Frédéric.

[NEO-DADAISM AND SURREALISM DURING WWII – NOT IN OCLC] Les cloches de la haute mer [The bells of the high seas]. One of only 25 copies printed.

Paris: Éditions des Réverbères, 1941. Octavo (25 × 17.5 cm). Original printed transparent glassine dust jacket and pictorial laid paper self-wrapper; [16] pp. lithographed facsimile of a manuscript. Large-margined copy; glassine slightly toned, with a few short tears and minute losses along the edges; one leaf with the extreme edges slightly toned; else very good. Item #55857

Very rare final publication of the Réverbères group, published after the group's dissolution. The small edition of only 25 numbered copies, signed by the author, was printed on four different paper stocks. The present copy is one of the first six printed on handmade vergé d'Auvergne blasonné. That this elaborate edition was still produced is remarkable, considering that other projects of the group could not be realized because of the war. Thus, Jean Cocteau's "Réverbères", Camille Bryen's "Trente dessins", and Michel Tapié's "Le Harem de Machiavel" remained unpublished. The author, known as Frédéric, had been a member of the Neo-Dada group Réverbères since 1939. "Les Réverbères" was founded in December 1937 by Michel Tapié, Jean Marembert, Jacques Office, Pierre Minne, and Henri Bernard. Among other events, the group also organized "Tribute to Dada” soirées, which featured readings of texts by Tristan Tzara, Ribemont-Dessaignes, and others. In "Art of the Defeat: France 1940–1944," Laurence Bertrand Dorléac asserts that the group still met for several gatherings retaining the spirit of the 1930s even after the German occupation of France in June 1940.

The Neo-Dadaist activities around Michel Tapié have not been explored to any significant degree and are only occasionally mentioned in passing in the literature on Dada and Surrealism. One exception is Michel Fauré's Histoire du surréalisme sous l'Occupation (1982). One reason for this dearth of research is the scarcity of these experimental, elaborate avant-garde publications, most of which were produced in very small editions during the occupation and are not widely held in institutions. There is no doubt, however, that Tapié's work is relevant to art history; after all, he is one of the most important figures of the European avant-garde after the end of the Second World War. Today, he is known to a wider circle above all as an important critic and theoretician who not only contributed significantly to the reception of Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, and Jean Dubuffet through his publications, but also played an active role in the development of the “Informel” and “Tachism” tendencies after 1945. His text “Un art autre”, published in 1952, is still discussed as one of the formative contributions. In it, “Dada” marks the decisive turning point for Tapié, comparable to Nietzsche in philosophy. “Dada” is described as the great, shattering break after which nothing in art could be taken for granted. (Michel Tapié, Un art autre, German transl. in: Laszlo Glozer, Westkunst. Zeitgenössische Kunst seit 1939, Cologne 1981, p. 158ff). In the second manifesto of “Nouveau Réalisme", the important group around Yves Klein, Michel Tapié is named as the ”guarantor of a new art movement” after the end of the war, since he upheld the “Dada myth” as a necessary “zero point,” as a “tabula rasa.” (See: Second Manifesto of “Nouveau Réalisme”, 1961, in: ibid., p. 246).

One of 6 copies on vergé d'Auvergne blasonné; alongside these, 19 copies were printed on other paper stocks.

Michel Fauré, Histoire du surréalisme sous l'Occupation, pp. 39 and 467.

As of August 2026, KVK, OCLC list no copies worldwide.

Price: €2,000.00

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