Spencer Museum of Art

Alfred Jarry Exhibition

About Perhinderion

Perhinderion I, (1896)

Spencer Museum of Art &
435 x 320 mm

• Alfred Jarry
  Cover
• Alfred Jarry
  Back Cover
• Albrecht Dürer
  Jésus présénté au peuple
• Albrecht Dürer
  Les quatre fléaux de l'Apocalypse
• Albrecht Dürer
  Saint Jean à la porte latine
• François Georgin
  Christ aux Évangélistes
• François Georgin
  Passage du Mont Saint-Bernard
• François Georgin
  Le Juif-Errant
• François Georgin
  L'Heureuse Bénédiction
• Anonymous
  Woodcut illustration to Sebastien Münster's Cosmography
• Anonymous
  Woodcut illustration to Sebastien Münster's Cosmography
• Anonymous
  Woodcut illustration to Sebastien Münster's Cosmography
• Anonymous
  Woodcut illustration to Sebastien Münster's Cosmography
• Alfred Jarry
  Premier Son de la Messe
• Alfred Jarry
  Table of contents and subscription information
• Alfred Jarry
  Advertisements

Jarry's journal, Perhinderion, appeared only in two fascicles, in March and June, 1896, and it is evident that Jarry exhausted his inheritance on this ambitious project. Perhinderion was a lavish elaboration of L'Ymagier's dedication to reproducing old and unusual prints (predominantly woodcuts) and Images d'Épinal. It also includes lithographs by Émile Bernard that are clearly inspired by popular devotional woodcuts. Jarry stated his intentions clearly at the end of the first fascicle in his short article "The First Bell at Mass."

In literally binding together Dürer, Georgin, Münster's Cosmographia, and Bernard (to take the second fascicle as an example), Jarry erodes the barriers that might normally separate an array of complementary opposites or near opposites: renaissance and the fin-de-siècle, intellectual and naïve, famous and anonymous, cherished and ephemeral, valuable and affordable, popular prints and "fine" prints. Finally, in giving a highly evocative reading of Dürer's woodcut, Saint Catherine, a reading that is essentially a symbolist poem that moves from emblems and formal elements to hallucinatory extrapolations, Jarry demonstrates his ability to tap the vitality of an old print and turn it toward a new purpose.