Jonny Hannah – On Ne Matraque Pas L’Imagination – Signed Screenprint & Letterpress 22/50 – Cakes & Ale Press – 2012

Description

A large and visually arresting original screenprint and letterpress work by Jonny Hannah, entitled On Ne Matraque Pas L’Imagination, dating from 2012.

The work measures 63.4 × 48 cm and was issued in a limited edition of only 50 impressions. This example is number 22/50, individually signed by Jonny Hannah, with the numbered edition device and Cakes & Ale Press imprint clearly visible in the left-hand margin.

Hannah combines screenprinted imagery with letterpress typography, using a deliberately restricted palette of warm yellow-ochre and red against the pale paper ground. A large, eccentrically drawn bicycle or cycle-like contraption occupies the background, its wheels and mechanical structure partially obscured by the emphatic block-lettered French slogan:

ON NE
MATRAQUE
PAS
L’IMAGI-
NATION!

The division of imagination across two lines makes the lettering itself part of the composition, while the final red exclamation mark sits dramatically within the lower wheel.

The result has the immediacy of a political poster, street proclamation or piece of hand-printed agitprop, but filtered through Hannah’s own distinctive interest in vernacular typography, graphic ephemera and historical visual culture.

“On ne matraque pas l’imagination”

The title is particularly important.

“On ne matraque pas l’imagination” is associated with the celebrated slogans of Paris in May 1968, when students and workers covered walls, posters and public spaces with an extraordinary mixture of political, poetic and anti-authoritarian statements.

The French verb matraquer derives from matraque, a police truncheon or club. The phrase can therefore be rendered approximately as:

“You cannot beat imagination with a truncheon.”

or, more literally:

“One does not club imagination.”

It is a characteristically May ’68 formulation: concise, defiant and deliberately poetic, opposing imagination and creative freedom to physical or institutional repression.

Hannah’s use of the phrase gives the print genuine historical and political resonance while allowing typography itself to carry much of the image’s force.

May 1968 and Graphic Protest

The events of May 1968 in France generated one of the most recognisable bodies of political graphic design of the twentieth century.

Student occupations, strikes and demonstrations were accompanied by rapidly produced posters and slogans, many of them deliberately simple so that they could be reproduced quickly and understood immediately.

Hannah’s work does not reproduce one of those historic posters directly. Instead, it engages with their visual and verbal culture: restricted colour, emphatic lettering, rough-edged imagery and the relationship between political language and handmade print.

That distinction is important. This is a Jonny Hannah interpretation of a historic slogan, not a facsimile of an original 1968 poster.

Bicycle Imagery

Behind the words Hannah places a loosely rendered bicycle-like machine, printed in yellow.

The large wheels provide an elegant circular counterpoint to the rigid typography, while the structure appears almost diagrammatic — part bicycle, part mechanical drawing, part absurd contraption.

This creates an intriguing tension between movement and prohibition. The typography is heavy and declarative; the bicycle suggests motion, freedom and mobility.

The image remains intentionally open to interpretation, allowing the historical slogan to remain the dominant narrative element.

Screenprint and Letterpress

This work combines screenprinting and letterpress, two processes with very different graphic characteristics.

The screenprinted elements provide the larger areas of colour and drawn imagery, while the letterpress typography introduces the direct physical quality of relief-printed type.

That combination is particularly appropriate to the subject. Letterpress carries strong associations with manifestos, notices, broadsides and political printing, while screenprinting was itself fundamental to the production of many twentieth-century posters.

Hannah exploits the contrast between these methods rather than disguising it. The work retains the small variations of ink, registration and surface associated with hand printing.

Typography

The red typography is the dominant visual element.

Rather than placing the title conventionally beneath an illustration, Hannah allows the words to run directly through the image:

ON NE MATRAQUE PAS L’IMAGINATION!

The unusually broken arrangement of L’IMAGI / NATION forces the viewer to reconstruct the word while simultaneously looking through and around the yellow bicycle imagery.

The result demonstrates one of Hannah’s defining strengths: the ability to make words function simultaneously as language and image.

Date and Edition

The work dates from 2012.

This example is:

22/50

from a limited edition of only 50 impressions.

The edition number, signature and Cakes & Ale Press identification are clearly visible in the left margin.

Artist

Jonny Hannah is a British illustrator, painter and printmaker whose work frequently combines hand lettering, popular music, folk art, political and commercial ephemera, old advertising and vernacular graphic traditions.

His work often revisits the graphic languages of earlier periods — posters, signs, record sleeves, packaging and printed notices — without simply reproducing them.

On Ne Matraque Pas L’Imagination is an especially strong example of this approach, bringing together French political history, typography and traditional printing techniques within a bold contemporary artist’s print.

Condition

Very good to excellent condition overall.

The red and yellow printing remains strong and clean, with excellent contrast against the pale paper.

There is only light natural paper undulation and minor evidence of handling consistent with a large, unframed hand-printed work. The slight variations in ink coverage and registration are characteristic of the combined screenprint and letterpress processes rather than later defects.

The Jonny Hannah signature and edition number 22/50 remain clear, together with the Cakes & Ale Press imprint.

Please study the photographs carefully as they form an integral part of the description.

Artist: Jonny Hannah
Title: On Ne Matraque Pas L’Imagination
Translation: You Cannot Beat Imagination with a Truncheon
Date: 2012
Medium: Original screenprint and letterpress
Edition: 22/50
Edition size: 50
Signed: Yes
Size: 63.4 × 48 cm
Imprint: Cakes & Ale Press
Subject: May 1968 / Paris / political slogans / typography
Format: Original limited-edition artist’s print
Unframed: Yes
Modern reproduction: No

Authenticity

This work has been handled, inspected and catalogued in-house at Hornseys before being offered for sale.

The artist’s signature, edition number 22/50 and Cakes & Ale Press imprint are clearly present on the sheet.

It is an original signed and numbered Jonny Hannah screenprint and letterpress work from an edition of only 50, not a later reproduction.

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