Alfred Jarry
France, 1873-1907 Ubu Roi-Programme du Théâtre de l'Oeuvre, 1896
Lithograph
Museum purchase: Letha Churchill Walker Memorial Art Fund, 1989.0016
Jarry's epochal play about human greed, cowardice, and stupidity, Ubu Roi (King Ubu), emerged from the presses on June 11, and premiered at the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre on December 10, 1896. The woodcut frontispiece for Ubu Roi is the best-known print by Jarry. It shows Ubu, with pointed head, spiral gut, and his physic-stick (bâton-à-physique), who became a symbol of ignorance and evil that has had a remarkably tenacious existence in the twentieth century. While Jarry cultivated a stance of political indifference, his revolutionary ideas challenged many assumptions about society and existence, and he has been understood as heralding the nihilist Dada movement and the theater of the absurd. In this lithographic announcement by Jarry for the performance of Ubu Roi, King Ubu appears as a shadow puppet with a segmented arm. He brandishes a dreadful, serrated scimitar in one hand and clutches a sack of gold in the other pincer-like hand.
