Jean Dubuffet — La Botte à Nique, Illustrated Artist’s Book in Publisher’s Leather, No. 652/1000 (1973)

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DUBUFFET, JEAN.
La Botte à Nique.
Geneva: Albert Skira, 1973. From the series Les Sentiers de la Création.

First edition of Jean Dubuffet’s densely integrated book of text and images, conceived and designed throughout by the artist.

The volume reproduces Dubuffet’s handwritten text in his deliberately unorthodox phonetic “jargon,” intertwined with more than one hundred black-and-white and color images in the visual language of his celebrated Hourloupe cycle. Printed in héliogravure after the artist’s manuscript and original maquette.

Dubuffet uses the seemingly ordinary subject of gardening as a vehicle for wordplay, visual puzzles, and a characteristically subversive meditation on language, culture, and artistic creation. The curving handwritten text mirrors the fluid, cellular forms of the illustrations, requiring the reader to rotate and actively manipulate the book.

One of 1,000 numbered copies on wove paper in the publisher’s full burgundy leather binding, ruled and lettered in gilt, with gilt top edge. This is copy 652.

Title: La Botte à Nique.
Series: Les Sentiers de la Création.
Edition: First edition, no. 652 of 1,000 leather-bound copies.
Illustrations: Extensively illustrated in black and color, printed in héliogravure after Dubuffet’s designs.
Format: Approximately 21.5 × 16.5 cm (8½ × 6½ inches).
Condition: Small nick to the top edge of the text block; otherwise fine.