The Journal of Eugène Delacroix (1893/1995) [FR, EN]

“The journal of the French 19th-century Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix is one of the most important works in the literature of art history. Expressive and unselfconsciously spontaneous, it offers a compelling insight into the painter’s life and the cultural scene of 19th-century Paris (his friends and acquaintances included Géricault, Stendhal, Victor Cousin, Baudelaire, George Sand, Chopin, Hugo, and Dumas).”

Journal de Eugène Delacroix
Compiled by Paul Flat and René Piot
Publisher Plon, Paris, 1893

English edition
A Selection Edited with an Introduction Hubert Wellington
Translated by Lucy Norton
First published in 1951
Third edition, Phaidon, 1995
ISBN 0714833592
570 pages

Reviews (of new French ed.): Wright (H-France Review, 2010), Barnes (Times Literary Supplement, 2010), O’Brien (19th-Century Art Worldwide, 2012).
Commentaries: Hannoosh (RIHA Journal, 2010, in French).

Publisher (EN)
Publisher (FR, 2009 edition)
WorldCat (EN)

Manuscripts (at INHA)
French edition, 1893: Tome 1: 1823-1850, Tome 2: 1850-1854, Tome 3: 1855-1863 (at Internet Archive), at Wikisource-FR
English edition, 1995: PDF (85 MB, no OCR)

Hubert Damisch: The Origin of Perspective (1987–) [EN, CR]

“In part a response to Panofsky’s Perspective as Symbolic Form, The Origin of Perspective is much more. In France it is considered one of the most important works of art history to have appeared in the last twenty years. With the exception of Michel Foucault’s analysis of Las Meninas, it is perhaps the first time a structuralist method such as the one developed by Claude Lévi-Strauss in The Way of the Masks has been thoroughly and convincingly applied to Western art.

The task Damisch has set for himself is to refute both the positivist critics, whose approach makes up the bulk of perspective studies and is based on a complete repression of Panofsky’s early work, and the current pseudo-avant-gardist position (whether in the field of cinema studies or in literary criticism), which tends to disregard facts and theoretical analysis. Damisch argues that if a theoretical analysis of perspective is possible, using all the tools of structuralist semiotics, it is only possible in the context of a close look at its appearance in history, beginning with the details of the ‘invention’ of perspective.”

Originally published in French as L’Origine de la perspective, Flammarion, Paris, 1987.

Translated by John Goodman
Publisher MIT Press, 1994
ISBN 0262041391, 9780262041393
477 pages

Review: Wood (The Art Bulletin, 1995).
Commentary: Iversen (Oxford Art Journal, 2005).

WorldCat (EN)

The Origin of Perspective (English, 1994, chapter 14 missing, 24 MB, no OCR)
Porijeklo perspektive (Croatian, trans. Zlatko Wurzberg, 2006, added on 2018-7-8)

Roman Jakobson: My Futurist Years (1992/1997)

“Born in Moscow in 1896, Roman Jakobson was a founder of and a key figure in two influential schools of 20th century literary thought: Russian formalism, and later, during his years in Prague, structuralism. Forced to flee the invading Nazis, Jakobson spent time in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, before coming to the United States in 1941. During his long and illustrious academic career in the U.S., Jakobson was a professor of literature and linguistics at Columbia, Harvard and MIT. Up to his death in 1982, he published 500 monographs and articles on linguistics, Slavic studies, poetics, and semiotics.

Vital as the extraordinary innovative and turbulent period that spawned these writings, My Futurist Years is one of the most important reflections on the Russian Futurist movement and a cornerstone in the career of one of the century’s greatest linguistic and literary thinkers.

Jakobson’s rare sensibility in his explorations in language and art are no more evident than in this volume, detailing the formative moment in his public and personal life. Along with the quite moving recollections of his friendships with such Modernist figures as Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov, and Malevich, the book includes Jakobson’s letters to other Futurists active in the scene and to his close friend Elsa Brik, later to gain notoriety as the French writer Elsa Triolet and wife of the poet Louis Aragon.” (from the back cover)

First published in Russian as Jakobson-budetljanin: sbornik materialov, Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1992.

Compiled and Edited by Bengt Jangfeldt
Translated and with an Introduction by Stephen Rudy
Publisher Marsilio, New York, 1997
ISBN 0941419797
371 pages
in the Unlimited Edition

Review: Avril Pyman (Slavonic & East European Review, 1993).

WorldCat

PDF (21 MB, updated on 2019-9-27)