Donation of Limited Edition Honors Renée Hubert

The Libraries have received a major donation in memory of Professor Emerita Renée Riese Hubert: an edition of Stephane Mallarmé's Un coup de dés, illustrated by the noted Minimalist artist Ellsworth Kelly.

Published by the Limited Editions Club in 1992 in an edition of 300 copies, the book was generously donated by Walter (Ted) Rex, Professor Emeritus of French at UC Berkeley, a long-time friend and colleague of UCI Emeriti Judd and Renée Hubert. The volume was exhibited in Langson Library in 2004 in the exhibit A Throw of the Dice: Artists Inspired by a Visual Text, curated by the Huberts, and will travel with an expanded version of the exhibit to Scripps College, Claremont, in 2007.

Mallarmé's poem, first published in 1897, is considered a key antecedent to the modernist and visual poetry of the 20th century and the development of the genre known as artists' books. It has been visually interpreted in book editions by a variety of distinguished artists. Kelly's black-and-white lithographs, which divide each folio page into two unequal parts, reflect the Minimalist approach for which he is known, stressing shape and planar masses, often in non-rectilinear formats.

The volume is available for use in Special Collections and Archives in Langson Library (spcoll@uci.edu or x47227).