Marc Chagall

(1887 - 1985)               [

1181

Philippe Soupault

Rose des vents

Windrose

Paris: Au sans pareil, 1920

192 x 132 mm. 34 pages 

Edition: 1,000. Copy nr. 946

In 1919 René Hilsum founded a society with the name Collection of literature. The aim of the society was to publish modern French poetry. Breton, Aragon and Soupault were its main supporters. In Mai 1919 the first volume of a series Collection of literature was printed by the publishing company Au Sans Pareil headed by Hilsum. The book with poems by Rimbaud had a cover design by Derain. This design was repeated on all the next volumes in the series. The fifth volume was Soupault’s Compass with four reproductions of drawings by Chagall. It had been Cendrars who had intervened with Chagall to get these designs. All four designs were drawings that Chagall had made in 1913-1914 during his stay in Paris. The drawing of the Drunkard is a well known theme in Chagall’s work. A cow thrusts its head through a window into a room where the drunkard sits at a table with playing cards and a fishbone. His head floats in the air above a bottle. The closeness of  the head and the bottle and its separation from the body, symbolizes the vice of drunkenness. The drawing is a repetition of a painting, Chagall did in 1912. The illustrations is based on a gouache made in 1914, that originally was intended for an exhibition in the Sturm Gallery in Berlin.  

References:

Meyer 1963, B 81

Fouché 1983, nr. 5

Seslavinskii 2009, pp. 412-414