LETTRIST CORPUS : EPHEMERA [1946-2023]

Author: FRÉDÉRIC ACQUAVIVA

Publisher: Éditions Marval / Rue Visconti

LETTRIST CORPUS is a monumental, unprecedented undertaking whose ambition is to document the publishing activity of the longest-running and most prolific avant-garde movement in the history of art: Lettrism.

For this volume, a selection has been made from the thousands of posters, invitation cards, pamphlets, and manifestos printed by the Lettrist group from 1946 to the present day. No fewer than 750 of the most significant documents—chosen through a scientific and rigorous approach by Frédéric Acquaviva—are reproduced and accompanied by notes in English to clarify their context, amounting to over 500 illustrated pages. Additionally, at the end of the book, there is a supplementary list of a thousand further documents arranged in chronological order.

This database, a veritable "goldmine" for thought, finally makes accessible the original and unprecedented concepts of the Lettrists, in which the art of insult intertwines with proposals for concrete upheaval of society across its poetic, visual, political, and utopian dimensions.

LETTRISM.Initiated in 1946 by Isidore Isou (1925–2007) with the help of Gabriel Pomerand, and welcoming figures such as François Dufrêne (who would join the Nouveaux Réalistes), Gil J Wolman, Jean-Louis Brau, Maurice Lemaître, Guy Debord (who would found the Situationist International), as well as Jacques Spacagna, Aude Jessemin, Roberto Altmann, Roland Sabatier, Alain Satié, Alain de Latour, Maggy Mauritz, François Poyet, Jean-Paul Curtay, Broutin, and others, Lettrism is that fascinating movement of generalized creation, which sought to revolutionize poetry as well as the visual arts, cinema, theater, economics, the novel, the sciences, and philosophy.

Paradoxically, the enormous quantity of documents produced in every direction by the group over several decades has contributed to their invisibility. Thanks to a discerning selection, this volume circumvents the problem of their rarity (as they are held in private collections or offered for sale at "stratospheric" prices) and reveals to a new and curious audience the importance of this forgotten avant-garde, the missing link between Dadaism, Surrealism... and sound poetry, concrete poetry, conceptual art, and the Situationist International.

THE AUTHOR.Frédéric Acquaviva (born 1967), a historian of Lettrism and the avant-gardes, is also a composer of experimental music. He received the 2019 FILAF Prize for his monograph on Isidore Isou (Éditions du Griffon). He is also the author of seminal works, including the first monograph on the oeuvre of Maurice Lemaître (Éditions de la Différence, 2014), the catalogue raisonné of Lettrist journals (Éditions OEI, Stockholm, 2021), exhibition catalogues on Gil J Wolman (MACBA, 2010) and Maggy Mauritz (Loeve@Co, 2021), and books on Bernard Heidsieck, Pierre Albert-Birot, Henri Chopin, Aude Jessemin, Jacques Spacagna, and others. He has curated more than fifty exhibitions and produced a dozen radio programs and filmed documentaries on Lettrism and its intersections.

Year
2023
ISBN
978-2-86234-478-2
Pages
512
Price
41.71 EUR — In stock

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Cover of LETTRIST CORPUS : EPHEMERA [1946-2023], FRÉDÉRIC ACQUAVIVA