Le Musée imaginaire de la Sculpture mondiale, Tome II : Des bas-reliefs aux grottes sacrées

The first edition, of which there were no deluxe copies.
Publisher's full cream cloth binding, complete with its illustrated dust jacket.
Spine of dust jacket sunned and with two small stains on the back panel
Precious signed autograph inscription from André Malraux to Maurice Blanchot.
While they knew each other at the NRF, it was primarily through several major articles by Blanchot devoted to Malraux that the two men "encountered" each other. After the war, Blanchot published in Bataille's ephemeral review 'Actualité' an article on l'Espoir that allowed him "to visibly inscribe his political reversal". In 1950-51, in his double article on "Le Musée imaginaire", he formalized his own theory of the image that would permeate his future work. Confronting these two visions of art, Henri Godard writes: "Through the constancy and radicalism of its reference to death, to absence, to nothingness, [Blanchot's thought] is one pole of our reflection on art, of which Malraux could well incarnate the other" (In "L'Expérience existentielle de l'art"). A polarity that could only bind Blanchot to Malraux, whose tutelary figure would be invoked one final time at the end of his last narrative, "l'Instant de ma mort": "Later, having returned to Paris, he met Malraux. The latter told him that he had been taken prisoner (without being recognized), that he had managed to escape, while losing a manuscript.... What does it matter! Only the feeling of lightness remains, which is death itself or, to put it more precisely, the instant of my death henceforth always pending."
Rich iconography.
Spine of dust jacket slightly sunned as is often the case and with two marginal stains at the head of the back panel.