When the Text is Remade with the Help of Illustrations: Banalité by Léon-Paul Fargue and its «compositions» by Lorris et Parry

Abstract

In the history of modern illustration, that is in the modernist years 1910-1930, Banalité by Léon-Paul Fargue (texte), with « compositions » by Fabien Loris and Roger Parry, is a truly innovative volume, which maintains however certain aspects of the traditional illustrated book. What is new in this publication is the merger of a classic format, well-known by bibliophile readers, and a new medium, photography, still discarded from the market of rare and expensive books. The authors’ attempt to introduce the new into the old is quite similar to what one finds in French modernist typography, as represented by the magazine Arts et métiers graphiques, which adapts the Bauhaus revolution to a broader French audience. At first sight, the book limits itself to conventionally adding images to text, yet these illustrations are complemented by a collective work on the work’s layout, which transforms the fundamentally nostalgic text by Fargue into a crucial step in experimental book design in French.