Jarry's Prints Alfred Jarry

French, 1873-1907

Alfred Jarry is best known for his satirical and farcical Ubu Roi (King Ubu). The figure of Ubu is a grotesque personification of human greed and ignorance. The scandalous success of Jarry's play had far-reaching repercussions. The Theater of the Absurd and the various manifestations of the Dadaists and Surrealists find an important precursor in anarchic and hallucinatory work of Jarry. There was much more to Jarry than Ubu, however. His text on the imaginary Dr. Faustroll betrays an unsettling anticipation of quantum physics. In addition to his prolific literary career, Jarry also made many images. The standard catalogue by Michel Arrivé includes 82 prints, paintings, and drawings. For example, Jarry designed the posters advertising the first performance of Ubu Roi by the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre in 1896, and the first edition of this play includes Jarry's unforgettable woodcut of Ubu.

In 1894 Remy de Gourmont and Jarry, founded the short-lived review L'Ymagier (literally: the maker of popular prints). Jarry would serve as co-conspirator and co-author on the first five numbers of L'Ymagier, which went through eight numbers before foundering in 1896. This was an extraordinarily important publication. In it we witness two members of the literary avant-garde actively recuperating ethnographic and folkloric images and texts for consideration by their fellow artists, who also contributed images to its pages. L'Ymagier moved without pause from works by Alfred Jarry, Remy de Gourmont, Armand Seguin, Emile Bernard, James McNeill Whistler, and the Douanier Rousseau; to numerous woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer, Anonymous block prints from Indo-China (the blocks were loaned by Jarry's friend Paul Fort), an anonymous Russian woodcut of a cat, early sixteenth-century devotional images from the texts of the Ars Moriendi (art of dying) and the Ars Memorandi (art of memorizing), and the popular 19th-century hand-colored woodcuts known as Images d'Epinal.

The folkloric interests of L'Ymagier went beyond images. Several popular devotional songs and early versions of miracles of saints were reprinted after the original texts, such as popular songs about Saint Nicholas and All Saints Day, and a song of 1520 titled "Or Nous Dictes, Marie."

Jarry's literary contributions to L'Ymagier included articles on the Passion, images of monsters, and the Virgin and Child. His artistic contributions included a woodcut of "Saint Gertrude" a series of drawings of Pains d'epice (gingerbread St. Nicholas cookies from Dinant); and an image of César Antechrist.

Jarry ceased to work on L'Ymagier after the appearance of number V, due to a falling out with de Gourmont, but he redirected his energies, and squandered much of his inheritance upon the publication of a deluxe review reproducing old and unusual prints and further Images d'Epinal. This review Jarry titled Perhinderion, the Breton word for "Pilgrimage." Perhinderion appeared only in two numbers, in March and June, 1896. As for Images d'Epinal, Jarry apparently arranged for their publisher, "la maison Pellerin et Cie" to make available the early nineteenth-century blocks of one the more celebrated woodcut artists in their employ, Georges de Georgin. Perhinderion also projected the publication of all of Dürer's prints in their original format, and the use of a special type font of beautiful letters of the fifteenth century. As Arnaud has shown, the cost of this font alone was enormous, and after the appearance of the second and final installment of Perhinderion, the font was next used to print Ubu Roi in June, 1896.

• Arnaud, Joel, Alfred Jarry, d'Ubu roi au Docteur Faustroll, Paris: Table Rond, 1974.
• Arrivé, Michel, Peintures, Gravures, & Dessins d'Alfred Jarry. Paris: Collège de 'Pataphysique, n.d.
• Shattuck, Roger, The Banquet Years. The Origins of the Avant Garde in France, 1885 to World War I. New York: Vintage, 1968.