modernist magazines and manifestos

8/11/2019 Modernist Magazines and Manifestos

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MODERNIST

MAGAZINES, CREEDS

ANDMANIFESTOS


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LATE 19THCENTURY GERMANY

The art magazines were central toArtNouveau'sdominance across Europe.This was particularly the case in Germany,where both Panand Die Jugendcontributed to the spread of the new style.The latter lent its name to the German

name forArt Nouveau, Jugendstil.


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PAN GERMANY, 1895

The German art magazine Panwas alavish celebration ofArt Nouveau. Ittook its name from the Greek God of

nature, who is depicted here in Sattler'scover for the first edition. His goat-likeform leers from the background againsta sinister red sky. The scene isdreamlike, and suffused withmythological imagery and symbolism.

In the foreground a flower grows, itsstamens coiling into the lettering of thetitle. The petals are square and curledat the edges to suggest scrolls of paper,and each bears an image of Pan's face.There is nothing natural about thisflower. It is not nature, but words andimagesthat bloom from the well-tendedearth. In using this imagery, Sattlermay be hinting at the role of themagazine in cultivating new art andliterature.


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LATE 19THCENTURY ENGLAND - THE YELLOW BOOK

1894 - 1897a quarterly literaryperiodical that lent itsname to the "Yellow"1890s.

published in London from 1894 to 1897

by Elkin Mathews and John Lane, laterby John Lane alone, and edited by the

American Henry Harland.

to some degree associated with

Aestheticismand Decadence, themagazine contained a wide range ofliterary and artistic genres, poetry, shortstories, essays, book illustrations,portraits, and reproductions of paintings.


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EARLY 20THCENTURY FRANCEDADA - 1917

Dada was an

international

movement among

European artistsand writers between

1915 and 1922,

characterized by a

spirit of anarchicrevolt.


6/25

EARLY 20THCENTURY FRANCE

L ITTRATURE 1919 - 1924 Littraturemagazine was a Dada- friendly

journal published from 1919 to1924 in France.

The first issue was February 1919.

These men, whom we shall call the 'L ittratu regroup,'represented a poetic and criticalposition between Rimbaud and Lautreamont onthe one hand and Jarry and Apollinaire on the

other; they supported the effort to liberate themind in progress since the second half of thenineteenth century... they were immediatelyattracted to the activity proposed by Dada... theysaluted Dada, a phenomenon bursting forth inthe midst of the post-war economic and moralcrisis, a savior, a monster, which would laywaste everything in its path. They felt that itwould be an offensive weapon of the first order.Thus, through the word Su rral isme, borrowedfrom Apollinaire and already full of meaning,was regularly used by the Littraturegroup andtheir friends, their magazine, for want of analternative course at the moment, gave itself toDada, a scarecrow erected at the crossroadsof the epoch.

Georges Hugnet, The Dada Spirit in Painting


7/25

SIMULTANEITY AND SPEED, DESTRUCTION

AND RECONSTRUCTION - PHOTOMONTAGE Like everyone else, artists were radically

affected by industrialization, politicalrevolution, trench warfare, airplanes,talking motion pictures, radios,automobiles, and much moreand theywanted to create art that was as radicaland new as modern life itself.

If we consider the work of the Cubistsand Futurists, we often think of theirworks in terms of simultaneity andspeed, destruction and reconstruction.

Dadaists, too, challenged theboundaries of traditional art withperformances, poetry, installations,and photomontagethat use thematerials of everyday culture instead ofpaint, ink, canvas, or bronze.


