May 05, 2011 - Sale 2246

Sale 2246 - Lot 88

Price Realized: $ 11,400
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
A. M. CASSANDRE (ADOLPHE MOURON, 1901-1968) MINIWATT / PHILIPS RADIO. 1931.
22 1/2x15 1/4 inches, 57x38 1/2 cm. Alliance Graphique, Paris.
Condition A-: minor loss in upper left corner. Hand-signed by the artist in pencil. Paper.
One of Cassandre's few forays into the realm of Sachs Plakat, Object Posters (or as his son refers to them, "ideograms"). What differentiates this image from Object Posters designed by Swiss artists is Cassandre's airbrush treatment of the light and shadows: The tube is darker on the side with the lighter colored background, and lighter on the side with darker background. The typography, which crosses the image, bears Cassandre's signature stylistic trait; it is outlined within the confines of the bulb itself. "The primary virtue of the IDEOGRAM is to be precise and clear . . . by overturning the established order and scale of things to create a fictive counterreality that is more explicit than reality itself, it becomes a poetic object in its own right" (Mouron p. 74). This is the smallest of three formats. Mouron pl. 32, Suntory 25, Brown & Reinhold 33, Cassandre / Weill p. 53.