Niki de Saint Phalle. Les années 1980 et 1990. L’art en liberté (“Niki de Saint Phalle. The years 1980 and 1990. Art in freedom”) is an exhibition dedicated to the French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle. It was held in Les Abattoirs in Toulouse from October 7th, 2022 to March 5th, 2023. In the accompanying catalog, you will find images from her œuvre, various texts (by Annabelle Ténèze, Lucia Pesapane, Julie Crenn, Karine Lacquemant, Thibault Boulvain, Mica Gherghescu, and Ruba Katrib), and a chronology of de Saint Phalle’s work. A substantial book of 224 pages, measuring 22×27 cm and weighing 1.25kg that makes a complete retrospective on the work of Niki.

Titles are set in all-caps ABC Maxi Round, marking a certain modernity in the look of Niki de Saint Phalle’s work. Art direction and graphic design by Agnès Dahan Studio, co-published by Gallimard and Les Abattoirs. The sans serif used for the texts and captions is ABC Marfa. You can flip through the whole book at cantook.net.

Beautifully designed in house at the French publishing house Gallimard, this monograph/biography of the architect and designer Charlotte Perriand (1903–1999) is a pleasure to read.

It has a diverse and contemporary typographic palette.

Titles are set in the typeface Orientation by Sandrine Nugue, published by Commercial Type. The main text is set in Lava by Peter Biľak, published by Typotheque. And the pull quotes and image captions are set in Akkurat Mono by Laurenz Brunner, published by Lineto.

On the occasion of the exhibition Huysmans. De Degas à Grünewald taking place at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, an illustrated version of the French novelist and art critic’s most famous text was published. Gallimard, the co-publisher, says the publication “confronts Huysmans’ text with an entire iconography that he either underlies or explicitly evokes.”

Sarah Martinon, art director and illustrator based in Paris, was in charge of the book’s layout as well as the creation of original marble-inspired illustrations used as chapter openers. These mesmerising patterns complement the text, now considered to be the ultimate example of Decadent literature, with a main character described by its author as “soaring upwards into dream, seeking refuge in illusions of extravagant fantasy.”

For the cover design and titles, Sarah Martinon used Bet (Revue Diorama), a typeface inspired by Jacoby & Fils’ poster wood typefaces from the end of the 19th century [see Series 4009–4019] — around the same time as “À rebours” was first published. The main text is set in Adobe Caslon, with page numbers in Akzidenz-Grotesk Bold. The chapter openers feature Nostra Stream (Lucas Descroix), whose wild and over-the-top curviness create a very interesting dialogue with Martinon's colorful illustrations.

The titles follow the same treatment as the cover.

The text and running title use Adobe Caslon, the page number is set in Akzidenz-Grotesk Bold.

Each chapter opener features an original and colorful pattern. The chapter number is set in Nostra Stream.

The book features a very generous late-19th-century iconography.

Both the pattern and the titling typeface share a "folded ribbon" kind of look.

Caption set in Adobe Caslon.

Back cover, showing an illustration by Odilon Redon from 1888.

The Folio SF pocket collection – an imprint of Gallimard – offers stories and novels from all walks of life, open to all worlds: science fiction, fantasy, fantasy, but also unclassifiable works, at the crossroads of genres. ABF Linéaire, designed by Philippe Apeloig and published by Nouvelle Noire is used as a main typeface for titling on various Folio SF book covers. Author’s names are set in Univers Condensed, and the Folio logo seems to be based on Adobe Garamond.

Source: www.abebooks.fr Librairie-Galerie Emmanuel Hutin (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

Raymond Queneau’s Exercices de style was first published in 1947. In 1963, Gallimard issued a deluxe hardcover edition. The 99 variations of the same story were typographically interpreted by Robert Massin (professionally known just as Massin), who had started working at Gallimard in 1958, serving as art director since 1960. Additionally included are 33 parallel exercises in style; drawn, painted, and carved by illustrator Jacques Carelman. This magnificient book deserves a post that also shows some of the interior pages and an analysis of the many typefaces in use. For the moment, a look at the cover and the title page will have to do.

