#Michel Leiris

[nobrashfestivity]

Michel Leiris, The African Phantom, 1931

The work was intended to record and safeguard indigenous cultures, held to be intact, threatened with disappearance by acculturation as a result of colonisation. Lots of the local culture disappeared as booty, hauled back to private collections and museums in France.

Leiris noted that the ethnographer is often just recording himself, projecting his mind on the people he observed. He later expressed his “resentment against ethnography, which makes people take this so inhuman position of observer in circumstances where it would be necessary to abandon oneself”.

As Sasha Frere-Jones writes, in 1976, Leiris described his core ideals as “an aspiration to the marvellous, a desire to commit himself to the struggle against the flagrant injustices of society, a desire for universalism which has led him to have direct contacts with cultures other than his own.”

He became a committed and active anti-colonialist and anti-racist towards the end of the 1940s.

via flashbak

[majestativa]

The four horsemen of the apocalypse.

[jordaneprestrot]

Jordane Prestrot

Website . Instagram . Flickr

[garadinervi]

Imprimeries clandestines, [«Le Point» – Revue artistique et littéraire], Le Point, Lanzac, par Souillac, 1945 [Jon Beacham / The Brother In Elysium, Holyoke, MA]. Photographs by Robert Doisneau. Contributions by Tristan Tzara, Raymond Queneau, Michel Leiris, Alain Gheebrant, Gaston Puel, Jean Cassou, Vercors, Georges Sadoul, and others

[auslannerung]

 Writer Michel Leiris and Francis Bacon, Paris, 1975 

[mayolfederico]

Michel Leiris - Tauromachie

Francis Bacon, Portrait of Michel Leiris, 1976Huile sur toile, 34 x 29 cm TAUROMACHIES  Donc, le matador se tient debout, les pieds impeccablement joints, rivés par sa peur dedéchoir au su du public en même temps quepar les bandelettes qui enserrent sa cheville,masquées par le bas rosevomi et le clinquant desescarpins. Roideur d’homme seul, roideurd’épée. La muleta lentement déployée couvre…

[surrealistnyc]

Out now: Frail Riffs, the fourth volume in Michel Leiris's The Rules of the Game in English translation for the first time.

[ochoislas]

REGRESO

Vuelto a casa el viajero limpia sus botas estrían sus ojos desangrados paisajes luego con dedos renegridos hojea un libro mazo de hechos mal trabados cosidos por un hilo blanco de rigor que ningún delirio pasa

En la roca el estallido de la fuente altiva y serena brindaba el jarro de olvidanzas cañonazo lejano cuyo tronido se asoma a la orilla del oído para estimar la profundidad de este pozo de silencio

¿Será hoy cuando las gentes saldrán de las casas con palmas encendidas y carnívoras bocas? ¿Será hoy cuando los colores humanos devorarán el verde de los bosques y de los pastos de muerte?

En linda y calma tormenta la vida remonta el horizonte las plantas pacen el jugo de las peñas las gotas de agua calan las prisiones

Vuelto a casa el viajero se lava las manos reaviva la pipa apagada presenta ambos puños al futuro que le repone sus graves cadenas de silencio

Luego se acuesta el viajero luego se duerme y duerme y duerme y duerme.

*

RETOUR

Rentré chez lui le voyageur nettoie ses bottes ses yeux striés du sang des paysages puis de ses doigts noircis feuillette un livre bouquet de faits mal liés cousus d'un fil forcément blanc que ne traverse aucun délire

Dans le roc l'éclatement de la source fière et calme tendait la cruche des oublis coup de canon lointain dont le tonnerre se penche à l'orée de l'oreille pour évaluer la profondeur de ce puits de silence

Est-ce aujourd'hui que les hommes s'en iront hors des maisons avec des paumes en feu et des bouches carnivores? Est-ce aujourd'hui que les couleurs humaines dévoreront le vert des bois et des pacages de mort?

En bel orage tranquille la vie remonte par-dessus l'horizon Les plantes paissent le suc des pierres les gouttes d'eau suintent dans les prisons

Rentré chez lui le voyageur se lave les mains rallume sa pipe éteinte tend les deux poings à l'avenir qui lui remet ses lourdes chaînes de silence

puis il se couche le voyageur puis il s'endort et dort et dort et dort

Michel Leiris

di-versión©ochoislas

[wildoute]

[werkboileddown]

Founded in 1986 by Michel Leiris and Jean Jamin, Gradhiva is published by the musée du quai Branly for its new series. The journal aims to be a place for debates on the history and current developments of anthropology based on original studies and the publication of archives or testimonies. Gradhiva also favors the study and analysis of real or symbolic objects as well as museological and anthropological issues. Above all, it is open to multiple disciplines: ethnology, aesthetics, history, sociology, literature and even music. Finally, she strives to develop an interaction between text and image through an often original and singular iconography.

[already-14]

LEIRIS (Michel)‎ ‎Miroir de la tauromachie.‎

‎Paris, GLM, 1938. In-8°, 52p. Broché.‎

Edition originale limitée à 800 exemplaires non numérotés sur vélin (seul tirage après 40 exemplaires de tête numérotés sur Normandy). Trois dessins d'André Masson hors texte

[influence-sable]

Leiris must feel, as he writes, the equivalent of the bullfighter's knowledge that he risks being gored. Only then is writing worthwhile.

[roughghosts]

At last, the final volume of Michel Leiris' The Rules of the Game is available in English—a few (well, more than a few) words about it and a link to my review at Minor Literature[s]

As a reader, I do not tend to be a completest, collecting and diligently making my way through the complete works and associated letters and journals of a particular writer, but if I have made one exception, it is for French poet, novelist, essayist, ethnographer, and critic Michel Leiris. However, as English language Leiris enthusiasts will know, his most important work—the four-volume…

[mascamaiorum]

Michel Leiris invents a fictional painting with Dogon mask in Venetian setting (from The Ribbon at Olympia’s Throat)

[garadinervi]

From: Imprimeries clandestines, [«Le Point» – Revue artistique et littéraire], Le Point, Lanzac, par Souillac, 1945 [Skylona Books]. Photographs by Robert Doisneau. Contributions by Tristan Tzara, Raymond Queneau, Michel Leiris, Alain Gheebrant, Gaston Puel, Jean Cassou, Vercors, Georges Sadoul, and others

[biblioklept]

Tomoé Hill's Songs for Olympia (Book acquired, 16 Feb. 2024)

So I started in on Tomoé Hill’s Songs for Olympia last night—poetic, critical, personal, strange in the right ways. Here’s publisher Sagging Meniscus’ blurb: In the twilight of life, a black ribbon emerges from a frame and coils itself inside the mind of one of the great French chroniclers of the internal. Across the world, a young girl stares at an image in a book: a woman, naked but for…