Of all media, paper is perhaps the most ubiquitous as well as the most invisible one. Paper is everywhere, but we only see it as a pure host medium, the passive carrier of an inscription. By doing so, we miss its “paperiness”, that is, to quote the editorial introduction of Sascha Bru, “its intrinsic materiality, the tools, techniques and technologies employed to manipulate it, the conceptual and cultural practices it is most intimately associated with, the affects it haptically engenders and the creative uses [it was put to].” (p. 1) Historically speaking, we know that there has been some kind of “paper turn” in Western culture, generally situated at the moment of invention of mechanically produced wood pulp paper, the invention of new steam and eventually rotative printing machines and of course the increasing literacy rates and democratization of society at large, but the awareness of this “paper turn” did not always involve a larger alertness to paper’s “paperiness”. Even lesser known is the role played by the historical avant-garde (Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism and the countless other -isms of the 1910s and 20s) in a kind of second paper turn, that of the exploration of paper as an art form in itself.

This remarkable book is about this second paper turn, as seen through the body of work produced by the avant-garde, not as a literary movement but as a key moment in the transformation of Western visual art, well knowing that it is almost impossible to draw sharp lines between the verbal and the visual in avant-garde art and practice.

The shift from paper to paperiness translates into the general structure of the book, which is at the same time very diverse (there is hardly any overlap between the fourteen chapters, which cover most of the forms, functions, and uses of paper of the historic avant-garde period) and powerfully organized (the organic structure of the work also testifies of a strong editorial hand). The essays are grouped in four sections, respectively devoted to questions of: 

1) materiality (paper is an umbrella term, in practice there are numerous types of paper and none of them is the same; the creative intervention of the avant-garde was to disclose this diversity and the push the boundaries of each of them); 

2) community (paper is not just a communication tool, according to the way it is used it create new forms of community, collective work, and local as well as international exchanges);

3) transfer (paper is part of larger processes of distribution and reproduction and this volume pays great attention to the technical and artistic aspects of printing all kind of images, from woodcuts to painting to photography, not only “on” paper but also “with” paper); and 

4) critique (paper may have been one of the favorite media of the avant-garde, its use and status were far from unproblematic and more than one the creation of works on paper also involved a strong criticism of more traditional ways of using and abusing of paper).

Most essays in this book tackle all four of these dimensions, yet always with a clear focus on one of them, thus producing a unique cohesiveness. It is however at the level of the close-readings of specific works, authors, ideas, and practices, that the book reaches its highest achievement. The themes and topics covered may not be surprising in themselves, such as for instance: How to print a black and white photograph of a color painting? How to combine paper and non-paper elements in a collage? How small (not in size but in impact) were the “little magazines” of these years? How were sheets of paper exhibited and curated? Yet the overall clarity and originality of the analyses are impressive. Thus we learn more about Picasso painting white paper white in his papiers collés, on the mix between magazines and exhibition catalogues, on the multiple origins of Klee’s monoprint technique (like the one used in his renowned “’Angelus Novus”) during his Bauhaus period, or on the meaning of certain banknotes in Hausmann’s lithograph and printed paper on paper “The Art Critic”. I am just quoting here one example of each of the four sections of the collection, but one can make discoveries on almost every page.

Finally, it is important to stress the exceptional iconographic quality of this publication, even if, for copyright and financial reasons one guesses, not all images are full page reproductions, but in general the number and quality of the images are much richer than in most comparable books. One can only hope that that there will soon be a properly literary companion to this volume, addressing for instance the making of new “paper collections” (one should think of the Jacques Doucet collection, a “modern library” made of books, manuscripts, and other literary and historical documents on the avant-garde commissioned by the famous fashion designer to André Breton and Louis Aragon and later donated to the French nation). Many other examples spring to mind:  the transformation of classic bibliophilia, characterized by the gap between binding and actual book content, into new forms of book art, including very democratic ones; the new trade in manuscripts of contemporary literature, or the emergence of “white books”, that is books with only paper and no print, a thriving subfield in the book art market. But for this time, let us simply enjoy this marvelous publication, which offers great inspiration for many follow-up research projects as well as new creative projects.