Lettrism
Encyclopedia
Lettrism is a French avant-garde
movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romania
n immigrant Isidore Isou
. In a body of work totaling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, painting and political theory. The movement has its theoretical roots in Dada
and Surrealism
. Isou viewed his fellow countryman, Tristan Tzara
, as the greatest creator and rightful leader of the Dada movement, and dismissed most of the others as plagiarists and falsifiers. Among the Surrealists, André Breton
was a significant influence, but Isou was dissatisfied by what he saw as the stagnation and theoretical bankruptcy of the movement as it stood in the 1940s.
In French, the movement is called Lettrisme, from the French word for letter, arising from the fact that many of their early works centred around letters and other visual or spoken symbols. The Lettristes themselves prefer the spelling 'Letterism' for the Anglicised term, and this is the form that is used on those rare occasions when they produce or supervise English translations of their writings: however, 'Lettrism' is at least as common in English usage. The term, having been the original name that was first given to the group, has lingered as a blanket term to cover all of their activities, even as many of these have moved away from any connection to letters. But other names have also been introduced, either for the group as a whole or for its activities in specific domains, such as 'the Isouian movement', 'youth uprising', 'hypergraphics', 'creatics', 'infinitesimal art' and 'excoördism'.
, Romania
, on January 31, to an Ashkenazi Jewish family. During the early 1950s, Goldstein would be signing himself 'Jean-Isidore Isou'; otherwise, it has always been 'Isidore Isou
'. 'Isou' is standardly taken to be a pseudonym, but Isou/Goldstein himself resists this interpretation.
. In effect, Homer set out a blueprint for what a poem ought to be like. Subsequent poets then developed this blueprint, investigating by means of their work all of the different things that could be done within the Homeric parameters. Eventually, however, everything that could be done within that approach had been done. In poetry, Isou felt that this point was reached with Victor Hugo
(and in painting with Eugène Delacroix
, in music with Richard Wagner
.). When amplic poetry had been completed, there was simply nothing to be gained by continuing to produce works constructed according to the old model. There would no longer be any genuine creativity or innovation involved, and hence no aesthetic value. This then inaugurated a chiselling phase in the art. Whereas the form had formerly been used as a tool to express things outside its own domain—events, feelings, etc.--it would then turn in on itself and become, perhaps only implicitly, its own subject matter. From Charles Baudelaire
to Tristan Tzara
(as, in painting, from Manet
to Kandinsky; or, in music, from Debussy to Luigi Russolo
), subsequent poets would deconstruct the grand edifice of poetry that had been developed over the centuries according to the Homeric model. Finally, when this process of deconstruction had been completed, it would then be time for a new amplic phase to commence. Isou saw himself as the man to show the way. He would take the rubble that remained after the old forms had been shattered, and lay out a new blueprint for reutilising these most basic elements in a radically new way, utterly unlike the poetry of the preceding amplic phase. Isou identified the most basic elements of poetic creation as letters—i.e. uninterpreted visual symbols and acoustic sounds—and he set out the parameters for new ways of recombining these ingredients in the name of new aesthetic goals.
(such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
), Russian Futurists
(such as Velemir Chlebnikov
, Iliazd, or Alexej Kručenych
—cf. Zaum
), and Dada
poets (such as Raoul Hausmann
or Kurt Schwitters
) had already been doing, and what subsequent sound poets
and concrete poets
(such as Bob Cobbing
, Eduard Ovčáček
or Henri Chopin
) would later be doing. However, the Letterists were always keen to insist on their own radical originality and to distinguish their work from other ostensibly similar currents.
and Futurist (both Italian
and Russian
) painting
and typographical
works, such as Apollinaire's
Calligrammes or Marinetti's
Zang Tumb Tuum
.
The two central innovations of Letterist film were: (i) the carving of the image (la ciselure d’image), where the film-maker would deliberately scratch or paint onto the actual film stock itself. Similar techniques are also employed in Letterist still photography. (ii) Discrepant cinema (le cinéma discrépant), where the soundtrack and the image-track would be separated, each one telling a different story or pursuing its own more abstract path. The most radical of the Letterist films, Wolman’s The Anticoncept and Debord’s Howls for Sade, went even further, and abandoned images altogether. From a visual point of view, the former consisted simply of a fluctuating ball of light, projected onto a large balloon, while the latter alternated a blank white screen (when there was speech in the soundtrack) and a totally black screen (accompanying ever-increasing periods of total silence). In addition, the Letterists utilised material appropriated from other films, a technique which would subsequently be developed (under the title of 'détournement
') in Situationist film. They would also often supplement the film with live performance, or, through the 'film-debate', directly involve the audience itself in the total experience.
