Erté

A fine text by Roland Barthes, followed by an extract from Erté’s memoirs, illustrated with numerous color reproductions mounted onto the pages, including the complete reproduction of the alphabet painted by Erté in gouache with gold and silver highlights in 1927.

“Roland Barthes’s extended introduction is intelligent, subtle and psychoanalytical, and naturally full of original insights; also somewhat serious and weighty, at least compared with the colored graphic work it comments upon. Twenty-six letters and ten numerals: thirty-six designs of signs that are at once sumptuous and refined, baroque and pure, feminized and sexless, modern style and art deco. Erté reminds us, in the extracts from his memoirs published in the same volume, that he made his first fashion drawings for Paul Poiret in 1912, before holding an extraordinary monopoly: every cover of Harper’s Bazaar published between 1915 and 1937. During the same period, he designed costumes and sets for Hollywood, the Paris and New York opera houses, the Folies-Bergères, and the great theaters of Paris and London” (François Richaudeau, “Erté, de Roland Barthes,” Communication et langages, no. 22, 1974).

The first French edition would not appear until the following year, before being reissued in 1975. The 1972 English edition never saw a further printing.