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Dadas Anti-art and cosmopolitanism (1916-

1920) For everything that art stood for, Dada was

to represent the opposite: Dada has never claimed to have anything to

do with art Max Ernst, 1920 Art has nothing to do with taste. Art is not

there to be tasted. Max Ernst Art is dead. Long live Dada. Walter

Serner Dada signified nothing, it is nothing, nothing

nothing Francis Picabia, 1915 The true dadas are against Dada. First

International Dada Fair Poster, 1919 In principle I am against manifestos, as I am

also against principles. Tristan Tzara,1919

The signatories of a Dada manifesto live inFrance, America, Spain, Germany, Italy,Switzerland, Belgium, etc. but have nonationality. Paris, 12 January, 1921

The new artist protests: he no longer paints(symbolic and illusionistic reproduction) butcreates directly in stone, wood, iron, tin,rocks, or locomotive structures capable ofbeing spun in all directions by the limpidwind of the momentary sensation. Tristan

Tzara, Manifesto, 23 March, 1918


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Hannah HchSchnitt m it dem Kchenm esser Dada durch die letzte Weimarer

Bierbauchkul turepoche Deutschlands

(Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of

Germany)

(1919-1920)


10/25

DADA PERFORMANCEHUGO BALLS

SOUND POEMS

In 1906, dadaistsgathered at the CabaretVoltaire in Zurich.HugoBall stood before an

irritated crowd in hisobelisk suitand beganreciting his soundpoems. This moment isknown for its brash

nihilism aimed atfreeing oneself fromhistory- artistic, political,etc.


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HUGO BALLS SOUND POEMS A NEW GENRE

Sound poems are poemswithout words or abstractpoems. In order to createthem, the language isdivided into its abstract parts

(syllables and individualletters) and then rearrangedto form meaninglesssounds.

An excellent example isHugo Balls poem

Karawane (1916) recited at

Cabaret Voltaire.


12/25

Signs of th is are everywhere apparent.

Grammar is violated; syn tax disintegrated

Thus, if you read Mr. Joyce and Mr. Eliot you will be struck by the indecency

of the one, and the obscurity of the other. Mr. Joyce's indecency in Ulyssesseems to me the conscious and calculated indecency of a desperate manwho feels that in order to breathe he must break the windows. At moments,when the window is broken, he is magnificent. But what a waste of energy!And, after all, how dull indecency is, when it is not the overflowing of asuperabundant energy or savagery, but the determined and public-spirited act

of a man who needs fresh air! Again, with the obscurity of Mr. Eliot. I think thatMr. Eliot has written some of the loveliest single lines in modern poetry. Buthow intolerant he is of the old usages and politenesses of societyrespect forthe weak, consideration for the dull! As I sun myself upon the intense andravishing beauty of one of his lines, and reflect that I must make a dizzy anddangerous leap to the next, and so on from line to line, like an acrobat flying

precariously from bar to bar, I cry out, I confess, for the old decorums, andenvy the indolence of my ancestors who, instead of spinning madly throughmid-air dreamt quietly in the shade with a book.

Virginia Woolf, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown


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a season of failures and fragments we must reconcile ourselves to a season of failures and

fragments. We must reflect that where so much strength isspent on finding a way of telling the truth, the truth itself isbound to reach us in rather an exhausted and chaotic

conditon. Ulysses, Queen Victoria, Mr. Prufrockto giveMrs. Brown some of the names she has made famous

latelyis a little pale and dishevelled by the time her rescuers reach her. And it is the sound of their axes that we

heara vigorous and stimulating sound in my earsunlessof course you wish to sleep, when, in the bounty of hisconcern, Providence has provided a host of writers anxiousand able to satisfy your needs.

Virginia Woolf, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown


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Your part is to ins is t that w r i ters shall com e

down o f f thei r pl in ths and pedesta ls

Your part is to insist that writers shall come down off their plinths and pedestals, and describe beautifully if possible, truthfully at any rate, our Mrs. Brown. You should insist that she is an old lady of unlimited capacity and infinite variety; capable of appearing in any place; wearing any dress; saying anything and doing heaven knows what. But the things she says and the things she does and her eyes and her nose and her speech

and her silence have an overwhelming fascination, for she is, of course, the spirit we live by,

life itself. But do not expect just at present a complete and satisfactory presentment of her. Tolerate the spasmodic, the obscure, the fragmentary, the failure. Your help is invoked

in a good cause. For I will make one final and surpassingly rash predictionwe are trembling on the verge of one of the great ages of English literature. But it can only be reached if we are determined never, never to desert Mrs. Brown. Virginia Woolf, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown

MARGARET ANDERSONS THE LITTLE REVIEW


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MARGARET ANDERSONS THE LITTLE REVIEW

1914 - 1929 Famous for her strong opinions about art

as well as for her beauty and wit, radicaleditor Margaret Anderson was a key

figure in American and EuropeanModernism.

