accent aigu, accent grave, accent circonflexe [three original works]

Carrión, Ulises

N.p. The Artist, N.d. [ca. 1979]. A series of three original works, each a 6.25 x 4.0625" leaf cut from a copy of Gustave Aimard’s Les Nuites Mexicaines, drawn on ink, and each mounted on an 8.25 x 11.75" sheet of thin card stock. Each titled in the artists’ hand at lower left margin, and two of the three works initialed at lower right margin.

Provenance: from the archive of the German artists’ periodical Die Zweitschrift, where the works were submitted in 1979, but not published.

A seriously playful work exploring semiotics, imperialism, and sexual and cultural identity. The works intervene on three pages of Gustave Aimard’s 1964 novel Les Nuites Mexicaines. As with so much of Carrión’s work, the surface simplicity gives way to multiple levels of meaning. Accent marks had both a semiotic and a cultural importance for Carrión, who had an accent in his own name which was often omitted when his name appeared in western publications. Carrión’s fellow Mexican artist Felipe Ehrenberg recalls Carrión “sending a typewritten letter with the accents added by hand. We were on the same wavelength.” Moreover, the source title is certainly a nod to Carrión’s Mexican identity, and a more subtle reference both to imperialism and crossing cultural and sexual borders. Aimard, sometimes known as the French Fenimore Cooper, was a prolific writer of romances involving Latin America and the American west. Aimard himself had been part of an ill-fated invasion and occupation of the Mexican city of Hermosillo in 1852 under the leadership of Duke de Raousset-Boulbon. Several of Aimard’s novels have homosexual themes, and Aimard was also am enigmatic figure who fled his own homeland, just as Carrión had left his native Mexico for Europe to work. Lastly, the emphasis on the accent marks is emblematic of Carrión’s own shift from being a novelist to his explorations of semiotics.

A few faint glue residue marks along margins behind book pages and toning to card stock sheets, else near fine. Item #1001

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