. Related to this, and arising out of it, is excoördism, the current incarnation of the Isouian movement, defined as the art of the infinitely large and the infinitely small.
and free trade
; its chiselling phase was that of Karl Marx
and socialism
. Isou termed these 'atomic economics' and 'molecular economics' respectively: he launched 'nuclear economics' as a corrective to both of them. Both currents, he felt, had simply failed to take into account a large part of the population, namely those young people and other 'externs' who neither produced nor exchanged goods or capital in any significant way. He felt that the creative urge was an integral part of human nature, but that, unless it was properly guided, it could be diverted into crime and anti-social behaviour. The Letterists sought to restructure every aspect of society in such a way as to enable these externs to channel their creativity in more positive ways.
Maurice Lemaître has privately published translations of a few of his own works, though these are not at all easy to find:
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n immigrant Isidore Isou
Isidore Isou
Isidore Isou , born Ioan-Isidor Goldstein, was a Romanian-born French poet, film critic and visual artist...
. In a body of work totaling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, painting and political theory. The movement has its theoretical roots in Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
and Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
. Isou viewed his fellow countryman, Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...
, as the greatest creator and rightful leader of the Dada movement, and dismissed most of the others as plagiarists and falsifiers. Among the Surrealists, André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
was a significant influence, but Isou was dissatisfied by what he saw as the stagnation and theoretical bankruptcy of the movement as it stood in the 1940s.
In French, the movement is called Lettrisme, from the French word for letter, arising from the fact that many of their early works centred around letters and other visual or spoken symbols. The Lettristes themselves prefer the spelling 'Letterism' for the Anglicised term, and this is the form that is used on those rare occasions when they produce or supervise English translations of their writings: however, 'Lettrism' is at least as common in English usage. The term, having been the original name that was first given to the group, has lingered as a blanket term to cover all of their activities, even as many of these have moved away from any connection to letters. But other names have also been introduced, either for the group as a whole or for its activities in specific domains, such as 'the Isouian movement', 'youth uprising', 'hypergraphics', 'creatics', 'infinitesimal art' and 'excoördism'.
History
1925. Isidore Goldstein is born at BotoşaniBotosani
Botoșani is the capital city of Botoșani County, in northern Moldavia, Romania. Today, it is best known as the birthplace of many celebrated Romanians, including Mihai Eminescu and Nicolae Iorga.- Origin of the name :...
, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, on January 31, to an Ashkenazi Jewish family. During the early 1950s, Goldstein would be signing himself 'Jean-Isidore Isou'; otherwise, it has always been 'Isidore Isou
Isidore Isou
Isidore Isou , born Ioan-Isidor Goldstein, was a Romanian-born French poet, film critic and visual artist...
'. 'Isou' is standardly taken to be a pseudonym, but Isou/Goldstein himself resists this interpretation.
My name is Isou. My mother called me Isou, only it’s written differently in Romanian. And Goldstein: I’m not ashamed of my name. At Gallimard, I was known as Isidore Isou Goldstein. Isou, it’s my name! Only in Romanian it’s written Izu, but in French it’s Isou.
1940s
- 1942–1944. Isou develops the principles of Lettrism, and begins writing the books that he would subsequently publish after his relocation to ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. - 1945. Aged twenty, Isou arrives in Paris on August 23 after six weeks of clandestine travel. In November, he founds the Letterist movement with Gabriel Pomerand.
- 1946. Isou and Pomerand disrupt a performance of Tzara’s La Fuite at the Vieux-Colombier. Publication of La Dictature Lettriste: cahiers d’un nouveau régime artistique (The Letterist Dictatorship: notebooks of a new artistic regime). Although announced as the first in a series, only one such notebook would appear. A subtitle proudly boasts of Letterism that it is 'the only contemporary movement of the artistic avant-garde'.
- 1947. Isou’s first two books are published by Gallimard: Introduction à une nouvelle poésie et à une nouvelle musique (Introduction to a New Poetry and a New Music) and L'Agrégation d’un nom et d’un messie (Aggregation of a Name and a Messiah). The former sets out Isou’s theory of the 'amplic' and 'chiselling' phases, and, within this framework, presents his views on both the past history and the future direction of poetry and music. The latter is more biographical, discussing the genesis of Isou’s ideas, as well as exploring JudaismJudaismJudaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
. Isou and Pomerand are joined by François Dufrêne. - 1949. Isou publishes Isou, ou la mécanique des femmes (Isou, or the mechanics of women), the first of several works of erotology, wherein he claims to have bedded 375 women in the preceding four years, and offers to explain how (p. 9). The book is banned and Isou is briefly imprisoned. Also published, the first of several works on political theory, Isou’s Traité d’économie nucléaire: Le soulèvement de la jeunesse (Treatise of Nuclear Economics: Youth Uprising).