The title is presented in four big lines, stacked and justified, with a different typeface for each line. “Exercices” is wrapped in two lines, in capitals from Comstock, a contoured grotesque first cast by the Inland Type Foundry in 1902 and also known under several other names including Astoria; and Didot. The specific version may be Initiales Firmin Didot, a caps-only cut offered by Deberny & Peignot in sizes up to 60pt. The dimensional seriffed letters depicted from an extreme perspective are probably from a 19th-century (wood?) typeface. All attention is ultimately directed to the word “style”. It’s presented in a range of bright colors in what otherwise is a monochrome cover. The bombastic letterforms are taken from a decorated capital alphabet originally shown in Jean Midolle’s lettering sampler Spécimen des écritures modernes (1834–1835) as Romaine (genre arabesque). Later on, after this book was designed, this face was adopted for dry-transfer lettering and inevitably made into a digital font, too.

These four lines are representative for Massin’s predilection for vintage and often expressive typefaces. The three small lines at the bottom are set in a more restrained and also much younger design: Folio was released by the Bauer foundry just a few years earlier, in 1957. The neo-grotesk was sold in France under the name Caravelle.

Source: www.abebooks.fr Librairie Le Feu Follet (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

The title page combines a multitude of typefaces, center-aligned, in a neo-Victorian fashion. The title is set in Didot caps, with a candlestick standing in for Y. The formal script appears to be Calligraphiques noires, issued by Deberny & Peignot in 1928. The shaded slab for “Carelman” is Initiales Compactes Éclairées, Deberny & Peignot’s name for a design that originated at the Bruce Type Foundry in 1865 and is better known as Gold Rush. The other typefaces are unidentified. If you have any insights, let us know in a comment.

In an article for Eye magazine no. 16 vol. 4 (1995), Richard Hollis regards the illustrated edition of Excercices de style as Massin’s “first important single piece of design at Gallimard”:

In attempting ‘a literal expression of the text (mainly limited to the titles),’ Massin displayed his skill with eccentric type forms, supplying each variation of the tale with a heading which suggests the narrative form that follows. Derived from the content, the type style becomes part of the expression of the text’s meaning. The letters are not decoration, but unified text and illustration. Massin’s Exercices de style was a further demonstration of Faucheux’s idea of ‘making connections between the text and its graphic expression.’ Since Faucheux had himself produced a book club version of Exercises de style in 1956, there was, for Massin, an element of rivalry as well as homage in the project.

On PaperPosts, Murray Grigo-McMahon shares several images of the interior pages, taken from a later edition issued by Gallimard in the late 1970s, with a different cover.

In 2007, Phaidon published a monograph of Massin’s work, edited by Laetitia Wolff. For more information about Massin and his œuvre, see also the features on Design Culture, Elisava, and Index Grafik as well as Jan Middendorp’s article for Eye about Massin and the Book.

Massin died February 8, 2020 at the age of 94.

On the occasion of its 10th anniversary, the Musée des Impressionnismes in Giverny, France presents a retrospective of Ker Xavier-Roussel (1867–1944), a lesser known member of Les Nabis, and one of the most original artists of the post-impressionist generation. Jardin Privé, Jardin Rêvé (“Private Garden, Dream Garden”) is the first major retrospective devoted to the painter in several decades.

The exhibition catalog uses Granville throughout. The modulated sans serif by Production Type appears in all caps for titles: stacked and staggered on the cover, and center-aligned for chapter headings. Body copy is set in ragged-right columns using Granville Bold, with catalog numbers distinguished by a lighter weight. Edited by Mathias Chivot, the catalog was published by Gallimard.

The Guernica exhibition catalog introduces the genesis of one of Picasso’s masterpiece through the links that unite the painting to its painter all along his life, and the way the piece drawn into culture up to becoming a popular icon. Painted in 1937, this monumental artwork is both a synthesis of the plastic research conducted by Picasso for 40 years and a popular icon. Exhibited, replicated all over the world, it has been at the same time an anti-franco, an anti-fascist and a pacific symbol. It is also an abundantly quoted, commented and taken up artwork, theorized by art historians and artists.

The in-house designers at Gallimard set the book with Minotaur, a typeface that was originally conceived for (but eventually never used by) the Musée Picasso where the exhibition takes place. Minotaur's name is a reference to Picasso's obsession for this creature and its no surprise that in such a book, the name would eventually appear and be set with the typeface! Body text is typeset with Louize, a revival of Perrin’s Augustaux by Matthieu Cortat (see also Alice Savoie’s review).

Éditions Gallimard / 320 pages / 25 × 32,5 cm

Cahiers Céline is an edition of previously unpublished texts and studies texts by French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, coordinated by Antoine Gallimard, Jean-Pierre Dauphin and Pascal Fouché. The paperback series was published by Gallimard, Paris between 1976 and 1988 in eight volumes.

