Johns, Jasper, illus.

Samuel Beckett.  Foirades/Fizzles.  [London and New York]:  Petersburg Press, 1976



62 unnumbered folios (including endpapers and excluding binding support leaves) (13  x 9  3/4 in.; 330 x 247 mm).  Two title-pages (French and English), text in both languages, illustrations by Johns, comprising 26 lift-ground aquatints (most with etching, soft-ground etching, drypoint, screen-print, and/or photogravure), 5 etchings (some with soft-ground etching and/or drypoint), one soft-ground etching, and one aquatint, all in black on ivory wove Auvergne Richard de Bas paper.  Publisher's ivory wove paper binding with aquatint endpapers in color, bound in accordian fold around support leaves.  Publisher's beige linen solander box with purple tassel by Rudolf Riesser (Cologne), lined with color lithograph. 

Artists' Books in the Modern Era 1870–2000: the Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books 162; Castleman, pp. 214–215; Manet to Hockney 156; Splendid Pages: the Molly and Walter Bareiss Collection of Modern Illustrated Books, p.209

62 unnumbered folios (including endpapers and excluding binding support leaves) (13 x 9 3/4 in.; 330 x 247 mm). Two title-pages (French and English), text in both languages, illustrations by Johns, comprising 26 lift-ground aquatints (most with etching, soft-ground etching, drypoint, screen-print, and/or photogravure), 5 etchings (some with soft-ground etching and/or drypoint), one soft-ground etching, and one aquatint, all in black on ivory wove Auvergne Richard de Bas paper. Publisher's ivory wove paper binding with aquatint endpapers in color, bound in accordian fold around support leaves. Publisher's beige linen solander box with purple tassel by Rudolf Riesser (Cologne), lined with color lithograph.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Copy 118 of 250 (of a whole edition of 300), signed by Johns and Beckett, with aquatints and etching printed by Crommelynck, lithograph by Petersburg Press, and text by Fequet et Baudier.

"One of the greatest artists' books of the second half of the twentieth century" by "two of the most enigmatic artists of our time"  (Logan, 162).  Johns's imagery is based on a major four-panel painting of 1972, along with imagery related to numbers and body parts.  "Confronting sets of the English and French names of objects in that painting, shown as if in a magic translating mirror, combine the artist's interest in ready-made letters with the ambiguity of how they are used" (Castleman).

The prose pieces of Fizzles were written by Beckett in the 1960s and early 1970s.  He described the works as "breaking wind quietly, hissing, spluttering; a failure or fiasco."  The first Fizzle begins famously, "I gave up before birth . . . ."  It is interesting to note that in the same year as this publication, Beckett also chose to collaborate with artist Edward Gorey on a book (All Strange Away).