1950s
- 1950. Maurice LemaîtreMaurice LemaîtreLettrist painter, producer of Lettrist works since the 1940s. Lemaître , Isidore Isou’s right hand man for nearly half a century, began to distance himself from Lettrism in the 2000s. He still continues to pursue traditional Letterist techniques, but now in relative isolation from the main...
, Jean-Louis Brau, Gil J. WolmanGil J. WolmanGil Joseph Wolman was a French artist, born in Paris in 1929 and dying there in 1995. His work encompassed painting, poetry and film-making. He was a member of Isidore Isou's avant garde Letterist movement in the early 1950s, then becoming a central figure in the Letterist International, the group...
and Serge Berna join the group. Isou publishes first metagraphic novel, Les journaux des dieux (The Gods’ Diaries), followed soon afterwards by Pomerand’s Saint Ghetto des Prêts (Saint Ghetto of the Loans) and Lemaître’s Canailles (Scoundrels). Also, the first manifestos of Letterist painting. Some of the younger Letterists invade Nôtre Dame cathedral at Easter massNotre-Dame AffairThe Notre-Dame Affair was an action performed by Michel Mourre, Serge Berna, Ghislain Desnoyers de Marbaix, and Jean Rullier, members of the radical wing of the Lettrist movement, on Easter Sunday, 9 April 1950, at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, while the mass was aired live on national TV...
, aired live on national TV, to announce to the congregation that God is dead. In a Letterist FAQFAQFrequently asked questions are listed questions and answers, all supposed to be commonly asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic. "FAQ" is usually pronounced as an initialism rather than an acronym, but an acronym form does exist. Since the acronym FAQ originated in textual...
published in the first issue of Lemaître’s journal, Ur, CP-Matricon explains: 'The letterists do not create scandals: they break the conspiracy of silenceConspiracy of silence (expression)The expression conspiracy of silence, or culture of silence, relates to a condition or matter which is known to exist, but by tacit communal unspoken consensus is not talked about or acknowledged. Commonly such matters are considered culturally shameful...
set up by pusillanimous show-offs (journalists) and smash the faces of those who don’t please them.' (p. 8). - 1951. Isou completes his first film, Traité de bave et d’éternité (Treatise of Slime and Eternity), which will soon be followed by Lemaître’s Le film est déjà commencé? (Has the film already started?), WolmanGil J. WolmanGil Joseph Wolman was a French artist, born in Paris in 1929 and dying there in 1995. His work encompassed painting, poetry and film-making. He was a member of Isidore Isou's avant garde Letterist movement in the early 1950s, then becoming a central figure in the Letterist International, the group...
’s L’Anticoncept (The Anticoncept), Dufrêne’s Tambours du jugement premier (Drums of the First Judgment) and Guy DebordGuy DebordGuy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
’s Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howls for Sade). Debord joins the group in April when they travel down to CannesCannesCannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....
(where he was then living) to show Traité de bave et d’éternité at the Cannes Film FestivalCannes Film FestivalThe Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
. Under the auspices of Jean CocteauJean CocteauJean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, a prize for 'best avant-garde' is specially created and awarded to Isou’s film. - 1952. Publication of the first (and only) issue of Ion, devoted to Letterist film. This is significant for including Debord’s first appearance in print, alongside work from Wolman and Berna who, following an intervention at a Charlie ChaplinCharlie ChaplinSir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
press conference at the Hotel Ritz in October, would join him in splitting from Isou’s group to form the Letterist International. - 1953. Isou moves into photography with Amos, ou Introduction à la métagraphologie (Amos, or Introduction to Metagraphology), theatre with Fondements pour la transformation intégrale du théâtre (The Foundations of the Integrated Transformation of the Theatre), painting with Les nombres (The Numbers), and dance with Manifeste pour une danse ciselante (Manifesto for Chiselling Dance).
- 1955. Dufrêne develops his first Crirhythmes.
- 1956. Isou introduces the concept of infinitesimal art in Introduction à une esthétique imaginaire (Introduction to Imaginary Aesthetics).
- 1958. Columbia RecordsColumbia RecordsColumbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
release the first audio recordings of Letterist poetry, Maurice Lemaître presente le lettrisme.
1960s
- 1960. Isou introduces the concept of supertemporal art in L’Art supertemporel. Asger JornAsger JornAsger Oluf Jorn was a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist, and author. He was a founding member of the avant-garde movement COBRA and the Situationist International...
publishes a critique of Letterism, Originality and Magnitude (on the system of Isou) in issue 4 of Internationale Situationniste. Isou replies at length in L'Internationale Situationniste, un degré plus bas que le jarrivisme et l'englobant. This is only the first of many works that Isou will write against Debord (his former protégé) and the Situationist International, which Isou regards as a neo-Nazi organisation. However, as Andrew Hussey reports, his attitude does eventually mellow: 'Now Isou forgave them and he saw (it was crucial, Isou said, that I should understand this!) that they were all on the same side after all.' - 1963 to 1972. Several new members join group, including Roberto Altmann, Roland Sabatier, Alain Satié, Michéline Hachette, Francois Poyet, Gérard-Philippe Broutin, Jean-Paul Curtay, Woody Roehmer.
