GRACQ (Julien, pen name of Louis Poirier). - Lot 115

GRACQ (Julien, pen name of Louis Poirier). Born in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil. 1910-2007. Writer. C.A.S. "J. Gracq" to "Cher Monsieur" [Jean Suquet]. St Florent, May 1 [1991]. 1 p. in-12 oblong. ...Always sensitive to your poetic approach, I send you on this non-business day my thanks for an original dispatch. I agree with you. Duchamp's work has gone "where everything goes", whether art or anti-art. No one can do anything about it, but his spirit stands out; it remains, as you do, to preserve it... Jean Suquet (Cahors, 1928 Cassis, 2007) is a writer, poet and photographer. A great specialist in the work of Marcel Duchamp, he devoted several books to the artist. "Le Grand verre rêvé", published by Aubier in 1991, is a literary interpretation of Duchamp's "Grand verre". Like André Breton and Louis Aragon, Jean Suquet began by studying medicine. He joined the Surrealists in the late 1940s, then became a photographer. In 1963, he was awarded the Prix Niepce. Cartier-Bresson and Jacques-Henri Lartigue were on the jury, but Jean Suquet threw his medal into the Seine. In short, an insubordinate, uncompromising man who never sold a photo during his lifetime, shunned recognition and burned the vast majority of his prints and negatives (around 35,000) in 2002, shortly before his death in 2007.