Élie Faure

Jacques Élie Faure (April 4, 1873 in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, France – October 29, 1937 in Paris) was a French art historian and essayist.

One illustration from Élie Faure's History of art (1921): Cordova (8th Century); interior of the great mosque

Élie Faure

Life

He was the son of Pierre Faure and Suzanne Louise Zéline Reclus.

Works

• Vélasquez (1903).
• Formes et Forces (1907).
• Eugène Carrière (1908).
• Les Constructeurs (1914).
• La Conquête (1917).
• La Sainte Face (1917).
• La Roue (1919).
• La Danse sur le Feu et l'Eau (1920).
• Napoléon (1921).
• Histoire de l'Art (1919–1921).
• L'Arbre d'Éden (1922).
• Cervantes (1926).
• L'Esprit des Formes (1927).
• Découverte de l'Archipel (1932).
• D'Autres Terres en Vue (1932).
• Mon Périple Suivi de Reflets dans le Sillage (1931). Critical edition by Juliette Hoffenberg, Seghers 1987, 10:18 1994.
• Équivalences (1951).
• Fonction du Cinéma: De la Cinéplastique à son Destin Social, 1921–1937 (1953, with a preface by Charles Chaplin).
• Méditations Catastrophiques (2006).

Translated into English

• Cézanne (1913, translated by Walter Pach).
• History of Art (1921–1930, translated by Walter Pach).
• The Art of Cineplastics (1923, translated by Walter Pach).
• Napoleon (1924, translated by Jeffery Eardley Marston).
• The Dance Over Fire and Water (1926, translated by John Gould Fletcher).
• The Italian Renaissance (1929).

Selected articles

• "Reflections on the Greek Genius," The Dial, Vol. LXXIII (1922).

Miscellany

• In the opening scene of Jean-Luc Godard's film Pierrot le Fou (1965), Jean-Paul Belmondo's character sits in a bathtub reading Elie Faure's Histoire de l'art to his daughter.
• In Henry Miller's novels Tropic of Capricorn (novel), Plexus and Nexus Miller speaks of Faure's works.
• Will Durant included Faure's 4-volume History of Art on his list of 100 Best Books for an Education.[1]

Notes

1. Durant, Will (1933). 100 Best Books for an Education. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Further reading

• Flinn, Margaret C. (2005). "The Prescience of Élie Faure," SubStance, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 47–61.
• Ellis, Havelock (1919). "Élie Faure." In: The Philosophy of Conflict. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, pp. 68–79.
• Pach, Walter (1921). "Élie Faure," The Freeman, Vol. III, pp. 58–60.

External links

• Works by or about Élie Faure at Internet Archive
• Works by Élie Faure, at Hathi Trust
• Faure, Élie: Dictionary of Art Historians
• Picture of Faure
• Short biography and picture