- 1964. Definitive split with Dufrêne and the UltraletteristsUltra-LettristThe Ultra-Lettrist movement was an art form developed by Jean-Louis Brau, Gil J Wolman, and Francois Dufrêne, in the 1950's, when they split from Isidore Isou's Lettrism....
, as well as with Wolman who, despite his participation from 1952 to 1957 with the Letterist International (who were forbidden by internal statute from any involvement in Isouian activities), had retained links with the old group. Dufrêne and Wolman form the Second Letterist International (Deuxième internationale lettriste). - 1967. Lemaître stands for election to the local Parisian legislature, representing the 'Union of Youth and Externity'. He loses.
- 1968. First work on architecture, Isou’s Manifeste pour le bouleversement de l’architecture (Manifesto for the Overhaul of Architecture).
1970s and 1980s
General continuation of existing currents, together with new research into psychiatry, mathematics, physics, and chemistry.- 1972 Mike Rose (painter)Mike Rose (painter)Mike Rose was a German painter, set designer und writer.- Life :...
, a German painter, set designer, and writer made acquaintance with the Lettrists and became part of them. He participated in their exhibitions until the 1980s.
1990s
Development of excoördism. Uncomfortable with the direction the group is going in, Lemaître—Isou’s right hand man for nearly half a century—begins to distance himself from it. He still continues to pursue traditional Letterist techniques, but now in relative isolation from the main group.2000s
- 2007 Isou dies and The End of the Age of Divinity is published.
The Amplic (amplique) and the Chiselling (ciselante) phases
Isou first discovered these phases through an examination of the history of poetry, but the conceptual apparatus he developed could very easily be applied to most other branches of art and culture. In poetry, he felt that the first amplic phase had been initiated by HomerHomer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
. In effect, Homer set out a blueprint for what a poem ought to be like. Subsequent poets then developed this blueprint, investigating by means of their work all of the different things that could be done within the Homeric parameters. Eventually, however, everything that could be done within that approach had been done. In poetry, Isou felt that this point was reached with Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
(and in painting with Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
, in music with Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
.). When amplic poetry had been completed, there was simply nothing to be gained by continuing to produce works constructed according to the old model. There would no longer be any genuine creativity or innovation involved, and hence no aesthetic value. This then inaugurated a chiselling phase in the art. Whereas the form had formerly been used as a tool to express things outside its own domain—events, feelings, etc.--it would then turn in on itself and become, perhaps only implicitly, its own subject matter. From Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
to Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...
(as, in painting, from Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
to Kandinsky; or, in music, from Debussy to Luigi Russolo
Luigi Russolo
Luigi Russolo was an Italian Futurist painter and composer, and the author of the manifesto The Art of Noises . He is often regarded as one of the first noise music experimental composers with his performances of "noise concerts" in 1913-14 and then again after World War I, notably in Paris in 1921...
), subsequent poets would deconstruct the grand edifice of poetry that had been developed over the centuries according to the Homeric model. Finally, when this process of deconstruction had been completed, it would then be time for a new amplic phase to commence. Isou saw himself as the man to show the way. He would take the rubble that remained after the old forms had been shattered, and lay out a new blueprint for reutilising these most basic elements in a radically new way, utterly unlike the poetry of the preceding amplic phase. Isou identified the most basic elements of poetic creation as letters—i.e. uninterpreted visual symbols and acoustic sounds—and he set out the parameters for new ways of recombining these ingredients in the name of new aesthetic goals.
The Lettrie
Isou’s idea for the poem of the future was that it should be purely formal, devoid of all semantic content. The Letterist poem, or lettrie, in many ways resembles what certain Italian FuturistsFuturism (art)
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...
(such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet and editor, the founder of the Futurist movement, and a fascist ideologue.-Childhood and adolescence:...
), Russian Futurists
Russian Futurism
Russian Futurism is the term used to denote a group of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism"...
(such as Velemir Chlebnikov
Velimir Khlebnikov
Velimir Khlebnikov , pseudonym of Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov , was a central part of the Russian Futurist movement, but his work and influence stretch far beyond it.Khlebnikov belonged to Hylaea,...
