Henri Michaux, poet-painter by Alison Vort Halász BA Ohio University, 1997 MA Ohio University ...

254 Pages·2007·19.4 MB·English

by  Alison Halasz

Henri Michaux, poet-painter

by
Alison Vort Halász
B. A. Ohio University, 1997
M. A. Ohio University, 1999

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

University of Pittsburgh

2007
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
ARTS AND SCIENCES

This dissertation was presented

by

Alison Vort Halász

It was defended on
June 15, 2007
and approved by
Dr. Millard F. Hearn Jr., Professor, Department of History of Art and Architecture
Dr. Philip Watts, Associate Professor, Department of French and Italian
Dissertation Co-Advisor: Dr. Roberta Hatcher, Assistant Professor, Department of French and
Italian
Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Daniel Russell, Professor, Department of French and Italian

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Copyright © by Alison Vort Halász
2007
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Henri Michaux, poet-painter
Alison Vort Halász, PhD
University of Pittsburgh, 2007

Henri Michaux’s trip to the Far East in 1930-1931 became a point of departure for his
career-long inquiry into the relation between language and image which led him to combine the
poetic and the pictorial as a way to relieve tensions within his divided self. For over sixty years,
the Belgian-born (1899-1984) poet-painter created text-only, image-only, and over twenty text-
and-image works. The merging of language and image in Michaux’s text-and-image projects
breaks down divisions between these two arts and consequently moves away from G. E.
Lessing’s separation of the arts. This departure from the modernist view of literature and art
positions Michaux as a transitional figure: as a practitioner between arts, cultures, and period
styles. Just as Michaux’s divided self came together to a certain degree from his creative work,
so too did his work obtain a unity of the poetic and the pictorial that blended into one kind of
expression. Although Michaux combined words and images to explore the self, this activity led
to the parallel development of Michaux as a poet-painter and to a merging relation between the
verbal and the visual.
This dissertation explores Michaux’s transformation into a hybrid artist and the works he
produced between 1922 and 1984. The initial chapter approaches the biographical features
contributing to Michaux’s career as a poet-painter and how mixing media was essential to his
practice. The following chapter frames the relations of words and images in a theoretical
context, focusing on Lessing’s separation of the sister arts and on W. J. T. Mitchell’s opposing
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view, in which he considers language and image not as separate forms of expression but instead
as overlapping forms. This framework serves as the methodology for approaching Michaux’s
corpus and this analysis situates his mixed-media work in relation to writers and artists like
Guillaume Apollinaire and René Magritte. The final chapter presents case studies of the verbal-
visual overlap in Michaux’s text-and-image projects and his poetic inquiry into his own visual art
and that of other artists. These constructions illustrate the diversity within Michaux’s work
while showing the unity within his text-and-image corpus.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE.............................................................................................................................xii
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................1
1.0 THE TRANSITION TO POET-PAINTER...........................................................11
1.1 Transitional Beginnings: From Belgium to the Far East......................................11
1.2 The Question of Writing and Painting..................................................................26
1.3 Travel, Writing, and Painting................................................................................48
1.4 Michaux Poet, Michaux Painter............................................................................69
1.5 Towards Reconciliation..........................................................................................73
2.0 WORDS AND IMAGES................................................................................................87
2.1 Word and Image Relationships..............................................................................87
2.2 Word and Image Formations...............................................................................108
2.3 Michaux and Magritte: Using Language in Image.............................................122
2.4 Michaux in Search of Language..........................................................................133
3.0 TEXT AND IMAGE INQUIRIES...............................................................................156
3.1 Bringing Words and Images Together................................................................156
3.2 Illustrated Hybrids...............................................................................................162
3.3 Beyond Words and Images: Mescaline................................................................175
3.4 Poetic Inquiry I.....................................................................................................184
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3.5 Poetic Inquiry II...................................................................................................190
3.6 Poetic “signes”......................................................................................................208
CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................224
APPENDIX A........................................................................................................................231
APPENDIX B........................................................................................................................233
BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................................................235
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LIST OF FIGURES
All works by Henri Michaux unless otherwise indicated.
Figure 1. Alphabet (recto), (1927) ink on paper, 14 1/4 x 10 5/8 cm,
private collection, rpt. in Alfred Pacquement, Henri Michaux
peintures (Paris: Gallimard, 1993) 23....................................................................34

Figure 2. Narration (1927) India ink on paper, 14 1/4 x 10 5/8 cm,
private collection, rpt. in Henri Michaux, ed. Alfred Pacquement
and Agnès de la Beaumelle (New York: The Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum in conjunction with the Centre Georges
Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, 1978) 15....................................35

Figure 3. Detail of Narration (1927) India ink on paper, 14 1/4 x 10 5/8 cm,
rpt. in Émergences-résurgences trans. Richard Seiburth (New York:
The Drawing Center, 1972) 10..............................................................................36

Figure 4. Alphabets (1943), ink on paper, collection Robert Godet, rpt. in
Peintures et dessins, in OC, I, 931.........................................................................38

Figure 5. Paul Klee Le Petit est de sortie (1937),
(Der Kleine hat Aussgang) (1937), rpt. in Henri Michaux:
le regard des autres (Paris: Galerie Thessa Herold, 1999) 19................................42

Figure 6. Untitled Mouvements (1951), ink on paper, 32 x 24 cm,
private collection, rpt. in Face aux verrous (Paris: Gallimard,
1951) n. pag..........................................................................................................43

