“LE TROISIEME DEGRE” DE LA PEINTURE. 1965. TRUE FIRST EDITION – WITH A MISTAKE CORRECTED BY HAND BY BRETON

Paris: Surrealist group/Le Comite pour L’Espagne Libre, 1965
27 x 21cm, 1pp black on red/orange. One of the last hurrahs of the official surrealists condemning the public representation of Marcel Duchamp (in a painting) being beaten up by the pop artists (as if we would ever put our money on the effete Andy in a face off with Marcel – even without calling up Arthur Craven to help tackle Basquiat in a tag match). Hardly worth the spleen but signed nonetheless by over 40 of the group including Breton, Audoin, Benoit, Dax, Estienne, Lebel, Lebrun, Mansour, Parent, Schwarz, and Toyen.

This is the true first edition as it contains a typographic mistake (“dynamite”) which is here corrected in Breton’s own hand to “dynamatique” – this copy came indirectly from Breton’s own collection. Fine.