PIEYRE DE MANDIARGUES André (1909-1991)

Lot 443
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Estimation :
800 - 1000 EUR
PIEYRE DE MANDIARGUES André (1909-1991)
Les corps illuminés, autograph manuscript signed [1965]; 8 leaves in-4 (270 x 210 mm). Black ballpoint pen on bluish paper, recto only, with erasures and additions (paper very slightly faded). "The simple outline of a woman's body is the first affirmation of the intelligence of life [...]" Successively titled À la lumière des corps, Catalogue de femmes and La Beauté blanche (titles crossed out on the manuscript) and then Les Corps lumineux, this text was first published in 1965 by Mercure de France under the title Les Corps illuminés to accompany 44 photographs by Frédéric Barzilay. It was reprinted in Troisième belvédère in 1971 (pp. 116 to 121). Here the writer offers an eulogy of the female body, from prehistoric cave paintings to Mannerism, whose paintings "constitute an apology for women, an illustration of all the details and possibilities of the female body", to Jean Fautrier, "and finally Man Ray, who reveals that "the lens and the darkroom were made for the woman's body like the cup for the wine or the arm for the waist". Stressing the talent of Frédéric Barzilay, he concludes: "What we ask of photography, and Barzilay's satisfies us, is an original vision, Edenic in a way, prior to the ragbag of worn-out sensations that constitute our memory, and then, through the image, a transmutation of vision that is capable of moving us or better striking us." Attached: The typescript of the same text entitled Les Corps illuminés (the last word crossed out and corrected in red pen "illuminés"). 8 leaves in-4 on paper with some autograph corrections in red ballpoint pen.
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