Documents

Chronology

The first number is gone back to April 1929. Documents is marked in subtitle: “doctrines, archeology, fine art, ethnography” and is presented in the form of a “illustrated magazine per annum appearing ten times” .

As often in the life of the reviews, its leaders will not reach their program of publication and Documents will know only 15 numbers. The review ceases its in January 1931 existence and seems to have received only one weak public echo.

The preliminary draft of the review

The idea of the review was born from the meeting between Georges Bataille and Pierre d' Espezel with the Cabinet of the medals of the National library of France, where they worked both then. Georges Bataille was then recognized like a promising numismatist and Pierre d' Espezel directed several reviews in specialized matter. He knew for this reason Georges Wildenstein, a merchant of old tables, who will finance Documents .

For the three creators of the review his title had value programming science. He had been proposed by Georges Bataille himself but from the Bataille start diverted it in a direction that the two other initiators of the project had not envisaged. In its introduction to the reprint of Documents Denis Hollier gives an echo of the divergences which separated the three founders. Pierre d' Espezel writes in Bataille: “the title that you chose for this review, is hardly justified but in the sense that it gives us " Documents" on your frame of mind. It is much, but it is not enough. It is really necessary to return to the spirit which inspired the first project of this review to us, when we spoke about it with Mr. Wildenstein, you and me. ” Of course Battle will not hold any account of it.

This concept of document which Bataille undoubtedly held of its formation with the École of the Charters enabled him to give to the review a new tone; all the elements brought contribute to the reflection and the unexpected bringings together: photographs sometimes seizing, of the pages of notebooks of sketch (Ingres, Delacroix, Seurat), of the reproductions of tables of time (Picasso, Matisse, Gaston-Louis Red-headed, etc) and especially much of testimonys and photographs of the ethnographic type.

Topics of the review

Whereas the two other initiators of Documents undoubtedly aimed at creating an specialized magazine and rather conventional Bataille makes of it an instrument with the service of the concerns which it will continue to develop throughout its life.

One of the originalities of this review is to mix the ethnography and creations with the avant-garde in order to create a new dialog between artists and academics.

Low matter

In the n° 6 of Bataille December 1929 writes an article entitled “the big toe” . He recalls that the man is distinguished from the arboricolous monkey by the characteristics of his foot whose big toe “applies on the ground to the same plan as the other fingers”. It is thanks to this firm base which it profits from “this erection whose man is so proud” . And yet, the man mistakes his foot: “the man who with the light head, i.e. high towards the sky and the things of the sky, looks at it as a spittle under pretext that it has this foot in mud.”

A development follows on the human foot “subjected to grotesque torments which make it deformed and rachitic.” the article is illustrated of three closes-up (on full each one page) on three deformed toes.

One finds here the set of themes of the low matter which characterizes the man whereas this one would like “the light head” , set of themes which is a constant of the work of Georges Bataille because, according to him, there is a “discordance” between the human aspirations and this low or ashamed matter of which it is made up.

Anti-idealism

The anti-idealism of Battle is translated initially in the orientations of the review. The ethnography holds to with it a major place but an ethnography which wants to be with more close to reality and material, an ethnography anti-esthetics.

This orientation is expressed multiple ways:

It is Carl Einstein who returns account of the great exposure of African art and Océanien of the time to the Pigalle gallery and which declares as of the second sentence of its article: “it is necessary to treat this art historically, and either only to consider it under the only point of view of the taste and esthetics.” (n° 2,1930).
It is Marcel Griaule who writes: “the archeologists and the esthètes are interested in the container, and not in the contents. (…) The shape of a handle is admired, but one will take care well to study the position of the man who drinks, and not to wonder why, among many people, it is ashamed of drinking upright.” Here “the archeologists and the esthètes” oppose the ethnographers, orientation which the author represents. The ethnographers seek to know the practical value of the objects, not to set them up in work of Article

This orientation translates a will to include/understand the other and not to solidify it in an otherness esthétisante. Let us note in the passing that Georges-Marie Rivière who plays a central role beside Bataille in the animation of the review was then in charge of the refitting of the museum of ethnography to the palate of Trocadéro and that he regards as a “misinterpretation” to make a place where “objects would distribute under the aegis of the only esthetics.” (n°1, 1929)

The material

The material is very present, in all the numbers: they are ethnographic photographs of objects, a fragment of manuscript of Duke Ellington, the pages of sketch of Eugene Delacroix, of Ingres, of Seurat, they are the reproductions of tables of Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, André Masson, Juan Gris etc which seem to leave their workshops and which are presented like testimonys of a work being done.

The material in fact also the photographs are never anecdotic but rather clinical even provocantes like those of the big toes evoked above or as these photographs in number 4 of 1929 which illustrate the article “Figure human” written by Bataille which holds of the remarks of a terrible violence on “hideous” appearance of those which preceded us. This article immediately follows, in counterpoint, a series of photographs on “antiquated sculptures of Cyclades” which present human figures stylized of one seizing beauty.

The first collective laboratory of Battle

One could multiply the examples of the topics which precede the work of Georges Bataille in the 15 numbers of this review. But this presentation of “Documents” does not aim at causing the one completed time nostalgia, it wants especially:

# To encourage to read “Documents” which is undoubtedly the best introduction to the work of Battle because for him the image, the document, the unexpected bringings together between documents, the ideas belonged to its method of writing;

# Rappeler that the figure of Georges Bataille who seems to us so solitary and isolated is inaccurate. Battle liked to work with others and it will continue in this direction with the leading and mystical adventure of “Headless” where the dimension of the community was asserted explicitly.

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