Nijinsky. Clown de Dieu First Edition - Alain Bejart - Bauman Rare Books

Nijinsky. Clown de Dieu

Alain BEJART

Item#: 59765 We're sorry, this item has been sold

Nijinsky. Clown de Dieu

“THE STUFF OF BALLET AND BALLET HISTORY”: FIRST EDITION OF MAURICE BÉJART’S NIJINSKY, CLOWN DE DIEU, WITH OVER 100 DRAMATIC PHOTOGRAVURES BY ALAIN BÉJART

BÉJART, Alain. Nijinsky: Clown de Dieu [Clown of God]. Brussels, Paris, London: Éditions Corps, (1973). Quarto, original gray cloth, original photographic dust jacket.

First edition, with over 100 vibrant photogravures (two folding) by photographer Alain Béjart of Maurice Béjart’s ballet, “Nijinsky, Clown de Dieu,” as performed October 1971 in Brussels, with Jorge Donn as Nijinsky and Suzanne Farrell as “La Jeune Fille en rose.”

When Maurice Béjart’s full-length ballet Nijinsky, Clown de Dieu, premiered in New York in 1972, following its world premiere a year earlier in Brussels, it was hailed as “outrageous… concerned with the visual, the sensual, and the life of the artist… the rare vision of a choreographer using the legendary stuff of his own art as material for a contemporary and meaningful work” (New York Times). With Jorge Dunn as Nijinsky and Suzanne Farrell as “La Jeune Fille en rose,” the ballet affirmed Béjart’s “flair for the spectacular” (Time). This first edition of Nijinsky, Clown de Dieu features over 100 bold images of the ballet as performed October 1971 in Brussels at the Forest-National. With text in French by Maurice Béjart and Vaslav Markevitch.

A fine copy.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
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