Lot 28: CHARLES HENRI FORD

CHARLES HENRI FORD 1913 - 2002 JAYNE MANSFIELD, RROSE SÉLAVY AS POPE JOAN, THE ACE OF SPADES IS ME AND OTHER POEM POSTERS [SIX WORKS] each signed, dated 1964 and 1965 respectively and numbered 1/1 offset lithographs each: 39 3/8 by 27 3/8 in. 100 by 69.5 cm Published by Vassily Papachrysanthou in Greece in 1964-65 in a small edition, these six prints were probably A.P.'s.

Ruth Ford, New York (gift of the artist)

Charles Henri Ford was an accomplished poet, graphic artist, filmmaker, photographer and publisher. He is generally credited as being America's first surrealist poet, publishing a pamphlet of sonnets in 1936 and editing View magazine in the 1940s. Charles Henri Ford's "Poem Posters" were exhibited at Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, New York in 1965 and were the subject of a film of the same title, which received the Fourth International Avant-Garde Film Festival Award in Belgium in 1966. Ever keen to explore and accelerate the possibilities of new art forms, Charles is credited with introducing Andy Warhol to Jack Smith, underground film pioneer, and taking Warhol to buy his first movie camera.

Among the first examples to spark a fad for color posters, these works can be viewed in the context of other artists such as Jacques Villeglé and Mimmo Rotella. Future exhibitions of "Poem Posters" included Robert Samuel Gallery, New York in 1980; October Gallery, New York in 1984; Ubu Gallery, New York in 1999 and Between Bridges Gallery, London in 2007. Recently, the Museum of Modern Art, New York acquired a set of 12 "Poster Poems".

"Ford's paste-up and collage poems from the late 1960s could be understood to be as much about the communication of information as about the information they communicate. These paste-up poems transport us as viewers/readers into the spreading power, the speed of turnover, the divine dissolution of the cut-up technique, demonstrating that significance and beauty can be excised from even the most workaday printed matters. " (Maria Fusco, "Charles Henri Ford," Frieze Magazine, London, Issue 112, January-February 2008, n.p.)