, Iliazd, or Alexej Kručenych
Aleksei Kruchenykh
Aleksei Eliseevich Kruchenykh or Kruchonykh or Kruchyonykh , a well-known poet of the Russian "Silver Age", was perhaps the most radical poet of Russian Futurism, a movement that included Vladimir Mayakovsky, David Burliuk and others. Together with Velimir Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh is considered the...
—cf. Zaum
Zaum
Zaum is a word used to describe the linguistic experiments in sound symbolism and language creation of Russian Futurist poets such as Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh....
), and Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
poets (such as Raoul Hausmann
Raoul Hausmann
Raoul Hausmann was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on the European Avant-Garde in the aftermath of World War I.-Early biography:Raoul Hausmann was...
or Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...
) had already been doing, and what subsequent sound poets
Sound poetry
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words"...
and concrete poets
Concrete poetry
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....
(such as Bob Cobbing
Bob Cobbing
Bob Cobbing was a British sound, visual, concrete and performance poet who was a central figure in the British Poetry Revival.-Early life:...
, Eduard Ovčáček
Eduard Ovčáček
Eduard Ovčáček , Czech graphic artist, sculptor, lettrist, painter and professor at University of Ostrava....
or Henri Chopin
Henri Chopin
Henri Chopin was an avant-garde poet and musician.-Life:Henri Chopin was a French practitioner of concrete and sound poet, well-known throughout the second half of the 20th century...
) would later be doing. However, the Letterists were always keen to insist on their own radical originality and to distinguish their work from other ostensibly similar currents.
Metagraphics/Hypergraphics
On the visual side, the Letterists first gave the name 'metagraphics' (metagraphie) and then 'hypergraphics' (hypergraphie) to their new synthesis of writing and visual art. Some precedents may be seen in Cubist, DadaDada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
and Futurist (both Italian
Futurism (art)
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...
and Russian
Russian Futurism
Russian Futurism is the term used to denote a group of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism"...
) painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and typographical
Typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...
works, such as Apollinaire's
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
Calligrammes or Marinetti's
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet and editor, the founder of the Futurist movement, and a fascist ideologue.-Childhood and adolescence:...
Zang Tumb Tuum
Zang Tumb Tumb
"Zang Tumb Tumb" is a sound poem and concrete poem written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian futurist. It appeared in excerpts in journals between 1912 and 1914, when it was published as an artist's book in Milan. It is an account of the Battle of Adrianople, which he witnessed as a reporter...
.
Letterist film
Notwithstanding the considerably more recent origins of film-making, compared to poetry, painting or music, Isou felt in 1950 that its own first amplic phase had already been completed. He therefore set about inaugurating a chiselling phase for the cinema. As he explained in the voiceover to his first film, Treatise of Slime and Eternity:I believe firstly that the cinema is too rich. It is obese. It has reached its limits, its maximum. With the first movement of widening which it will outline, the cinema will burst! Under the blow of a congestion, this greased pig will tear into a thousand pieces. I announce the destruction of the cinema, the first apocalyptic sign of disjunction, of rupture, of this corpulent and bloated organization which calls itself film.
The two central innovations of Letterist film were: (i) the carving of the image (la ciselure d’image), where the film-maker would deliberately scratch or paint onto the actual film stock itself. Similar techniques are also employed in Letterist still photography. (ii) Discrepant cinema (le cinéma discrépant), where the soundtrack and the image-track would be separated, each one telling a different story or pursuing its own more abstract path. The most radical of the Letterist films, Wolman’s The Anticoncept and Debord’s Howls for Sade, went even further, and abandoned images altogether. From a visual point of view, the former consisted simply of a fluctuating ball of light, projected onto a large balloon, while the latter alternated a blank white screen (when there was speech in the soundtrack) and a totally black screen (accompanying ever-increasing periods of total silence). In addition, the Letterists utilised material appropriated from other films, a technique which would subsequently be developed (under the title of 'détournement
Detournement
A détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International, and consist in "turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself." Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was...
') in Situationist film. They would also often supplement the film with live performance, or, through the 'film-debate', directly involve the audience itself in the total experience.
Supertemporal art (L’art supertemporel)
The supertemporal frame was a device for inviting and enabling an audience to participate in the creation of a work of art. In its simplest form, this might involve nothing more than the inclusion of several blank pages in a book, for the reader to add his or her own contributions.Infinitesimal art (Art infinitesimal)
Recalling the infinitesimals of G.W. Leibniz, quantities which could not actually exist except conceptually, the Letterists developed the notion of a work of art which, by its very nature, could never be created in reality, but which could nevertheless provide aesthetic rewards by being contemplated intellectually. Also called Art esthapériste ('infinite-aesthetics'). Cf. Conceptual ArtConceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
. Related to this, and arising out of it, is excoördism, the current incarnation of the Isouian movement, defined as the art of the infinitely large and the infinitely small.
