L’Ymagier, subtitled “A Magazine of Engravings” was a French symbolist

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

 art magazine edited by Alfred Jarry

Alfred Jarry

Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....

 and Remy de Gourmont

Remy de Gourmont

Remy de Gourmont was a French Symbolist poet, novelist, and influential critic. He was widely read in his era, and an important influence on Blaise Cendrars...

 between 1894 and 1895. It ran for five issues and disbanded one year after its first printing, but in that time it published many prints and engravings by influential artists of the time, including Henri Rousseau

Henri Rousseau

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier , a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector...

.

Beginnings

Jarry, a French playwright and artist, and Gourmont, a novelist and poet of the same nationality, had worked in woodcuttings for many years before they joined together to form the magazine, although both men were so poor at times that they were forced to experiment with other mediums, such as linoleum

Linoleum

Linoleum is a floor covering made from renewable materials such as solidified linseed oil , pine rosin, ground cork dust, wood flour, and mineral fillers such as calcium carbonate, most commonly on a burlap or canvas backing; pigments are often added to the materials.The finest linoleum floors,...

 and soap for their cuttings. Jarry had also been fascinated with the editorial aspects of publication since he, Francois Coulon and Louis Lormel had collaborated on L’Art Litteraire in 1893-94, which Jarry contributed to and Lormel edited. Jarry and Gourmont founded their own magazine in 1894 with a modest fortune, thus giving them a venue through which they would have complete artistic control over the expression and presentation of both their art and their interests.

Symbolism

Jarry wrote in L’Ymagier of the power of the direct and archetypal

Archetype

An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...

 symbol, and set about comparing those symbols, such as the Passion

Passion (Christianity)

The Passion is the Christian theological term used for the events and suffering – physical, spiritual, and mental – of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion...

 and the Virgin Mary

Mary (mother of Jesus)

Mary , commonly referred to as "Saint Mary", "Mother Mary", the "Virgin Mary", the "Blessed Virgin Mary", or "Mary, Mother of God", was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee...

 to the deliberately primitive pieces of Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...

 and Émile Bernard

Émile Bernard

Émile Henri Bernard is known as a Post-Impressionist painter who had artistic friendships with Van Gogh, Gauguin and Eugene Boch, and at a later time, Cézanne. Most of his notable work was accomplished at a young age, in the years 1886 through 1897. He is also associated with Cloisonnism and...

, as well as many of his own works. The theme of the universal, primitive, and often childish forces at work in art and society was one that both Jarry and Gourmont would revisit often in their own writing and artwork, particularly in Jarry’s most famous play “Ubu Roi.”

Ubu Roi

Ubu Roi is a play by Alfred Jarry, premiered in 1896. It is a precursor of the Theatre of the Absurd and Surrealism. It is the first of three stylised burlesques in which Jarry satirises power, greed, and their evil practices — in particular the propensity of the complacent bourgeois to abuse the...

 The two also attempted to impress in their magazine the rejection of an optical reality, and instead tried to return art to a place of cult and ritual, hence the heavy religious imagery which peppered several of the issues.

Publication

The first issue was published in October 1894, and was entitled “The Passion” as it contained many woodcuttings depicting the Passion of Christ

Christ

Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...

. It was filled with elaborate and striking religious imagery, yet it was followed shortly by the shockingly graphic and unusual issue “Monsters” in January 1895. Following that was an issue in April 1895 entitled “The Virgin and Christ Child

Child Jesus

The Child Jesus represents Jesus from his Nativity to age 12. At 13 he was considered to be adult, in accordance with the Jewish custom of his time, and that of most Christian cultures until recent centuries.The Child Jesus is frequently depicted in art, from around the third or fourth century...

” and then a revisiting of “The Passion” in July of the same year. The final issue, published in October 1895 was the most sparse of all. It was entitled “Gingerbread Figures

Gingerbread man

A gingerbread man is a biscuit or cookie made of gingerbread, usually in the shape of a stylized human, commonly male as the name suggests, although making other shapes, especially seasonal themes and characters, is quite common as well.-History:...

” and contained only five pictures, four published under the name Alain Jans, Jarry’s nom-de-plume, and one which was unsigned. Shortly after this issue Jarry and Gourmont separated and the magazine quietly died out.

Contributors

Aside from Jarry and Gourmont, L’Ymagier published engravings from Gauguin, Bernard, Francois Georgin, a renowned woodcutter of the day, and Henri Rousseau who developed the status of cult artist due to his work in the magazine and was consistently one of its most popular contributors.

Afterwards

Following his father’s death in 1895 Jarry used his inheritance to found Perhinderion, a journal whose title is a Breton

Breton language

Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...

 word for pilgrimage

Pilgrimage

A pilgrimage is a journey or search of great moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith...

. The journal was dedicated to juxtaposing conflicting elements often seen separately in art, such as intellectuality and naiveté, as well as presenting the complete works of Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

, a 15th century painter and printmaker from Germany. Special attention was paid to Durer’s Saint Catherine

Catherine of Alexandria

Saint Catherine of Alexandria, also known as Saint Catherine of the Wheel and The Great Martyr Saint Catherine is, according to tradition, a Christian saint and virgin, who was martyred in the early 4th century at the hands of the pagan emperor Maxentius...

which is highly symbolist in the way it moves between the formal and the hallucinatory. Jarry declared in the first issue of Perhinderion that the reproductions of the woodcuts would be photoengraved

Photoengraving

Photoengraving also known as photo-chemical milling is a process of engraving using photographic processing techniques. The full form of photoengraving is photo mechanical process in the graphic arts, used principally for reproducing illustrations. The subject is photographed, and the image is...

…without reducing their size, and struck…on laid paper

Laid paper

Laid paper is a type of paper having a ribbed texture imparted by the manufacturing process. In the 19th century its use diminished as it was largely supplanted by wove paper...

, which is the most similar to the original paper.” This, along with the lavish format, led production costs to be so high that publication was discontinued after only two issues.
Though short lived, Jarry and Gourmont’s work in L’Ymagier and the magazine’s highly symbolist style influenced many artists and writers of the early 20th century, notably Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

 and Max Jacob

Max Jacob

Max Jacob was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.-Life and career:After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career...

 who would build on Jarry and Gourmont’s work in symbolism through Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 and Dada

Dada

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

ism in the 1900s.

Further reading

Stabenow, Cornelia. “Henri Rousseau, 1844-1910.” Taschen, 2001.

‘’L’Ymagier’’ from the Remy de Gourmont web page.

‘’L’Ymagier’’ exhibit at the University of Kansas’s Spencer Museum of Art.

Arrive, Michel. “Les Langages de Jarry.” Klincksieck, 1972.

LaBelle, Maurice Marc. “Alfred Jarry - Nihilism and the Theater of the Absurd.” New York University Press, 1980.