Prévert's collages
On October 12, 1948, during a radio interview in Paris, Prévert accidentally fell out of a window. After several days in a coma, he suffered neurological damage as a result of the unfortunate incident. Forced to rest for several months in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, he assiduously took up collage, which served as another form of poetry for him. “In Prévert, the combinations are always deliberate, no matter how baffling they may seem. Collage is a way of seeing –or of saying– the world, mulling it over in advance.[1] And he found its definition in the French dictionary: “Collage: the situation of a man and a woman living together out of wedlock.”[2]
In 1957, Jacques Prévert showed a series of these works for the first time at Galerie Maeght. Next was an exhibition at the Grimaldi museum in Antibes in 1963, and, later that same year, at Galerie Knoedler in Paris, for which Picasso contributed a drawing-inscription to be published in the catalogue. Prévert’s collages often appeared alongside his poetry: he published fifty-seven of those in the collection Fatras (1966) and twenty-five in Imaginaires (1970).
The Musée national Picasso-Paris has several undated photo collages (1955-1960), one of which is inscribed “À Picasso” (Inv.: MP3608), as well as La Californie (1956), an envelope containing a handwritten note by Jacques Prévert to Picasso for his birthday, on paper with embedded dried flowers. (Inv.: MP3610). In his warm message, Prévert “raises his glass” of “red wine in the tin cup” to his friend.
The Musée Picasso in Antibes holds collages containing photographs of the artist: Au plus digne (1955) and, from that same year, the spiritual Entrevue de Pablo Picasso et de Napoléon Bonaparte à Versailles, de nos jours, with comical stagings of the artist’s works (gift of Françoise Gilot, 1987, Inv.: MPA 1987.2.4). Pablo Picasso, in turn, portrayed Jacques Prévert, for example in a quick sketch from September 26, 1956 (Musée national Picasso-Paris, Inv.: MP1514). In June 2010, the poet’s estate parted with a small painting titled Les Baigneurs, showing the poet, his wife Janine, and their daughter Michèle. Dated June 1958, the inscription on the verso reads “to my friend Jacques Prévert.”
[1] Translator’s Note : The original French, en tournant sept fois la langue dans la bouche, ou sept fois les yeux dans les orbites (literally “turning your tongue seven times in your mouth, or rolling your eyes seven times in their sockets”) is a play on words : the first part, an idiomatic expression, means to think before speaking. The second part is a playful extension of the first.
[2] André Pozner, Jacques Prévert Collages, foreword by Philippe Soupault, Gallimard, 1982.
4 / 8
Summary