VVV

New York: VVV, 1944. First edition. Very good plus overall.. Complete run of this multidisciplinary surrealist journal, a short-lived little magazine and luxurious treasure-house of a disintegrating avant-garde. Edited by Hare and with editorial advisors André Breton, Max Ernst, and Marcel Duchamp, the ambitious VVV offered a new American publication for the disrupted and disruptive output of European surrealists in exile. These four issues (complete in three volumes) include literary work and essays, in French and English, by Philip Lamantia, Aimé Césaire, Jean Rollin, Benjamin Péret, Claude Levi-Strauss, Charles-Henri Ford, Valentine Penrose, Robert Motherwell, Alfred Jarry, Guillaume Apollinaire, Alain Bosquet, Charles Duits and William Seabrook; art and photography by Ernst, Duchamp, Roberto Matta, Irving Penn, Kay Sage, Julio Diego, Enrico Donati, Sonia Sekula, Yves Tanguy, Giorgio de Chirico, Dorothea Tanning, Marc Chagall, Joan Miró - and others.

Among the spectacular contents: the first English-language publication of Leonora Carrington's Down Below, "as told to Jeanne Megnen, translated from the French by Victor Llona," Carrington and Matta's illustrated scheme for a "non-Euclidian" Tarot; Frederic Delanglade's recreated playing card designs for the Jeu de Marseille; Robert Allerton Parker on H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith; and the jewel of the first issue, a carefully tabulated data set ranking "attractions" felt by a roster of eminent Surrealists to an array of mythological figures, from the Sphinx to the Bloody Nun. An exceptionally well preserved set. 11'' x 8.75''. Three volumes. Number 1: Original pictorial wrappers by Ernst. 72 pages. Light edgewear and faint sunning. Number 2-3 (double issue): Original pictorial wrappers by Duchamp, chicken-wire inset to back cover. Moderate chipping and some soil to wrappers, rear cover with some repairs. Number 4: Original pictorial wrappers by Matta. Light scuffing to edges. All volumes illustrated throughout, with some color plates and cut-outs as issued.