Pablo PICASSO (1881-1973), Léon BAKST (1866-1924), Serge de - Lot 51

Pablo PICASSO (1881-1973), Léon BAKST (1866-1924), Serge de DIAGHILEV (1872-1929), Jean COCTEAU (1889-1963) and Guillaume APOLLINAIRE (1880-1918). Ballets Russes program. Paris 1917. Les Ballets Russes in Paris. Représentations Exceptionnelles avec le gracieux concours des Artistes de M. Serge de Diaghilew, Théâtre du Chatelet, May 1917. In-4°, Maurice de Brunoff, Paris, May 1917. Dimensions: 24.5 x 31.5 cm. Visible marginal tearing and spotting, small tears on some pages. As is. First edition of the most important program of the Ballets Russes, announcing the ballet Parade, and in which Apollinaire's first mention of "sur-réalisme" appears. Cover illustrated with a vignette by André Marty. The magazine is illustrated with two color lithographs and stencils by Pablo Picasso, a color stencil by Larionov, several color and black drawings by Picasso and Léon Bakst, and photographic reproductions of the dancers and artists. The program contains the season's repertoire in three performances, on May 11, 14, 16; May 18; May 21 and 23, with detailed programs and arguments for The Firebird; Women of Good Cheer; Russian Tales; The Polovtsian Dances of Prince Igor; The Sylphs; Parade; Petrushka and Night Sun. Guillaume Apollinaire's preface, Parade et l'Esprit nouveau, which introduces the expression "sur-réalisme" for the first time, formalizes a new, transversal and radical conception of Art: "From this new alliance, because until now the sets and costumes on the one hand, and the choreography on the other, had only a factitious link between them, there has resulted, in Parade, a kind of sur-realism in which I see the starting point for a series of manifestations of this new Spirit which, finding today the opportunity to show itself, will not fail to seduce the elite, and promises to change arts and mores from top to bottom with universal glee, since common sense dictates that they should at least be on a par with scientific and industrial progress [...]....] Picasso's cubist sets and costumes bear witness to the realism of his art. This realism, or cubism, as one may call it, is what has most profoundly agitated the Arts over the last ten years". The other texts are by Léon Bakst and Michel Georges-Michel. While the world war raged on, the Ballets Russes gave six exceptional performances at the Théâtre du Châtelet in aid of the "gueules cassées", during one of which Parade was created on May 18, 1917, the fruit of a musical, visual and poetic complicity between Cocteau, Satie and Picasso. Remained in the annals of modernity, this avant-garde music-hall show remains "one of the greatest scandals in the entire history of music" and an aesthetic masterpiece admired by Marcel Proust, who came out of his reclusion for the duration of an enchanting evening, complimenting the authors: "I would like to tell you - and for Monsieur Picasso - the sneezes and spleen that the Sunday blue with white astragals of the misunderstood acrobat, dancing "As if he were reproaching God, tirelessly provokes in me. ". The acrobat "with white astragals" who won Proust over is illustrated in the program after a superb watercolor by Picasso. Picasso himself appears in a photograph taken by Cocteau, depicting him and Massine amid the ruins of Pompeii. It's no coincidence that Picasso's Pompeian escapade was reproduced in the Parade program. Rehearsals for the ballet took place in Rome. In February 1917, Picasso left for Italy with Cocteau and Léonide Massine. He met his wife, Olga Khokhlova, as well as the Futurists and artists of the Secession, and was deeply impressed by his visit to Pompeii and Naples: "This Arab Montmartre, in the enormous disorder of a fair that never closes" (Jean Cocteau, Lettres à sa mère, March 3, 1917). This initiatory journey into one of the treasures of ancient art inspired the inimitable visual signature of Parade, a curtain painting marking the beginnings of his neo-classical period, spanning seventeen meters in length and now housed at the Musée national d'art moderne Georges Pompidou. Provenance: Eugenia Errazuriz (1860-1951).