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Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui, 343

n°343

Periodical

Author

Person cited Dr Jean-Martin Charcot
Drawings by Manuel Luque de Soria, dit Luque

Description

The collection of Les Hommes D'Aujourd'hui was founded in September 1878 by André Gill and Félicien Champsaur. The journal was first published by Cinqualbre (until 1883), then by Léon Vanier after two years of interruption. The last publication appeared in 1899. André Breton posessed 27 numbers of the collection.

The revue was originally inspired by the successful journal, Le Bulletin de vote, published in collaboration with the journalist Maxime Rude which was a collection of illustrated biographies, promoting the republican candidats in the legislative elections of October 1877. The collection of Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui strays from militant politics; each number (containing 4 pages) is devoted to a different contemporary figure belonging to the world of arts, literature or science. A colorful portrait of the spotlight celebrity is on each cover, followed by three pages of satire. These texts are playful, written in jest, and are composed of contemporaneous and fantastic elements.

When Léon Vanier took over the publication in 1885, he would finalize the element of caracature for the series (André Gill and Henri Demare were the consecutive authors of the first portraits). Among the graphic artists that would join, would be Luque, alias Manuel Luque de Soria, artist of the caricature of Dr Jean-Martin Charcot on the cover of n°343.

Doctor Jean Martin Charcot was one of the most well-known french doctors at the end of the 19th century.  Even though Charcot taught Pathological Anatomy at the University of Paris (1860-1893), he also headed the Parisian Hospital of Salpêtrière in 1862.

Reputed professor, he would attract students from all over the world. The most celebrated of them would be Freud, who was interested in the psychological origins of neurosis and Charcot's use of hypnosis. Charcot was the first to employ hypnosis as a mode of treatment.

Charcot is represented here, coming out of the jaw of a skull holding forth his hands as would a sorcerer.  The word, "Suggestion," above his head : sinister motto for what hypnosis has to offer.

Later, André Breton would become interested in the theories of Freud and Charcot, which would become the one of the point of departures for automatic writing.