Between1914-1929, Andersonspioneering art and literature magazine theLittle Reviewpublished poetry, criticismand artwork by many of the mostsignificant writers and artists of the

twentieth century, including William ButlerYeats, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, PabloPicasso, Hart Crane, Man Ray, Mina Loy,Wyndham Lewis, T.S. Eliot, Sherwood

Anderson, and Francis Picabia.

James Joyces Ulysses appeared

serially in the Litt le Review before itwas published in its entirety in 1922;the Little Reviewand its editors becamethe subjects of a widely-publicizedobscenity trial when the United State PostOffice deemed some segments of thework obscene and refused to distribute

copies.


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La Nouvelle Revue Franaise,April 1922 Valery Larbaud, one of the most prominent French writers and

critics of the 1920s, helped introduce Joyce to the French

literary world.Sylvia Beach introduced Larbaud to Joyce onChristmas Eve 1920. In early February she sent him copies of The

Little Review in which Ulysses had been serialized. Larbaud was more than enthusiastic; on February 22 he wroteBeach (in English) "I am raving mad over Ulysses. ... It is wonderful!

As great as Rabelais.

Larbaud gave a lecture on Joyce and Ulysses at Adrienne

Monnier's bookstore La Maison d es Amis d es Livres(whichwas across the street from Beach's Shakespeare and Company onthe rue d'Odon) on December 7, 1921, still two months before thepublication of Ulysses.

Joyce kept in close contact with Larbaud, sending him page proofsof recently-completed episodes as well as a copy of the schema hehad prepared. Larbaud gave his talk to an audience of over twohundred and fifty people. Adrienne Monnier remarked: "I believeit was the first time a work in English had been studied in

France, by a French writer, before its having been done in

England or in America.

An expanded version of Larbaud's lecture appeared in the

journal La No uvelle Revue Franaise.Joyce called the N.R.F."the Little Review of France (though it is now more conservative).

In both his lecture and the subsequent article, Larbaudemphasized the European backgrounds to Joyce's literary

sensibility. The article was tremendously influential on other earlycritical appraisals of Joyce in France, Europe, and even Englandand America.


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CRITERION1922 - 1939

39. The Cri ter ion ,I.1,October 1922

The first issue of T.S. Eliot'sjournal The Criterionincluded an Englishtranslation of Larbaud'sN.R.F. article on Joyce,along with Eliot's poem TheWaste Land. The Englishversion omits the first part ofLarbaud's article, a generalintroduction to Joyce,because, presumably, theEnglish-speaking worldwould have less need for itthan the French.


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CRITERION, ITS AIM, ITS CONTRIBUTORS AND

ITS READERS

The Criteriondoes not aim at a very large circulation, but aims solely atpublishing the highest class of work. While a contribution to this paperdoes not reach a very large audience, it probably receives moreintelligent attention than any other review and the audience is notlimited to Great Britain. T. S. Eliot

Eliots aim for the journal was international, and he hired translators toprovide summaries of important articles in French, German, Spanish, Italian,and Dutch intellectual journals.

Most of the great figures of the day wrote for it: James Joyce, D.H.

Lawrence, Yeats, Ortega y Gasset, E.R. Curtius, Paul Valry, and others.

Good literature is produced by a few queer people in odd corners; the use

of a review is not to force talent, but to create a favourable atmosphere. T.

S. Eliot


19/25

THE DIAL 1920 - 1929

From 1920 to 1929 The Dial was an influential outlet for Modernist literaturein English.

