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Hieronder vind je een tekst van Francis Picabia over Dada: ubuweb

Manifeste Cannibale Dada
(27th March 1920)
Francis Picabia

You are all indicted; stand up! Stand up as you would for the Marseillaise or God Save the King....
Dada alone does not smell: it is nothing, nothing, nothing.

It is like your hopes: nothing.
like your paradise: nothing.
like your idols: nothing.
like your politicians: nothing.
like your heroes: nothing.
like your artists: nothing.
like your religions: nothing.

Hiss, shout, kick my teeth in, so what? I shall still tell you that you are half-wits. In three months my friends and I will be selling you our pictures for a few

"It's better than nothing, because really, here, there's nothing ...", wrote Francis Picabia to Alfred Stieglitz from Barcelona on 22 January 1917, to announce the publication of his "magazine", 391, the "double" that of the New York photographer, 291 [Cited in M. Sanouillet, 1966, p. 46].

Even if Picabia appeared to be duplicating 291 in the title and material presentation of his magazine, 391 is the instrument which allowed him to diffuse his art and his ideas: from the launch of the magazine in 1917 until 1924, each issue contained the artist's poems, notes, and drawings, and the covers almost always reproduced one of his works. The periods in which Picabia experienced difficulty account for the magazine's irregular rhythm of publication: a turning point in his art, boredom, solitude, and illness... "Better than nothing": to do everything to avoid doing nothing, to work, to create to live. For Picabia, as for the Dada movement, which he joined after the creation of 391, these years of war were about battling nothingness, the vacuum that is civilization, with provocation.

Between January and March of 1917, four issues appeared in Barcelona, then three others in New York between March and July of the same year. Behind a 'mechanomorphic' drawing by Picabia, he published texts and illustrations from the circle of artists located in Barcelona, then from innovative artists from New York, whom he tried to federate around his journal, but without success; numbers six and seven contained almost exclusively his own texts and drawings.

Picabia returned Europe and in February of 1918, he was in Lausanne and entered into contact with Tristan Tzara. The two men understood and appreciated each other. Picabia moved to Zurich in February 1919 and stayed there for three months. A great effervescence resulted from these exchanges. Picabia's ideas joined those of Dada; they developed mutually and complemented each other. Tzara and Picabia decided to collaborate on the next issues of their respective reviews - Dada Numbers 4-5 and 391 Number 8, in February 1919. The latter is in a larger format than previous issues. A new series began, inaugurated by Picabia's Construction moléculaire, which appeared on the first page instead of the usual 'mecanomorphic' drawing. Construction is the allocation or the recapitulation on a grid (a chessboard?) of people, places, and journals close to Picabia: the New York artists and their reviews make up the majority, along with Tzara and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes; Apollinaire being the only artist from a former generation. On a subsequent page appeared two texts, by Tzara and Picabia, printed side-by-side and head-to-foot, the result and symbol of their common work.

Issue 9, published in Paris in November 1919, was concerned essentially with a polemic by Ribemont-Dessaignes against the Salon d'automne. The change persisted. Beginning with issue Number 10 (December 1919), the format grew even larger. The magazine gained clarity and deftness, the words harder hitting, the illustrations more striking. The first page, cover and title page, were no longer constrained by the format of title/drawing. The text progressively took over the cover; it became just as dense as the others.

Typographical design and composition developed. Walter Serner and André Breton contributed to issue 11, published in February 1920. Heading issue 12 (March 1920), L.H.O.O.Q. by Marcel Duchamp was supported by a 'Dada manifesto' by Picabia. The contents included the forever-faithful Ribemont-Dessaignes, as well as Tzara, Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault, Céline Arnauld, and Paul Dermée. This issue also reproduced Picabia's La Sainte Vierge.

Number 13 (July 1920) is lighter, in every sense of the term, whereas number 14 (November 1920), the final Dada issue, was an explosion. The layout was the most developed; no page bore any resemblance to another. It featured a composition by Tzara, Une nuit déchec gras, a poem composed entirely of 'advertisements' for page 62 Dada publications. In this poem, the typographic procedures commonly used in advertising at the time were pushed to the extreme and metamorphosed. The sobriety of the opposite page, on which appears Picabia's poem Notre-Dame-de-la-peinture, opposes Une nuit and reinforces its impact. In 1921, the Pilhaou-Thibaou appears, subtitled, 'an illustrated supplement to 391' (number 15), used entirely for controversial aims, while Picabia separated himself from Dada. In the last four issues published in 1924, Picabia flouted surrealism by 'inventing' Superrealism or Instantaneism.