The cover typeface used throughout the series is Block – always featuring its alternate forms for a and n, see this specimen from 1921 and also Marinetti’s La Cucina Futurista.

Paul Cézanne has painted almost two hundred portraits during his life, including twenty-six self-portraits and twenty-nine portraits of his wife, Hortense. Curiously there never has been a single exhibition dedicated to the portrait work of the one Picasso regarded “his one and only master”. Studying these artworks in a chronological perspective reveals precious insights into the evolution of his style. One can linger on the variations that appear in the continuity from his style and way of working.

This book explores Cézanne’s aesthetic peculiarities and topics in this specific exercise that the portrait is, exposing us to the most personal side of his body of work, maybe the most intimate one.

Brice Tourneux chose the geometrical Wigrum, which references sans serifs from the 1930s, to compose the whole book.

Musée d'Orsay / Gallimard | 256 pages | 21,6 × 28,8 cm

Launched in 1972, “Folio” is the paperback imprint of French literary giant Éditions Gallimard. It is the most famous series of livres de poche (pocket books) in France, whose meteoric rise (15 million copies were sold in the first six years of activity alone) owes a great deal to its iconic cover template, designed by Gallimard’s then art director, Robert Massin (1925–2020).

Influenced by Swiss designer Celestino Piatti’s work for German publisher DTV (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag), Massin chose a white background with black type stacked at the top of the format, but selected a classic, ranged-left, seriffed roman, Baskerville Old Face (a.k.a. Fry’s Baskerville), instead of going for the full modernist outlook (Akzidenz Grotesk Medium, flush-right) favoured by Piatti.

The rest of the cover was entrusted to a vast roster of illustrators, painters or photographers, whose visual pyrotechnics resulted in images which have since then become deeply ingrained in the collective consciousness: for several generations of French readers, L’Étranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus, for instance, is forever associated with Alexis Oussenko’s allusive watercolour, while David Levine’s caricature of Jean-Paul Sartre (originally published in The New York Review of Books in 1969) is arguably, thanks to its appearance on the cover of Les Mots (Words), one of the most enduring portraits of the radical Left-Bank philosopher and novelist.

Massin’s outstanding contribution to Gallimard’s success — and to French book design at large — has been the subject of this excellent book by Laetitia Wolff.

The Bibliothèque de la Pléiade was founded in 1931 by Jacques Schiffrin, a Russian émigré. Named after a group of Russian poets, the Pléiade contains today more than 550 volumes, and is considered in French-speaking countries the most prestigious collection of classic literature.

Inspired by his travels in Germany and England, Schiffrin sought to create a practical and convenient edition of complete works: leather-bound, durable, printed on thin bible paper as to fit in your coat’s pocket, and set exclusively in Monotype Garamond. All the volumes sold today look exactly the same as they did 80 years ago.

While it quickly became popular among connoisseurs, lack of funds obliged Schiffrin to sell his collection two years later to Gallimard, where he continued to supervise the Pléiade until he was dismissed in 1940 for being Jewish. After receiving asylum in New York, Schiffrin went on to found Pantheon Books with Helen and Kurt Wolff (a refugee himself, Wolff was the first to publish Franz Kafka and Franz Werfel).

Publishing critical editions of French classics, as well as translations from the literary canon, the Pléiade is also quite famous among contemporary writers. To be “enthroned” in the collection is a high honour, compared by many to the Nobel Prize, but received by few living writers. From the 250 authors published by the collection, only 16 have had the chance to see their name stamped on the golden spine.

Today, 300,000 volumes are sold each year and the collection is Gallimard’s most profitable.

Fun fact: Although the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade has always been considered a reference work, the first ever published volume ironically contained poems falsely attributed to Baudelaire. Pascal Pia, renowned today for his involvement in the French Resistance during World War II, had forged unpublished manuscripts which went unnoticed by the responsible scholar.

Since historical ligatures were not originally digitized by Monotype, the typeface had to be modified in-house.

All the promotional material of the Pléiade uses Bodoni.

Front and back of the exhibition catalog for Sade. Attaquer le soleil at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

SADE is set in NewParis KingSize Air, serifs removed, paired with Euclid Flex. The quote on the back is set in SangBleu, or Romain [see the note in the comments].

Ultramarine is the first novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry. Originally published in 1933, this French paperback edition is dated 1978.