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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
Again and again, the authors of these manifestos open with a mighty trumpet blast, issuing the most lofty and passionate denunciations of the imbecilic, stale, decadent, safe, bourgeois, vile, outmoded, mechanical, academic, etc. tradition they are rejecting. But when it comes time for them to reveal their epochal new vision, the mighty doctrine that will overthrow the past, turn art on its head and lead mankind into a dazzling new era of truth and beauty, it turns out to be, well, "spatial forms arising from the intersection of the reflected rays of various objects" (Rayonists Mikhail Larionov and Natalya Goncharov). Or a theater in which the actors read aloud from their parts (the Russian symbolist Fyodor Sologub). Or a placard proclaiming "No Girdle!" (The nunist Pierre Albert-Birot, who also incorrectly asserted that nunism is "an 'ism' to outlast the others.") Without discounting the originality of these ideas -- rayonist paintings are among the first abstract works ever executed, Sologub's theater anticipates Brecht, and Birot would have burned Andy Warhol in a game of one-on-one -- after the mighty windup, there's something banana peel-like about these aesthetic punchlines.
And yet, these manifestos inspire more than laughter. "The attraction of those initial or founding manifestos of violence was and is their energy and their potential for energizing," Caws notes, and their energy, their intensity, their passionate belief that art matters, that nothing is as important as finding a new, deeper, more modern way to paint or write or compose, is in the end what you take away from them.
You also take away a few pints of the finest avant-garde bile. The authors of these manifestos, like all self-consciously "advanced" thinkers -- and the Manifesto Moment was highly self-conscious -- engage in more backbiting than a Bakuninist cell. The first "ism" of them all, futurism, seems to wear the biggest "Kick Me" sign -- no doubt because its founder, F.T. Marinetti, had more than a touch of the P.T. Barnum about him, and also because his chest-beating program, with its worship of fast cars and tough guys, was so tempting a target. So here are the Russian constructivist brothers Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner whispering nasty nothings into futurism's chrome ear: "One had to examine Futurism beneath its appearance to realize that one faced a very ordinary chatterer, a very agile and prevaricating guy, clad in the tatters of worn-out words like 'patriotism,' 'militarism,' contempt for the female,' and all the rest of such provincial tags." Or the English vorticist R. Aldington -- whose own movement's doctrines were uncomfortably close to futurism, as is so often the case in these unpleasant affairs -- putting in his 2 cents' worth: "The artist of the modern movement is a savage (in no sense an 'advanced,' perfected, democratic, Futurist individual of Mr. Marinetti's limited imagination)." Or, returning again to Russia (Italo-Russo relations being apparently just as strained in 1913 as they are on "The Sopranos"), here are the Futurists Victor Khlebnikov and Alexey Kruchenykh piling on: "The Italians caught a whiff of these Russian ideas and began to copy them from us like schoolboys, making imitation art. They had absolutely no sense of verbal matters before 1912 (when their big collection came out), and none after ... These Italians have turned out to be noisy self-promoters, but inarticulate pipsqueaks as artists."
There's also a bit of unseemly scrambling to lay claim to the title of first dadaist, first cubo-futurist, etc. This isn't surprising: Just as the Old West was already a myth when Buffalo Bill took his Wild West show on the road, so the age of "isms" was legendary when it was still going on, and being first in line gave one the status of a minor art-deity. In light of this I-was-here-first-ism, one of the more charming manifestos is by the Brazilian Mario de Andrade, who in his "Very Interesting Preface" writes "If we are geniuses: we will point the road to follow; if we are jackasses: shipwrecks to avoid" and concludes, "So the poetic school of 'Hallucinism' is finished. In the next book I will found another school."
Such modest self-awareness is rare in these pages, and it's probably just as well: Like quarterbacks and divas, avant-garde artists pretty much have to be cocky. Of all the manifestos here, practically the only one that doesn't assert its utter originality is Jorge Luis Borges' Ultraist Manifesto of 1921, which states "The ultraists have always existed: they are those who, prescient for their times, have brought to the world new aspects of vision and expression." In this fire-breathing collection, this measured statement feels like Walter Mitty mumbling to himself at a party of gangsta rappers. (It may not be a coincidence, however, that Borges' artistic achievement is considerably greater than that of many of his noisier co-manifestoists.)
"Manifesto" includes pieces by writers as disparate as Guillaume Apollinaire, Salvador Dali, John Cage, Edvard Munch, Paul Klee (who demonstrates a higher artistic IQ than just about anybody else here), Willem de Kooning, Mina Loy (a fascinating American modernist whose aphorisms are hard-edged and memorable), Frank O'Hara and Blaise Cendrars (whose essay on film is stunning). The greatest pleasure in reading "Manifesto" is finding the unexpected prize -- and there are many, some of them Cracker Jack toys, some diamonds. Take Francis Picabia's "Dada Cannibalistic Manifesto" (1920), a masterpiece of free-associative invective:
[You are] Finally standing before DADA, which represents life and accuses you of loving everything out of snobbism from the moment that it becomes expensive.
Are you completely settled? So much the better, that way you are going to listen to me with greater attention.
What are you doing here, parked like serious oysters -- for you are serious, right?
Serious, serious, serious to death.
Death is a serious thing, huh?
One dies as a hero, or as an idiot, which is the same thing. The only word which is not ephemeral is the word death. You love death for others.
To death, death, death.
Only money which doesn't die, it just leaves on trips.