Figure 7. “Untitled” Arbres des tropiques 8/18 (1942), rpt. in OC, I, 733.............................60

Figure 8. “Untitled” Arbres des tropiques 14/18 (1942), rpt. in OC, I, 739...........................61

Figure 9. “Untitled” Arbres des tropiques 15/18 (1942), rpt. in OC, I, 740...........................62

Figure 10. Page from Misérable miracle (1956), rpt. in Misérable miracle
(Paris: Gallimard, 1972) 35..................................................................................65

Figure 11. “Untitled” Mouvements (1951), ink on paper, 32 x 24 cm,
private collection, rpt. in Face aux verrous (Paris: Gallimard,
1951) n. pag........................................................................................................76
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Figure 12. “Untitled” Mouvements (1951), ink on paper, 32 x 24 cm,
private collection, rpt. in Face aux verrous (Paris: Gallimard,
1951) n. pag.........................................................................................................77

Figure 13. “Untitled” Mouvements (1951), ink on paper, 32 x 24 cm,
private collection, rpt. in Face aux verrous (Paris: Gallimard,
1951) n. pag.........................................................................................................78

Figure 14. “Untitled” Mouvements (1951), ink on paper, 32 x 24,
private collection, rpt. in Face aux verrous (Paris: Gallimard,
1951) n. pag........................................................................................................79

Figure 15. Page from Saisir (1979), rpt. in OC, III, 971........................................................91

Figure 16. Page from Misérable miracle (1956), drawing c. 1954,
rpt. in Misérable miracle (Paris: Gallimard, 1972) 34..........................................95

Figure 17. Page from Lecture par Henri Michaux de huit lithographies
de Zao Wou-Ki, poem, Henri Michaux (1950), lithograph,
Zao Wou-Ki (1949), rpt. in OC, II, 266-267.........................................................97

Figure 18. Pages from Emérgences-résurgences (1972), Untitled
“Mouvements” China ink on paper, 32 x 25 cm (1951),
rpt. in OC, III, 580-581.....................................................................................101

Figure 19. Joseph Jastrow, “Duck-Rabbit” (1892), from Fliegende Blätter, rpt. in
W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press) 54.............................................................................................106

Figure 20. René Magritte, Les Mots et les images, La Révolution
surréaliste, ed. André Breton, 12.2 (1929): 32-33.............................................110

Figure 21. Anonymous, Rebus, rpt. in Speaking Pictures:
A Gallery of Pictorial Poetry from The Sixteenth
Century to the Present, ed. Milton Klonsky (New York:
Harmony Books, 1975) 54...............................................................................111

Figure 22. Ian Hamilton Finlay, au pair girl (1966), rpt. in Speaking
Pictures: A Gallery of Pictorial Poetry from The Sixteenth
Century to the Present, ed. Milton Klonsky (New York:
Harmony Books, 1975) 247.............................................................................114

Figure 23. Guillaume Apollinaire, Du coton dans les oreilles from
Calligrammes: Poèmes de la paix et de la guerre (1913-1916)
(Paris: Gallimard, 1925) 159............................................................................117
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Figure 24. Guillaume Apollinaire, Paysage from Calligrammes:
Poèmes de la paix et de la guerre (1913-1916) (Paris:
Gallimard, 1925) 27..........................................................................................118

Figure 25. René Magritte, La Trahison des images (1929), rpt. in
Marcel Paquet, René Magritte (New York: Taschen, 2000) 9...........................119

Figure 26. Excerpt from a page in Quatre cents hommes en croix:
Journal d’un dessinateur. Fragments (1956), OC, II, 792.................................120

Figure 27. René Magritte, Ceci est un morceau de fromage
(1936 or 1937), oil on canvas in gilded wooden frame:
glass dome and pedestal (10.3 x 16.2 h, 31; diam. 25.2),
The Menil Collection, Houston, rpt. in Sarah Whitfield,
Magritte (London: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992) n. pag..........................125

Figure 28. La fleur rouge (1958), watercolor, 48 x 64 cm, rpt. in
Henri Michaux: le regard des autres (Paris : Galerie Thessa
Herold, Spring-Summer, 1999) 94....................................................................125

Figure 29. Un poulpe ou une ville (1926), oil and ink, 23 x 32 cm,
collection André Berne Joffroy, Paris, rpt. in
Henri Michaux, ed. Alfred Pacquement and Agnès
de la Beaumelle (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum in conjunction with the Centre Georges Pompidou,
Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, 1978) 14..................................................126

Figure 30. René Magritte, La Joconde (1962), goache on paper,
35.2 x 26.5 cm, patrimoine culturel de la Communauté
française de Belgique, rpt. in The Portable Magritte
(New York: Universe, 2001) 375......................................................................126

Figure 31. René Magritte, La Clef des songes (1930), oil on canvas,
81 x 60 cm, private collection, rpt. in The Portable Magritte
(New York: Universe, 2001) 128......................................................................130

Figure 32. René Magritte, L’Apparition (1928), oil on canvas,
82 (cid:1) x 116 cm, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, rpt. in The Portable
Magritte (New York: Universe, 2001) 84..........................................................130

Figure 33. Page from Les Grandes Épreuves de l’esprit (1966),
rpt. in OC, III, 342............................................................................................145

Figure 34. Pages from Parcours (1967), rpt. in OC, III, 440-441.......................................146

Figure 35. Page from Idéogrammes en Chine (1975) rpt. in OC, III, 834-835....................150
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