A wealth of recent literature on Erté, including his autobiography, critical studies by Charles Spencer and Roland Barthes, and, most recently, Erté at Ninety, a major book on his graphics, has showered attention and accolades on an artist who, in 1979, at a sprightly eighty-seven years of age, launched himself into a new careet in sculpture with the same verve and enthusiasm with which he had set out at twenty to conquer Paris's world of haute couture in 1912. (Introduction)