Blaise Cendrars and Fernand Léger Make a Book Out of a Film Scenario, La Fin du monde filmée par l’ange N-D / A New Research Resource
Event details
This seminar presents a digital research project that brings together for the first time interactive scans of two versions of an artist’s book: La Fin du monde filmée par l’Ange N.-D. (The End of the World Filmed by the Angel of Notre Dame), written by poet Blaise Cendrars and illustrated by artist Fernand Léger in 1919. The project allows users to examine and compare the deluxe copy held by the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which includes Léger’s original maquette (mock-up) for the published book bound into the back, to a standard copy held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France accompanied by Cendrars’s unique proofs for the manuscript, offering a glimpse into the artist’s bold choices of composition and colour as well as the creative process shared between writer and artist.
Professor Christopher Green FBA
Chris Green is an Emeritus Professor of History of Art at the Courtauld Institute and a Fellow of the British Academy. An internationally recognized specialist in European and British modernist art and architecture of the 20th Century, he is the author of many books, including Cubism and its Enemies: Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art, 1916-1928 (1987, winner of the Mitchel Prize for 20th Century art history), Art in France, 1900-1940 (2000), and Picasso: Architecture and Vertigo (2005). Among the exhibitions he has curated, whose catalogues he has edited are: Modern Antiquity: Picasso, de Chirico, Léger, Picabia (Los Angeles: J.Paul Getty Museum, 2011), Mondrian/Nicholson. In Parallel (Courtauld Gallery, 2012), and Cubism and War. The Crystal in the Flame (Museu Picasso, Barcelona, 2016-17).
In 2018, Chris was the first Distinguished Fellow at the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which led to the publication of his book Cubism and Reality: Braque, Picasso, Gris (Bloomsbury, 2025), one of two finalists for the 2026 Association of American Publishers PROSE award in Art History and Criticism.
Image caption: Blaise Cendrars (author) and Fernand Léger (artist). La Fin du monde filmée par l’Ange N.-D., 1919. Illustrated book with twenty-two pochoirs published by Éditions de la Sirène, Paris, and eleven compositions in gouache and pencil, in embossed leather binding, 13 3/8 × 11 1/8 × 1 5/8 in. (34 × 28.3 × 4.1 cm). Collection of the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Library, Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art (PN1997.F465 1919 LALRC Quarto).
Please contact Michael White (michael.white@york.ac.uk) or Ivan Knapp (ivan.knapp@york.ac.uk) if you have any questions. View the full schedule for the semester.