates. Louis Icart — Original Color Heliogravure, Gargantua et Pantagruel (Le Vasseur Edition, 1936) This is a meta-print -- showing the book about the book -- Rabelais winking at his own title through Icart's figures. The figures holding the book are dressed in the white and feathered carnival costume that reads as either theatrical harlequin-adjacent or more specifically as the commedia innamorata type — the romantic leads rather than the clown servants. "maintes foys passé vostre temps avec les honorables dames et damoyselles"--many times have you passed your time with the honorable ladies and damsewomen. --from Rabelais' prologue address to his readers, the famous mock-dedication where he positions the book as companions for drinking, traveling, and idle hours. Which is precisely what two carnival figures reading it together illustrates. Artist: Louis Icart (1888–1950) Medium: Multiple etched copper plates. Original color heliogravure (photogravure), Printer: Draeger Frères, Paris Publisher: Le Vasseur et Cie, Paris Year: 1936 Paper: Vélin d'Arches Plate mark (cuvette) is visible and lovely, the visble physical artifact of an intaglio copper plate pressed into heavy paper. Sheet size: approximately 9.5 × 7.25 inches, full margins as issued From # 446 of 900 Limited Edition Sets. Photos of the colophon and "Justification du Tirage" are for informational purpose only and are not part of the sale. Le Vasseur's 1936 edition is the definitive illustrated Rabelais of the Art Deco period — a luxury bibliophile production printed by Draeger Frères in color heliogravure using multiple etched copper plates. Louis Icart built his reputation on elegant, sensual depictions of Parisian women — polished, fashionable, and largely decorative. The 1936 Rabelais commission placed him in entirely different territory: broad physical humor and the full carnival spirit of a text that has been transgressing decorum since 1532. The result is unmistakably Icart in line and color, but working in a register — grotesque, comic, uninhibited — that his commercial output rarely required of him. Ships flat, protected in rigid mailer with archival sleeve and stiffeners.
