Ballade du pauvre macchabé mal enterré (Ballad of the Unfortunate Corpse Badly Buried)

Description

Life and death mingle in the words and images of this collaboration between poet René Dalize and André Derain. Dalize’s poem is narrated by the titular “poor man badly buried,” who describes the experience of navigating his unfortunate condition. While the deceased narrator muses on things beyond the comprehension of the living, Derain’s woodcuts of flowers and clouds, depicted in rough but detailed woodcuts, anchor the viewer to the world we can see, touch, and smell. The melancholy tone of this collaboration was heightened by the inclusion of memorial pieces by Guillaume Apollinaire and André Salmon for Dalize, who passed away shortly before this work was published.

Ballade du pauvre macchabé mal enterré (Ballad of the Unfortunate Corpse Badly Buried)

André Derain

1919

Accession Number

244547

Medium

Illustrated book with six woodcuts

Dimensions

28.6 × 31.8 × 1.3 cm (11 5/16 × 12 9/16 × 9/16 in.)

Classification

woodcut

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Mary Reynolds Collection, Ryerson & Burnham Libraries