Untitled

January 18, 1937

André Breton
French, 1896-1966

Status: On View, Gallery 397
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: André Breton
Title: Untitled
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1937
Medium: Collage composed of oilcloth laid down on cardboard, with woven ribbon, leaf, tarot card, metal mechanism, die-cut cardboard element, pen and black and white inks, nailed on wood panel in shallow box
Inscriptions: Signed and dated, lower center: "Pour Jacqueline / André / 18-1-1937"; inscribed: "CARTE/RESPLENDISSANTE (printed on card) de ma vie / J'ai compris / J'ai caressé l'enfant perdu / Dans le jardin de la pendule / Il y avait dans le train bleu / Uune femme aux cheveux d'hameçons" (Respledent card of my life / I've understood / I've caressed the lost child / In the garden of the clock / There in the blue train was / A woman with hair of fishhooks)
Dimensions: 39.4 × 30.4 × 3.7 cm (15 9/16 × 12 × 1 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection
Reference Number: 2018.307
Copyright: © 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Minotaure 10 (Winter 1937), p. 59 (ill.).
Nicholas Calas, “Surrealist Heritage?,” Arts Magazine 42:5 (Mar. 1968), p. 28 (ill.), as “For Jacueline.”
Hilton Kramer, “The Secred History of Dada and Surrealism,” Art in America 56:2 (Mar.-Apr. 1968), p. 109 (ill.), as “For Jacueline.”
William Rubin, The Surrealism of the Thirties: Surrealist Objects (New York, 1968), p. 266, fig. 264, as “Poem-Object.”
Nahma Sandrow, Surrealism: Theater, Arts, Ideas (New York, 1972), opp. p. 61 (ill.), as “Pour Jacueline.”
Rutgers University Art Gallery, Surrealism and American Art, 1931-1947, exh. cat. (1977), p. 16, pl. X (ill.), as “Poem Object.”
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Surrealism in Perspective exh. cat. (1979), p. 30, photograph of work exhibited, as “For Jacueline.”
Robert Short, Dada and Surrealism (London, 1980), pl. 136, as “Poem-Object.”
José Pierre, L’Univers Surréaliste (Paris, 1983), pp. 180 and 185 (ill.), as “Pour Jacueline.”
In the Mind’s Eye: Dada and Surrealism (New York, 1985), p. 22, pl. 13.
André Breton: Je vois j’imagine, Poèmes-Objets, (Paris, 1991), p. 172, pl. 17.
Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, André Breton: La beauté convulsive, exh. cat. (1991), p. 72 (hanging in Breton’s home, c. 1939; see fig. 2) and p. 300 (ill.), as “Objet-Poème (Carte Resplendissantede ma vie).”
Phil Powrie, “The Surrealist Poème-Objet,” in Silvano Levy (editor), Surrealism: Surrealist Visuality (Keele, Staffordshire, 1996), p. 75 no. 4.
Dawn Ades, with Margherita Andreotti and Adam Jolles, Surrealist Art: The Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1997), pp. 15–17, cat. 7 (color ill.).

New York, Museum of Modern Art, “Dada, Surrealism and their Heritage,” Mar. 25-June 9, 1968, pp. 94 and 230, cat. 34, fig. 135, as “For Jacqueline”; also Los Angeles County Museum of Art, July 15-Sept. 8, 1968; and the Art Institute of Chicago, Oct. 19-Dec. 8, 1968.
Chicago, The Arts Club, “A Second Talent: An Exhibition of Drawings and Paintings by Writers,” Nov. 16-Dec. 31, 1971, cat. 25 (ill. upside down), as “Pour Jacqueline.”
New York, Robert Elkon Gallery, “Twentieth-Century Masters on Paper,” Oct. 2-Nov. 3, 1976, cat. 40 (ill.).
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, “Words at Liberty,” May 6-July 10, 1977, pp. 5 and 16, as “For Jacqueline.”
London, Hayward Gallery, “Dada and Surrealism Reviewed,” Jan. 10-Mar. 27, 1978, cat. 12.23 (ill.), as “Objet-Poème.”
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, “Dada and Surrealism in Chicago Collections,” 1984–1985, pp. 23 and 126, pl. 13, as “For Jacqueline.”
Art Institute of Chicago, “A Tribute to Edwin A. Bergman (1917–1986): Selections from the Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection,” 1986, pamphlet no. 4, as “For Jacqueline.”

Sold by Robert Elkon Gallery, New York to Lindy and Edwin Bergman, Chicago, 1964; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, from 2018.

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