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Some Poems of Jules Laforgue with images by Patrick Caulfield

Patrick Caulfield; Jules Laforgue; Petersburg Press; Frank Kicherer; Waddington Graphics; Advanced Graphics

Artwork Details

Some Poems of Jules Laforgue with images by Patrick Caulfield
1973
Patrick Caulfield; Jules Laforgue; Petersburg Press; Frank Kicherer; Waddington Graphics; Advanced Graphics
ink on paper
15 15/16 in x 14 3/16 in (40.5 cm x 36 cm)
Gift of Jack A. and Noreen Rounick
2004/2.79

Description

Subject Matter:

This book has a series of poems by the French poet and art critic Jules Laforgue accompanied by screenprints by British Pop artist Patrick Caulfield. Admired by the artist, Laforgue was a nineteenth-century symbolist poet who was one of the invetors of vers libre or "free verse" poetry. This new form of poetic verse relied on the phrase as a unit rather than constraining the poetic verse to set numbers of syllables. Laforgue’s poetry became important for later poets like T.S. Eliot because of its blending of observations of everyday life with poetic associations. In this book, Caulfield used the long-dead poets verses as inspiration for twenty-two scenes, created in colorful screenprint. Of these prints, Caulfield noted that “They are not illustrations but complementary images. There are few visually descriptive lines in Laforgue. The images suggest the things I have imagined the poet seeing when he wrote the poem…”

Physical Description:

Bound book with 12 poems and 22 screenprints. 

Usage Rights:

If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit https://umma.umich.edu/request-image/ for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.