Carton Perforé: Piano (2020)

Carton Perforé: Piano (2020)
Rainier Lericolais
Single-fold card, single fold folio of sheet music. H270 x W210 mm, 4 unnumbered pages. © DTD Éditions. Paris, France. Acquired from the artist, 15 May 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.

In 2009, Rainier Lericolais created one of the more unusual works of homage to Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira le Hasard (1914). In Carton Perforé, the words and lines of Mallarmé’s poem take up their positions as perforations on a continuous paper roll used for a barrel organ or hurdy-gurdy.

Carton Perforé © Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou. Photo: Lili Kim. Displayed with permission of Rainier Lericolais.

Carton Perforé © Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou. Photo: Lili Kim. Displayed with permission of Rainier Lericolais.

For a multidisciplinary artist and musician, Lericolais’ choice of medium here is highly appropriate, as is the choice of Mallarmé’s poem for an artist in pursuit of “grasping the elusive“. The work is now in the permanent collection at the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou.

In 2020, Lericolais revisited his visual barrel-organ homage to create a version that could be heard as well as seen. Under the Direct to Disk Éditions label, Lericolais published Carton Perforé as sheet music for piano along with a recording of it. Just as Broodthaers and other hommageurs signaled their homage by changing Mallarmé’s subtitle from Poème to Image, Sculpture, Musique, etc., Lericolais adds the subtitle Piano, paying homage to their tributes, Mallarmé’s poem and, humorously, his own earlier work. A performance of the piano version can be heard here.

Further Reading

“Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira l’Appropriation”. 1 May 2022. Bookmarking Book Art.