Contents:

Texts by Cendrars, Soupault, C. Leroy, C. Dobzynski, M. Décaudin, Gustave Le Rouge, Henri Barbusse, Henri Béhar, unpublished works by Cendrars...

New 1995 edition

Back cover:

Cendrars long passed for a writer to be discovered. It's not that he was ignored, this famous unknown, but he was known more by name than by pen. Malraux, who held him to be one of the greatest poets of the century, judged him "distractedly recognized". In collective memory, his presence was as turbulent as it was fragmented. He was making his cruise, here or there, in the vicinity of Apollinaire or alongside the painters of the School of Paris (Delaunay, Léger, Chagall...), of whom he had made himself the poet from his installation in France, in 1912. He was still encountered under the sign of modernity, but a very early century modernity, more inclined, it seemed, to the exaltation of machines and speed, of trains and ocean liners, than to formal experimentation. He provided, finally, the archetype of writer-travelers: the adventurer, that was him. Enormous and truculent, strong in mouth and in coups d'éclat, inclined to show off, drawing the blanket of his books to himself, Cendrars' character cast too much shadow on his writing... The present issue of Europe, published for the first time in 1976, was the first collective act of modern Cendrarsian criticism. Because it cleared many passages beyond received images, it was also, in its way, a manifesto. Under the figure of the adventurer, it was necessary to reveal the alchemist of words. After the parade of the fighter, the time had come to go "to the heart of the text". Long out of print, sought after by numerous Cendrars enthusiasts, this historic issue certainly deserved to be reissued.

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Text reprinted in: Henri Béhar, Littéruptures, Lausanne, L'Age d'Homme, 1988, p. 169-180.

Extensions: the exhibition

DEBRIS – COLLAGES: RECOVER, ASSEMBLE AND RECONSTRUCT LAM, VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ – June 21, 2018 to September 16, 2018

Presented as part of the 50th anniversary of MEL (European Metropolis of Lille), the exhibition proposes to rediscover the museum's collections in an unprecedented and transversal way, through modern art, contemporary art and outsider art. Through its journey, the exhibition will present the practice of collage, very widespread in the 20th century, while mixing it with that of recovery, dismantling, deconstruction and even destruction. Visitors will be invited to discover the practice of tinkering in art, which was one of the responses to the great upheavals of the last century.

On this occasion, the LaM will present new acquisitions as well as works very rarely, or even never exhibited, such as the torn or ripped posters by Jacques Villeglé and Mimmo Rotella or the décollages by François Dufrêne.