What still surprises and holds our interest today in 391 - evidence of the distress and the revolt of a man, but also of an era - is a certain allure that continues despite or with the innovations, the provocations, the refusals that it embodies. That is, the sign of a certain liberty.

TEXT CREDITS
Rémi Froger, '391', translated from the French text, published in the catalogue Dada (Editions du Centre Pompidou : Paris 2005) 64-65. The translation was part of the Press Kit, published by MNAM Centre Pompidou 2005, p. 61-62 [Press Kit. MNAM Centre Pompidou; courtesy Centre Pompidou].

COVER
No. 8 (February 1919); collection New York Public Library.

391
Edited by Francis Picabia. Barcelona, New York, Zurich, Paris, 1917-1924. 19 Numbers.

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Giacomo Balla

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Mediatheek

Giacomo Balla (Turijn, 18 juli 1871 – Rome, 1 maart 1958) was een Italiaans kunstschilder. Hij is vooral bekend als leidend futurist, die in zijn werken de beweging wilde laten uitkomen.

francis picabia

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Archipenko

Mediatheek

Luigi Russolo, Italy | 1885-1947






















The Art of Noise (futurist manifesto, 1913) by Luigi Russolo, translated by Robert Filliou (1967, Great Bear Pamphlet, Something Else Press) [PDF, 1.7mb]


Luigi Russolo (1885-1947)

Luigi Russolo was born in Portogruaro (Veneto) in 1885. His father was the local cathedral organist and director of the Schola Cantorum at Latisana. While his two elder brothers graduated from the Milan conservatory, Russolo, after joining his family in Milan in 1901, chose to pursue painting.

In 1909 he showed a group of etchings at the Famiglia Artistica in Milan, where he met Boccioni and Carrˆ. His Divisionist period works were influenced by Previati and particularly by Boccioni in style and subject matter. The following year, after his encounter with Marinetti, Russolo signed both the Manifesto of Futurist Painters and the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting. Afterwards, he participated in all Futurist soirees and exhibitions. His mature Futurist canvases, while open to Cubist influence, drew primarily on the examples of Anton Giulio Bragaglia's photo-dynamism and Etienne-Jules Marey's chrono-photography.

On 11 March 1913, Russolo issued his manifesto L'arte dei rumori (The Art of Noises), dedicated to fellow Futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pratella. Expanded into book form in 1916, it theorized the inclusion of incidental noise into musical composition. With Ugo Piatti, he later invented the intonarumori, noise-emitting machines that allowed the modification of tone and pitch. In 1913-14, Russolo conducted his first Futurist concerts with numerous intonarumori. Audiences in Milan, Genoa and London reacted with enthusiasm or open hostility. Russolo started to contribute to the magazine Lacerba, where in 1914 he published his Grafia enarmonica per gl'intonarumori (Enharmonic Notation for Futurist Intonarumori), which introduced a new and influential form of musical notation.

With the outbreak of the war, Russolo volunteered, like many of his Futurist friends, in the Lombard Volunteer Cyclists Battalion. After being seriously wounded in December 1917, he spent eighteen months in various hospitals. In 1921 Russolo held three concerts in Paris with an orchestra of twenty-seven intonarumori. The performances were greatly acclaimed by Stravinsky, Diaghilev (who had already applauded him in Milan in 1915), Ravel and Mondrian, who devoted a long article to the intonarumori in De Stijl.

Due to his opposition to Fascism, Russolo spent most of his time between 1927 and 1932 in Paris. Beginning in 1922, he invented a series of rumorarmoni, a kind of harmonium which allowed for the extension of tone and pitch by the simple shift of one register. In 1925 he patented the "enharmonic bow" and later the "enharmonic piano." Russolo appeared in three short Futurist films (now lost), for which he also composed the music. He held his last concert in 1929, presented by Edgard Varese, at the opening of a Futurist show in Paris at the Galerie 23.

In 1931 he moved to Tarragona in Spain, where he studied occult philosophy and then in 1933 returned to Italy, settling in Cerro di Laveno on Lake Maggiore. Russolo published his philosophical investigations Al di lˆ della materia (Beyond Matter) in 1938. In 1941-42, he took up painting again in a realist style that he called "classic-modern". Russolo died at Cerro di Lavenio in 1947.

Written by Micaela Mantegani

Luigi Russolo

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