Grandville (Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gérard, known as) (1803-1847 - Lot 143

Grandville (Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gérard, known as) (1803-1847) Another world. Poster announcing the work and its publication. 1844. Lithograph. [560 x 740]. Very fine and fresh proof on thin vellum, lined on strong white vellum and cloth-backed. Some light foxing. Full margins. "Published in 1844 by Fournier, Un autre monde is Grandville's masterpiece. The book's subtitle is "Transformations, visions, incarnations, ascensions, locomotions, explorations, peregrinations, excursions, stations, cosmogonies, phantasmagorias, reveries, folâtreries, facéties, lubias, metamorphoses, zoomorphoses, lithomorphoses, metempsycoses, apotheoses and other things". With its transformations, inventions and phantasmagorias, the book is intended to reflect an era in the throes of change. Another World recounts and illustrates the extraordinary journeys of three neo-gods, Puff, Krackq and Hahblle. It takes the reader to a strange planet, at the whim of the artist's imagination. Grandville offers us a philosophical voyage [...] The reader, led on a strange planet imagined by the artist, is invited, like Gulliver in the land of Laputa, to a parodic journey through his philosophical, scientific, economic and religious ideals, his infatuations, inventions and preoccupations: Romanticism, machinismo, socialism, money, the feuilleton, advertising, Anglomania, philanthropy, phrenology, etc." (Annie Renonciat, Paris)."(Annie Renonciat, La Vie et l'œuvre de Grandville, Paris, ACR-Vilo, 1985, p. 230). The work includes 220 woodcuts based on the artist's drawings. Designed by Grandville, the images inspired the text by Taxile Delord. The book was initially published in installments. Grandville's contemporaries could buy a drawing each week, or wait until the end of the year to purchase the complete album." (Dossier for the exhibition Grandville, un autre monde, un autre temps, Musée du Temps, Besançon, 2011-2012). Grandville was subsequently appreciated by Georges Bataille and contemporary critics, who saw him as a precursor of Surrealism.