Antonin Artaud — Dessins, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1987

Private view invitation / exhibition card
Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris
30 June – 11 October 1987

Offset print on card stock
Recto reproduces Antonin Artaud, Portrait de Jany de Ruy, 2 July 1947

Condition: very good; light toning, minor edge wear, faint handling marks.

Issued for the inauguration of Antonin Artaud: Dessins at the Centre Georges Pompidou, 30 June 1987. Exhibition presented until 11 October 1987, Salle d’Art Graphique, 4th floor. Invitation valid for two persons.

The reproduced work, Portrait de Jany de Ruy, is held by the Musée national d’art moderne / Centre Pompidou and was made at the maison de santé du Dr Delmas, Ivry, in graphite and greasy coloured chalk on paper. The Pompidou records the drawing as signed and dated by Artaud on 2 July 1947.

The 1987 exhibition gathered Artaud’s graphic work at the Musée national d’art moderne, including the early Sorts of 1939, calligraphed, drawn and burned letters, later drawings from 1948, notebooks and correspondence. The Pompidou describes the exhibition as bringing together more than sixty drawings, with many works leaving private collections for the first time.

This card is not the catalogue. It is the access object. The institutional surface through which Artaud’s drawings entered the museum: name, date, room, press hour, invitation status, reproduced wound.

Not a reproduction in the ordinary sense. Not a later document. A surviving exhibition support from the opening structure itself. Held outside the institutional archive.

The catalogue remains traceable. The invitation does not circulate in the same way. Its function was temporary: admit, announce, disappear. Here it survives as a small Pompidou object, carrying Artaud’s late graphic violence in reduced administrative form.

A borderline artwork-object: Artaud’s drawing translated into museum card, the museum card returned to circulation as image, document, and support.

Original period item. Shipping included.