Youth uprising (Le soulèvement de la jeunesse)
Isou identified the amplic phase of political theory and economics as that of Adam SmithAdam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
and free trade
Free trade
Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...
; its chiselling phase was that of Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. Isou termed these 'atomic economics' and 'molecular economics' respectively: he launched 'nuclear economics' as a corrective to both of them. Both currents, he felt, had simply failed to take into account a large part of the population, namely those young people and other 'externs' who neither produced nor exchanged goods or capital in any significant way. He felt that the creative urge was an integral part of human nature, but that, unless it was properly guided, it could be diverted into crime and anti-social behaviour. The Letterists sought to restructure every aspect of society in such a way as to enable these externs to channel their creativity in more positive ways.
Major developments of Lettrism
- The Letterist International was formed in 1952 by Lettrists Guy DebordGuy DebordGuy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
, Gil J. WolmanGil J. WolmanGil Joseph Wolman was a French artist, born in Paris in 1929 and dying there in 1995. His work encompassed painting, poetry and film-making. He was a member of Isidore Isou's avant garde Letterist movement in the early 1950s, then becoming a central figure in the Letterist International, the group...
, Jean-Louis Brau and Serge Berna. In 1957, it fused with the International Movement for an Imaginist BauhausInternational Movement for an Imaginist BauhausThe International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus was a small European avant-garde artistic tendency that arose out of the breakup of COBRA, and was initiated by contact between former COBRA member Asger Jorn and Enrico Baj and Sergio Dangelo of the Nuclear Art Movement.-Timeline:*December 1953:...
and the London Psychogeographical AssociationLondon Psychogeographical AssociationThe London Psychogeographical Association is an organisation devoted to psychogeography. The LPA is perhaps best understood in the context of psychogeographical praxis.-London Psychogeographical Institute:...
to create the Situationist International. During its five years, the Letterist International continued to practice the Lettrist technique of metagraphics, although they were quite against hypergraphics, instead developing metagraphics into détournementDetournementA détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International, and consist in "turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself." Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was...
. - Ultra-LettrismUltra-LettristThe Ultra-Lettrist movement was an art form developed by Jean-Louis Brau, Gil J Wolman, and Francois Dufrêne, in the 1950's, when they split from Isidore Isou's Lettrism....
arose in 1958, its manifesto appearing in the second issue of Grammes in that year, signed by the Lettrists François Dufrêne, Robert Estivals, and Jacques Villeglé. Its members practiced hypergraphics and, with Dufrêne's crirhythmes and a greater interest in tape-recording, they sought to push Letterist sound-poetry further than Isou's group had done. - The Second Letterist International was an ephemeral group formed in 1964 by Wolman, Dufrêne and Brau.
- The New Lettrist International was formed in the late 1990s. Although it has no direct connection with the original Letterist group, it has drawn influences both from them and from the Letterist International, as well as from Hurufism (Arabic for 'Letterism').
Key members
- Isidore IsouIsidore IsouIsidore Isou , born Ioan-Isidor Goldstein, was a Romanian-born French poet, film critic and visual artist...
(Jan 29, 1925–July 28, 2007). - Gabriel Pomerand (1926–1972), member from 1945.
- François Dufrène (1930–1982), member from 1947 to 1964. Split to form Ultra-letterismUltra-LettristThe Ultra-Lettrist movement was an art form developed by Jean-Louis Brau, Gil J Wolman, and Francois Dufrêne, in the 1950's, when they split from Isidore Isou's Lettrism....
and the Second Letterist International. - Maurice LemaîtreMaurice LemaîtreLettrist painter, producer of Lettrist works since the 1940s. Lemaître , Isidore Isou’s right hand man for nearly half a century, began to distance himself from Lettrism in the 2000s. He still continues to pursue traditional Letterist techniques, but now in relative isolation from the main...
(1926–), member since 1950, and still actively pursuing his own approach to Letterism. - Gil J Wolman (1929–1995), member from 1950 to 1952. Split to form Letterist InternationalLettrist InternationalThe Letterist International was a Paris-based collective of radical artists and theorists between 1952 and 1957. It was created by Guy Debord as a schism from Isidore Isou's Letterist group...
1952-1957], but then returned to occasional participation with Isouian group from 1961 to 1964, before splitting again to form the Second Letterist International. - Jean-Louis Brau (1930–1985), member from 1950 to 1952. Split to form Letterist InternationalLettrist InternationalThe Letterist International was a Paris-based collective of radical artists and theorists between 1952 and 1957. It was created by Guy Debord as a schism from Isidore Isou's Letterist group...
