Victor Brauner 120

The tribute volume Victor Brauner 120 manages to convey more than the title suggests and, being conceived on a different level than the usual one, it goes beyond the stage of simple evocative discourse with an inherently subjective character. He presents, in seven chapters, different segments of the author's concerns in relation to this subject: the first of these bringing together, under the title "Ratio Temporum", a chronology of Brauner's life and work alongside a consistent chapter, entitled "Pictopoesis", which contains, for the first time, translations from Brauner's writings, followed by "Ut Pictura Amicitia" which brings together a series of period texts written by the artist's friends, mostly Romanians. The fourth section of the volume is called "Sidera" and includes some of the book chronicles or texts about exhibitions written over the years by the author, being continued with "Translatio" - a series of translations of some little-known texts about the artist written by André Breton, Alain Jouffroy, Marina Vanci-Perahim, Eugène Ionesco and Jacques Lassaigne. Sixthly, we can read an interesting sequence of interviews - inspiredly named "Dialogus", and the volume ends with a substantial bibliography, named, like the others, also in Latin, which rigorously notes all the references in Romanian about the surrealist born in Piatra-Neamț. We have a wide spectrum of materials that, despite the diversity, coagulate a coherent image of Victor Brauner, but, with equal importance, also of the author. This is why, this fluent and informative writing naturally ranks among the books published by Petrișor Militaru, outlining an original image of the avant-garde phenomenon in Romania. Catalin Davidescu