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46 - Guy-Ernest DEBORD. Memoirs. Asger Jorn’s Load-bearing Struct…
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Estimate €1,500 - €2,000
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Description
Guy-Ernest DEBORD. Memoirs. Asger Jorn’s Load-bearing Structures. This volume is composed entirely of prefabricated elements. Published by the Situationist International [Copenhagen, Permild & Rosengreen printers], 1959. Quarto, paperback, plain cover in filled emery paper, cream paper slipcase. First edition: it comprises 48 colour plates printed in offset, known as ‘load-bearing structures’. The layout combines, in the form of collages, extracts from printed texts, photographs and drawings, all coloured by the painter Asger Jorn, the leading figure of the CoBrA group. The second book produced by the leader of the Situationist International and Asger Jorn (the first, *The End of Copenhagen*, had been published in 1957), these *Memoirs* recount Guy Debord’s youth and struggles in the 1950s. They illustrate the technique of détournement; that is to say, they are composed of text extracts appropriated by Debord to form his own ‘memoirs’, as indicated by the warning printed on the title page: “This work is composed entirely of prefabricated elements.” Asger Jorn subsequently intervened on these collages using brightly coloured paints. A perfect copy. (Peyré, *Peinture et poésie, le dialogue par le livre*, no. 74: “Beneath its rough, emery-paper cover lies a book of high poetry; images and text are scattered throughout, the narrative unravels, one imagines less a grenade – which is what *Fin de Copenhague* was – than a bottle of rare perfume; the revolution has slipped into the intimate sphere of the soul, a disconcerting velvety texture, and Jorn composes the arabesques, the cobwebs, an electric cartography; he arrives at the thread that winds from page to page, a golden thread of restrained excess. Debord and Jorn have made their way step by step, gathering splendour with every stride. […] The Debord/Jorn partnership has pushed the book of dialogue to its limits; it has offered it a chance for a fresh start; spring has been touched.)”
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About the sale Henri Michaux, the Sven Pitsey collection
Auction location
Auction time 10/29/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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