1952-1957], but then returned to occasional participation with Isouian group from 1961 to 1964, before splitting again to form the Second Letterist International.* - Guy DebordGuy DebordGuy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
(1931–1994), member from 1951 to 1952. Split to form Letterist InternationalLettrist InternationalThe Letterist International was a Paris-based collective of radical artists and theorists between 1952 and 1957. It was created by Guy Debord as a schism from Isidore Isou's Letterist group...
. - Jacques Spacagna (1936–1990), member from 1959 to 1972.
- Aude Jessemin (1937– , member from 1959 to 1968.
- Roberto Altmann (1942–), member from 1962 to 1968.
- Roland Sabatier (1942–), member since 1963.
- Micheline Hachette (1938–1993), member since 1964.
- Alain Satié (1944–2011), member since 1964.
- Jean-Pierre Gillard (1948-), member since 1966.
- François Poyet (1948-), member since 1966.
- Broutin (1948-), member since 1968.
Influences
- FluxusFluxusFluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
artist BenBen VautierBen Vautier , also known simply as Ben, is a French artist.Vautier lives and works in Nice, where he ran a record shop called Magazin between 1958 and 1973...
[Vautier] has openly avowed his indebtedness to Isou: "Isou, I don't deny it, was very important for me around 1958 when I first theorized about art. It was thanks to Isou that I realized that what was important in art was not the beautiful, but the new, the creation. In 1962, while reading L'agrégation d'un nom et d'un messie, I was fascinated by his ego, his megalomania, his pretences. I said to myself then: there is no art without ego, and this is where my work on the ego is rooted." - The German painter, set designer, and writer, Mike RoseMike RoseFor the other baseball player with a similar name, see Mike Rouse.Michael John-Ferrero Rose is a Major League Baseball catcher, who is currently a free agent....
, developed techniques close to Letterism during the 1970s and 1980s, and had some contact with the Parisian group. - The film Irma Vep (1996) contains a sequence that evokes the Lettrist aesthetic.
- Michael Jacobson's novella The Giant's Fence (2006) is a hypergraphic work, apparently inspired by the Letterists.
English translations of Letterist works
Although the Letterists have published literally hundreds of books, journals and substantial articles in French, virtually none of these have been translated into English. One recent exception is:- Pomerand, Gabriel. Saint Ghetto of the Loans (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006).
Maurice Lemaître has privately published translations of a few of his own works, though these are not at all easy to find:
- Conversations about Letterism.
- Correspondence. Maurice Lemaitre-Kirk Varnedoe.
- Has The Film Already Started?
- The Lettrist Cinema.
Secondary works in English
- Curtay, Jean-Paul. Letterism and Hypergraphics: The Unknown Avant-Garde, 1945–1985 (Franklin Furnace, 1985).
- Debord, GuyGuy DebordGuy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
and Gil J. WolmanGil J. WolmanGil Joseph Wolman was a French artist, born in Paris in 1929 and dying there in 1995. His work encompassed painting, poetry and film-making. He was a member of Isidore Isou's avant garde Letterist movement in the early 1950s, then becoming a central figure in the Letterist International, the group...
.Why Lettrism? - Ferrua, Pietro, ed. Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Letterism (Portland: Avant-Garde, 1979)
- Foster, Stephen C., ed. Lettrisme: Into the Present (University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1983).
- Home, StewartStewart HomeStewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...
. The Assault on Culture (Aporia Press and Unpopular BooksUnpopular BooksUnpopular Books is a publisher in London's East End, producing leaflets, pamphlets and books.- Leaflets, pamphlets and booklets :* Jean Barrot - What is Communism * Jean Barrot - Fascism/Antifascism...
, 1988). - Isou/Satié/Gérard Bermond. Le peinture lettriste (bilingual edition, Jean-Paul Rocher, 2000).
- Jolas, EugeneEugene JolasJohn George Eugene Jolas was a writer, translator and literary critic.-Biography:Eugene Jolas was born in Union City, New Jersey, but grew up in Forbach in Elsass-Lothringen , to which his family returned when he was two years old. He spent periods of his adult life living in both the U.S...
. 'From Jabberwocky to Lettrism', Transition 48, no. 1 (1948). - Jorn, AsgerAsger JornAsger Oluf Jorn was a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist, and author. He was a founding member of the avant-garde movement COBRA and the Situationist International...
. 'Originality and Magnitude (on Isou's System)', in his Open Creation And Its Enemies (Unpopular Books, 1994). - Marcus, GreilGreil MarcusGreil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.-Life and career:Marcus was born in San Francisco...
. Lipstick TracesLipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th CenturyLipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century is a non-fiction book by American rock-music critic Greil Marcus that examines popular music and art as a social critique of Western culture....
(Penguin, 1989). - Monsegu, Sylvain. 'Lettrism', in Art Tribes, ed. Achille Bonito Oliva (Skira, 2002).
