Ubu's Almanac: Alfred Jarry and the Graphic Arts

Perhinderion I, (1896)

Spencer Museum of Art &
435 x 320 mm

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.