In 1920, Scofield Thayerand Dr. James Sibley Watson. Jr. re-established TheDialas a literary magazine, the form for which it was most successful andbest known. Under Watson's and Thayer's sway The Dialpublishedremarkably influential artwork, poetry and fiction, including William ButlerYeats' The Second Comingand the first United States publication of T. S.Eliot's The Waste Land. The first year alone saw the appearance of Sherwood

Anderson, Djuna Barnes, Kenneth Burke, William Carlos Williams, HartCrane, E. E. Cummings, Charles Demuth, Kahlil Gibran, Gaston Lachaise,Amy Lowell, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Odilon Redon, Bertrand Russell,Carl Sandburg, Van Wyck Brooks, and W. B. Yeats.The Dialpublished art as well as poetry and essays, with artists ranging fromVincent van Gogh, Renoir, Henri Matisse, and Odilon Redon, through OskarKokoschka, Constantin Brancusi, and Edvard Munch, and Georgia O'Keeffeand Joseph Stella. The magazine also reported on the cultural life ofEuropean capitals, writers included T. S. Eliot from London, John Eglintonfrom Dublin, Ezra Pound from Paris, Thomas Mannfrom Germany, and Hugovon Hofmannsthalfrom Vienna.
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20/25

THE CRISIS - 1910 In the very first issue, Du Bois, a freedom fighter

and dedicated scholar wrote: It [The Crisis]takes its name from the fact that the editorsbelieve that this is a critical time in the history of

the advancement of men. Catholicity andtolerance, reason and forbearance can todaymake the world-old dream of humanbrotherhood approach realization: while bigotryand prejudice, emphasized race consciousnessand force can repeat the awful history of thecontact of nations and groups in the past.

The Crisis became the original publication forthe NAACP (National Association for theAdvancement of Colored People)

Readers were not only exposed to the politicaland social reform issues of that time, but theyalso read literary works from great writers suchas Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Jean

Toomer. Du Bois, along with The Crisisliteraryeditor, Jessie Fauset, knew the importance ofgiving African-American writers a platform toshare and express their thoughts in The Crisis,which soon transformed the publication into agreat literary journal.


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THE CRISIS AND ITS AIM

Du Bois proclaimed his intentions in his first editorial:

The object of this publication is to set forth those facts and arguments which show

the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people.It takes its name from the fact that the editors believe that this is a critical time in thehistory of the advancement of men. Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights

of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy,and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempts to gain these rights andrealize these ideals.

Th fi t li t if t


22/25

The first surrealist manifesto The first Surrealist manifesto was written by Breton and released to the public in 1924. The

document defines Surrealism as: "Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally,

by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning ofthought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason,

exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern."

The text includes numerous examples of the applications of Surrealism to poetry andliterature, but makes it clear that its basic tenets can be applied to any circumstance of life;not merely restricted to the artistic realm.

The importance of dreamas a reservoir of Surrealist inspiration is also highlighted.

Breton also discusses his initial encounter with the surreal in a famous description of ahypnagogic statethat he experienced in which a strange phrase inexplicably appeared inhis mind: "There is a man cut in two by the window." This phrase echoes Breton'sapprehension of Surrealism as the juxtaposition of "two distant realities" united tocreate a new one.

The manifesto also refers to the numerous precursors of Surrealismthat embodied theSurrealist spirit, including the Marquis de Sade, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud,Comte de Lautramont, Raymond Roussel, and Dante. The works of several of hiscontemporaries in developing the Surrealist style in poetry are also quoted, includingPhilippe Soupault, Paul luard, Robert Desnos, and Louis Aragon.

The manifesto was written with a great deal of absurdist humor, demonstrating theinfluence of the Dada movement which preceded it.

The text concludes by asserting that Surrealist activity follows no set plan or conventionalpattern, and that Surrealists are ultimately nonconformists.


23/25

Salvador Dal and Surrealism One day it will have to be officially

admitted that what we havechristened reality is an evengreater illusion than the world ofdreams.

Give me two hours a day of

activity, and I'll take the other

twenty-two in dreams.

I believe that the moment is

near when by a procedure ofactive paranoiac thought, it will

be possible to systematizeconfusion and contribute to thetotal discrediting of the world ofreality.


24/25

Sleep

I have oftenimagined themonster of sleepas a heavy, gianthead with atapering body heldup by the crutchesof reality. When thecrutches break wehave the sensationof falling.


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modernist magazines and manifestos

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