Page 48 - ernst - grandville_Demo

25. ERNST, Max. Eluard, Paul. Misfortunes of the Immortals. Translated by Hugh Chisholm. New York. Black Sun Press. 1943.
4to. (257 x 189 mm). [28 leaves including 4 leaves of pink paper; pp. 44, (i), (iii), (i), (i)]. Leaf with monochrome frontispiece by Ernst verso, printed title, half-title and Eluard’s text in French and English translation by Hugh Chisholm above illustrated with twenty monochrome plates after collages by Ernst, section title ‘Vingt Ans Après’, four leaves of pink paper with three monochrome collages by Ernst, leaf with ‘List of Drawings’ and final leaf with justification. Original publisher’s pink printed boards with titles to front cover and spine in black, front cover with the inset inverted reproduction of Ernst’s collage ‘Rencontre de Deux Sourires’ on yellow rhodoïd with a yellow background.
An excellent unsophisticated copy from the édition de tête of the first edition in English of the seminal collaboration marking the boundary between dada and Surrealism.
From the edition limited to 610 numbered copies, with this one of 110 copies from the édition de tête on Strathmore Rag paper signed and numbered by the artist in black ink; a pencil note to the front free endpaper suggests that this is one of the first 50 copies, the only copies to feature the yellow rhodoïd insert and the pink boards, the subsequent 60 copies being issued in green paper-covered boards.
The first edition of Misfortunes of the Immortals was published in Paris in 1922 in very small numbers as Les Malheurs des Immortels. The book matches Paul Eluard’s prose poems - here also with Hugh Chisholm’s English translation above Eluard’s original French - with Max Ernst’s synthetic collages, with each poem faced with one collage. The order of both text and collage is altered for this first edition in English, designed by Caresse Crosby and published by her Black Sun Press and the collages are reproduced at a slightly larger size than in the original 1922 edition. This version also includes a supplement of three collages on pink paper titled Vingt Ans Après together with a List of Drawings. Neither the supplement nor the different order of text and image was retained for the second Paris edition published in 1945.