This page contains an extract from Édouard Dujardin’s influential essay from 1888, titled “Cloisonnism.” Jarry chose the passage in which Dujardin argued that the source of an artist’s imagery, be it a Japanese or Épinal print, is insignificant in comparison to the purpose the image serves for an artist’s project. Jarry set the text in the Renaissance-style type he had acquired and named for Perhinderion. The antiquated letterforms and punctuation include the long s, which resembles f, and ligatures; Jarry replaced Dujardin’s semicolons with colons, as if to connect, rather than separate, ideas. In addition, the critic’s key words and neologisms, which he had emphasized in italics, were rendered by Jarry in roman and thus brought into equivalence with the rest of the text. Jarry misattributed the excerpt to his friend, Félix Fénéon, and imposed a new title, “D’Art.” By transforming Dujardin’s words and ideas for his own purposes, Jarry had applied the critic’s theory of art to art criticism.
Excerpt from Edouard Dujardin’s “Le Cloisonisme,” 1888, misattributed to Félix Fénéon, in Perhinderion, no. 2 (1896). The Morgan Library & Museum, New York. Gift of Robert J. and Linda Klieger Stillman, 2017. PML 197087.