- Seaman, David W. Concrete Poetry in France (UMI Research, 1981).
- Roland Sabatier, Persistence of Lettrisme, in « Complete with missing parts : Interviews with the avant-garde ». Edited by Louis E. Bourgeois, Vox Press, Oxford, 2008
- Frédéric Acquaviva, [monograph] Gil J Wolman, I am immortal and alive", MACBA, 140pp (anglais) + texts by Kaira Cabanas and Bartomeu Mari
General introductions and surveys in French
- Bandini, Mirella. Pour une histoire du lettrisme (Jean-Paul Rocher, 2003).
- Curtay, Jean-Paul. La poésie lettriste (Seghers, 1974).
- Devaux, Fréderique. Le Cinéma Lettriste (1951–1991) (Paris Experimental, 1992).
- Lemaître, Maurice. Qu’est-ce que le lettrisme? (Fischbacher, 1954).
- Sabatier, Roland. Le lettrisme: les créations et les créateurs (ZEditions, n.d. [1988]).
- Satié, Alain. Le lettrisme, la creation ininterrompue (Jean-Paul Rocher, 2003).
- Frédéric Acquaviva, "Isou 2.0" in Catalogue Isidore Isou, pour en finir avec la conspiration du silence, Institut Culturel Français, 2007
- Frédéric Acquaviva," Lettrisme + bibliophilie : mode d’emploi", Le Magazine de la Bibliophilie n°75, 2008
- Roland Sabatier, Isidore Isou : La problématique du dépassement, revue Mélusine n° XXVIII (Actes du colloque de Cerisy « Le Surréalisme en héritage : les avant-gardes après 1945 », 2-12 août 2006), Editions L’Age d’Homme, Lausanne, 2008.
- Fabrice Flahutez, Le lettrisme historique était une avant-garde , Les presses du réel, 2011. ISBN : 978-2-84066-405-5.
Discography
- Maurice Lemaître présente le lettrisme (Columbia ESRF1171, 1958). (7" e.p., 45 r.p.m).
- Maurice Lemaître, Poèmes et musique lettristes (Lettrisme, nouvelle série, no. 24, 1971). (Three 7" discs, 45 r.p.m.). Augmented reissue of the above. Two extracts are also included in Futura poesia sonora (Cramps Records CRSCD 091–095, 1978).
- Maurice Lemaître, Oeuvres poètiques et musicales lettristes (1993). (Audio cassette) / Rédition 100ex en 2007 avec 2 CDs, préface Frédéric Acquaviva
- Isidore Isou, Poèmes lettristes 1944-1999 (Alga Marghen 12vocson033, 1999). (12" l.p., 33 r.p.m., 500 copies).
- Isidore Isou, Musiques lettristes (Al Dante II-AD04, 1999). (Compact disc, realization by Frédéric Acquaviva).
- Isidore Isou, Juvenal (symphonie 4) (Al Dante, 2004). (Compact disc, realization and orchestration by Frédéric Acquaviva).
- Gil J. Wolman, L'Anticoncept (Alga Marghen 11VocSon032, 1999). (12" l.p., 33 r.p.m., 400 copies).
- Gil J. Wolman, La mémoire (Ou, no. 33, 1967).
- L'Autonomatopek 1 (Opus International, nos. 40–41, 1973). (7" e.p.) Contains work by Isou, Dufrêne, Wolman, Brau, Spacagna etc.
- Jacques Spacagna" in Jacques Spacagna, le voyage en Italie , de Frédéric Acquaviva, Ed Conz, Verona, 2007 (Book + Compact Disc)
- Jean-Louis Brau" in Jean-Louis Brau, instrumentations verbales, LP Alga Marghen with linear notes by Frédéric Acquaviva, Milano, 2010
External links
- Site Isidore isou
- Letterism—French avant-garde film and visual poetry
- Texts of The Anticoncept and Howls for Sade
- Avant-garde films, including Traité de bave et d’éternité and Howls for Sade
- Avant-garde audio recordings, including some letterism
- Alain Satié’s site
- Roberdhay site (French)
- Roland Sabatier site (English and French)
- Gerard-Phillipe Broutin's site (Italian and French)
- Official letterism site (French)
- Letterist blog (French)
- Damien Dion : the tsiou's gallery (la galerie du tsiou) (French)
- A radio program on letterism with several texts by Bernard Girard (French)
- Lettrism papers, 1946-1965. Research Library at the Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California. Letters and ephemera sent to editor Raymond Queneau concerning the avant-garde movement Lettrism, founded by Isidore Isou.
- Art and Architecture Thesaurus, Getty Vocabularies. AAT Full Record Display for Lettrist, Getty Vocabulary Program. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California.