RARE LIMITED EDITION OF THE FAMED FRENCH ART DECO PUBLICATION, VOLUME EIGHT OF MODES ET MANIÈRES D’AUJOURD’HUI FOR 1919 IN THE ORIGINAL PORTFOLIO, ONE OF ONLY 12 COPIES ISSUED ON JAPON (OF 300), FEATURING THE ARTISTRY OF ANDRE EDOUARD MARTY WITH 12 POCHOIR COLOR PLATES AND ORIGINAL GOLFING WATERCOLOR SIGNED BY MARTY, ALONG WITH 12 SHORT WORKS BY FRENCH AUTHOR TRISTAN BERNARD

MARTY, André AND BERNARD, Tristan. Modes et Manières d’Aujourd’hui. Huitième Année. 1919. (Paris): Collection Pierre Corrard, (1921). Folio, original half ivory and decorative paper boards, plates loose as issued, original cloth ties. Housed in a custom slipcase.

Limited first edition of Modes et Manières d’Aujourd’hui, Volume VIII for the year 1919, number 4 of only 12 copies issued on Japon (of 300 copies), featuring 12 loose pochoir color plates, accompanying suite of 12 uncolored plates, and original matted watercolor signed by French artist Andre Edouard Marty, the leading Art Deco artist whose work, like that of Barbier and others, “made fashion the art of the day instead of art being the fashion” (Metropolitan Museum of Art), with 12 leaves of accompanying text in French by popular playwright and novelist Tristan Bernard, rarely found complete in the original portfolio.

This original limited edition portfolio highlights the splendid Art Deco artistry of Andre Edouard Marty, who shared with Georges Barbier, Charles Martin and others a love of “elegance and luxe… They fused their styles from a heady mix: Japanese woodblock prints, classical Greek and Roman art, modern stage and costume design, and the cinema… The result of this alchemy was a new way of illustrating the figure” (Torre, 20th-Century Fashion Illustration, 33). “As Vogue reported in the June 15, 1914 issue, these ‘young men of birth and Beaux Arts training… made fashion the art of the day instead of art being the fashion… artistic modernism provided a crucial link between haute couture and high culture” (Metropolitan Museum of Art). Marty, also well known for his theatre posters, was one of an elite group of only four artists who contributed yearly to Gazette du Bon Ton (1912-25) and his images were regularly featured in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Modes et Manières d’Aujord’hui and other publications.

This rare complete Volume VIII of Modes et Manières d’Aujourd’hui, for the year 1919, in the original portfolio, additionally contains 12 corresponding short works by noted French author Tristan Bernard, each printed in green and black on an individual leaf, loose as issued. Born Paul Bernard, the Jewish playwright and novelist was a member of the influential circle, La Revue Blanche. Well known in Paris, his witty “bon mots were so famous that for three decades he was credited with many of the jokes current in France. Bernard wrote several novels, notably Les Mémoires d’un jeune homme rangé (1899)… he is best remembered, however, as the author of such hilarious comedies as Les pieds nickelés (1895)… He was arrested by the Nazis during WWII but was released following the intervention of influential friends” in 1943. Weakened by his imprisonment he died in Paris four years later (Encyclopedia Judaica). Featured in this exquisite limited edition collection are 12 loose pochoir color plates La Démobilisation, Le Matin Dans le Parc, Le Répétition Générale, Le Golf, Le Ciné, Le Bal de Sauvages, Racing, A L’Oasis, La Jupe Lumineuse, Le Samedi a Médrano, La Rythmique, Chez L’Antiquaire, and Les Ailes Dans le Vent. These are accompanied by a suite of 12 respective uncolored plates, and an original matted watercolor of Le Golf, signed by Marty. Volume VIII of Modes et Manières d’Aujourd’hui, which first appeared in 1912: a hghly influential Art Deco fashion periodical, each of its volumes contains plates by a featured artist and text by a featured writer. Publication ceased in 1923 with a total of 7 volumes, each limited to a total of 300 copies. Complete volumes in the original portfolios are quite rare.

Plates and text very fresh, small bit of early tape reinforcement to inner seams of portfolio.