GRACQ (Julien, pen name of Louis Poirier). - Lot 130

GRACQ (Julien, pen name of Louis Poirier). Born in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil. 1910–2007. Writer. C.A.S. “J. Gracq” to “Dear Sir ” [Jean Suquet]. St. Florent, May 1 [1991]. 1 p., oblong in-12. ...Always appreciative of your poetic approach, I am writing to you on this non-working day to express my thanks for your original correspondence. I agree with you. Duchamp’s work has gone “where everything goes,” whether it be art or anti-art. No one can do anything about it, but his spirit stands apart; it remains, as you do, to preserve it... Jean Suquet (Cahors, 1928–Cassis, 2007) was a writer, poet, and photographer. A leading expert on the work of Marcel Duchamp, he devoted several books to him. *Le Grand verre rêvé*, published by Éditions Aubier in 1991, is a literary interpretation of Duchamp’s *The Large Glass*. Like André Breton and Louis Aragon, Jean Suquet began by studying medicine. He associated with the Surrealists in the late 1940s, then became a photographer. In 1963, he won the Niepce Prize—with Cartier-Bresson and Jacques-Henri Lartigue serving on the jury—but Jean Suquet threw his medal into the Seine. In short, a nonconformist, an uncompromising artist who never sold a single photograph during his lifetime, shunned recognition, and burned the vast majority of his prints and negatives (approximately 35,000) in 2002, shortly before his death in 2007.