Leiris & Co.

He went through the whole century, and not as a simple onlooker. Michel Leiris was born in 1901, and died in 1990, and had the time to live a remarkable ethnographic career (rhythmed by his famous Afrique fantôme) while he rubbed elbows with an impressive “who’s who” of the art world of his time. He was close to Breton, Bataille and Jouhandeau (with whom he had an affair), a friend of creators as different as Miró, Masson, Giacometti or Bacon, he wrote, collected and sold (he was married to Louise Godon, Kahnweiler’s sister in law). The exhibition at the Centre Pompidou Metz is one of the exhibitions dedicated to the hidden figures of XXth century art (Charles Ratton, Nancy Cunard, Kenneth Clark, etc.). The catalogue, arranged by decade, gives us the opportunity to see the extraordinary combination of genres of this brilliant jack-of-all-trades, who speaks as easily of the Dogons as of jazz, of Boris Vian or Voodoo. Thsi reader has one single regret when reading a book of reference with so many names: it has no index.

• Leiris & Co., directed by Denis Hollier, Agnès de La Beaumelle, Marie-Laure Bernadac, Gallimard, 2015, 400 p., €49.