HENRI MICHAUX (1899-1984) - Lot 93

HENRI MICHAUX (1899-1984) Mescaline drawing, 1955 India ink on paper from the F. Barjon paper mill in Moirans, Isère, signed with initials lower right. 32 x 24 cm. Provenance. Collection B.C., Paris. Exhibitions. . Description d'un trouble, Librairie La Hune, Paris January 1956. . Henri Michaux, Musée National d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, February 12 - April 4, 1965, reproduced on page 24 of the catalog. . Rétrospective Henri Michaux, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi, September 18 - October 24, 1971, exhibition no. 101. . Retrospective, Kestner-Geselschaft, Hanover, November 17, 1972 - January 7, 1973. . Retrospective, traveling exhibition Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, March 15 - June 14, 1978, reproduced on catalog page 96 and Guggenheim Museum, New York, September 6 - October 15, 1978, exhibition no. 69. and Musée d'Art Contemporain, Montreal, November 2 - December 10, 1978. . Paris - Paris, Créations en France 1937 - 1957, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, May 26 - November 2, 1981. . Henri Michaux, Exposition Itinérante,The Seibu Museum of Art,Tokyo, January 2 - February 21, 1983, exhibition no. 61, reproduced on page 73 of catalog, Kitakyushu, April 2 - May 2, 1983 and Ohtsu May 15 - June 15, 1983. . Passions Privées, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, December 1995 - March 1996, exhibition no. 147, reproduced on catalog page 301... Forces Fields: Phases of the Kinetic, Hayward Gallery, London, exhibition nos. 134 to 136. Bibliography. . Franck Leibovici, Henri Michaux: Voir (une enquête), PUPS, 2014, reproduced on page 218. . Will appear in the catalog raisonné of Henri Michaux's work being prepared by Micheline Phankim, Rainer Michael Mason and Franck Leibovici. This work is referenced in the Michaux archives - Micheline Phankim, Rainer Michael Mason and Franck Leibovici - as under no. HM4590. Sale by court order. Buyer's fee 14.28% incl. VAT + Live fee 1.80% incl. VAT if auctioned on Drouot Live. HENRI MICHAUX (1899-1984) In order to understand Michaux's approach to drugs and mescaline, it is interesting to refer to Muriel Pic's article in Mouvements 2016/2, n° 86 pp 142 -150, a condensed version of which is reproduced below: It is often said of writer and painter Henri Michaux's (1899-1984) experiments with psychotropic drugs that they were carried out "under medical supervision". What is at stake in this expression, and what is mostly ignored, is the legal clinical use of psychotropic drugs in psychiatric and pharmaceutical circles in the Fifties... In the 1950s, hallucinogenic drugs (Mescaline, LSD 25, psilocybin) were at the heart of psychopharmacological research. Psychiatrists and neurologists experimented with them on themselves and on the insane, in order to discover cures for diseases of the soul. As disruptors of the central nervous system, these drugs do not produce strong physical dependence, unlike depressants such as opiates. Scientists experiment with psychotropic drugs in synthetic forms, drawing on their knowledge of psychic processes and following a precise protocol: the presence of third parties, recording of the individual's vital parameters, the dose ingested and hourly monitoring of effects. Michaux, who experimented with drugs from 1955 to 1960, did not systematically adhere to the protocol, but always adopted an experimental, rather than recreational or compulsive, approach to them. His experiments with psychotropic drugs were in line with advances in neurological science, whose importance for medical progress he had already affirmed in 1936, as well as for "L'Avenir de la poésie" (The Future of Poetry) in an eponymous lecture: "An increasingly detailed knowledge of brain-intelligence, brain-glands, brain-blood, mind-nerve relationships, the increasingly thorough and experimental study of disorders of language, of cenesthesia, of images, of the subconscious and of intelligence, tends to give the poet the curiosity to touch all this from the inside, and the taste for more daring incursions into second states, into dangerous states of the self". Michaux was to collaborate with some of the leading scientific figures and institutions of the day, including psychiatrists Jean Delay and Julian Ajuriaguerra at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne in Paris, botanist Roger Heim at the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris and the pharmaceutical firm Laboratoires Sandoz in Basel. ... January 2, 3 and 9, 1955 In addition to critical interpretations of the psychotropic works of..., Michaux, aged 54, experiments with mescaline for the first time in the company of Jean Paulhan.