Loin de Rueil (Skin of Dreams)

This book binding by Mary Reynolds, with design contributions by Marcel Duchamp, houses Raymond Queneau’s Loin de Rueil, a story about a constantly daydreaming young man. She repurposed test prints of one of Duchamp’s rotoreliefs—decorated discs meant to be spun on a turntable to create optical illusions—on each end page. This rotorelief design, entitled Corollles, was originally produced for the sixth edition of the Surrealist magazine Minotaure. Although this particular rotorelief is static, its graphics nonetheless evoke a sense of movement, spiraling like a daydreaming mind set adrift. The Surrealists placed great value in the creativity that can emerge from this dream-like state. Reynolds’s binding for Queneau’s novel reflects this mood as well as her response to it.