A meeting of the Lettrist group in 1971 (Le Lutèce café, Paris). From left to right:Isidore Isou, Dany Tayarda, Jean-Louis Sarthou, Edouard Berreur, Jacqueline Tarkieltaub andMaurice Lemaître.
Lettrism is a Frenchavant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s byRomanian immigrantIsidore Isou.[1] 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 inDada andSurrealism. Isou viewed his fellow countrymanTristan Tzara as the greatest creator and rightful leader of the Dada movement, and dismissed most of the others as plagiarists and falsifiers.[2] 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.[3]
In French, the movement is calledLettrisme, from the French word forletter, arising from the fact that many of their early works centred on letters and other visual or spoken symbols. TheLettristes 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'.
1925.[4] Isidore Goldstein was born atBotoșani,Romania, on 31 January, to anAshkenazi Jewish family. During the early 1950s, Goldstein would be signing himself 'Jean-Isidore Isou'; otherwise, it was always 'Isidore Isou'. 'Isou' was normally taken to be a pseudonym, but Isou/Goldstein himself resisted 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.[5]
1942–1944. Isou develops the principles of Lettrism, and begins writing the books that he would subsequently publish after his relocation toParis.
1945. Aged twenty, Isou arrived in Paris on 23 August after six weeks of clandestine travel. In November, he founded the Letterist movement withGabriel Pomerand.
1946. Isou and Pomerand disrupt a performance of Tzara'sLa Fuite at the Vieux-Colombier. Publication ofLa 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 byGallimard:Introduction à une nouvelle poésie et à une nouvelle musique (Introduction to a New Poetry and a New Music) andL'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 ofpoetry andmusic. The latter is more biographical, discussing the genesis of Isou's ideas, as well as exploringJudaism. Isou and Pomerand are joined by François Dufrêne.
1949. Isou publishesIsou, ou la mécanique des femmes (Isou, or the mechanics of women), the first of several works oferotology, 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 onpolitical theory, Isou'sTraité d'économie nucléaire: Le soulèvement de la jeunesse (Treatise of Nuclear Economics: Youth Uprising).
1950.Maurice Lemaître,Jean-Louis Brau,Gil J. Wolman andSerge Berna join the group. Isou publishes firstmetagraphicnovel,Les journaux des dieux (The Gods' Diaries), followed soon afterwards by Pomerand'sSaint Ghetto des Prêts (Saint Ghetto of the Loans) and Lemaître'sCanailles (Scoundrels). Also, the first manifestos of Letteristpainting. Some of the younger Letteristsinvade Nôtre Dame cathedral at Easter mass, aired live on national TV, to announce to the congregation that God is dead. In a LetteristFAQ published in the first issue of Lemaître's journal,Ur, CP-Matricon explains: 'The letterists do not create scandals: they break theconspiracy of silence set up by pusillanimous show-offs (journalists) and smash the faces of those who don't please them.' (p. 8).
1951. Isou completes his firstfilm,Traité de bave et d'éternité (Treatise on Slime and Eternity), which will soon be followed by Lemaître'sLe film est déjà commencé? (Has the film already started?),Wolman'sL'Anticoncept (The Anticoncept),Dufrêne'sTambours du jugement premier (Drums of the First Judgment) andGuy Debord'sHurlements en faveur de Sade (Howls for de Sade). Debord joins the group in April when they travel down toCannes (where he was then living) to showTraité de bave et d'éternité at theCannes Film Festival. Under the auspices ofJean Cocteau, a prize for 'best avant-garde' is specially created and awarded to Isou's film.
1952. Publication of the first (and only) issue ofIon, 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 aCharlie Chaplin press conference at the Hotel Ritz in October, would join him in splitting from Isou's group to form theLetterist International.
1953. Isou moves intophotography withAmos, ou Introduction à la métagraphologie (Amos, or Introduction to Metagraphology),theatre withFondements pour la transformation intégrale du théâtre (The Foundations of the Integrated Transformation of the Theatre),painting withLes nombres (The Numbers), anddance withManifeste pour une danse ciselante (Manifesto for Chiselling Dance).
1955. Dufrêne develops his firstCrirhythmes.
1956. Isou introduces the concept of infinitesimal art inIntroduction à une esthétique imaginaire (Introduction to Imaginary Aesthetics).
1958.Columbia Records release the first audio recordings of Letterist poetry,Maurice Lemaître presente le lettrisme.
1960. Isou introduces the concept of supertemporal art inL'Art supertemporel.Asger Jorn publishes a critique of Letterism,Originality and Magnitude (on the system of Isou)[permanent dead link] in issue 4 ofInternationale Situationniste. Isou replies at length inL'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 theSituationist 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.'[6]
1964. Definitive split with Dufrêne and theUltraletterists, 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 Isou's group. Dufrêne and Wolman with Brau 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 onarchitecture, Isou'sManifeste pour le bouleversement de l'architecture (Manifesto for the Overhaul of Architecture).
General continuation of existing currents, together with new research into psychiatry, mathematics, physics, and chemistry.
1972Mike Rose (painter), 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.
Other members to join the lettrism during the seventies :Woody Roehmer,Anne-Catherine Caron, and during the eighties : Frédérique Devaux, Michel Amarger ...
Development of excoordism. 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.[7] He still continues to pursue traditional Letterist techniques, but now in relative isolation from the main group.
Isou first invented 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 byHomer. 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 thatcould be done within that approachhad been done. In poetry, Isou felt that this point was reached withVictor Hugo (and in painting withEugène Delacroix, in music withRichard 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. FromCharles Baudelaire toTristan Tzara (as, in painting, fromManet toKandinsky; or, in music, fromDebussy toLuigi 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 asletters—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.
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, thisgreased pig will tear into a thousand pieces. I announce thedestruction 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'sThe Anticoncept and Debord'sHowls 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.
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.
Recalling theinfinitesimals ofGottfried Wilhelm 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 calledArt esthapériste ('infinite-aesthetics'). Cf.Conceptual Art. 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.
Isou identified the amplic phase of political theory and economics as that ofAdam Smith andfree trade; its chiselling phase was that ofKarl Marx andsocialism. 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.
Ultra-Lettrism arose in 1958, its manifesto appearing in the second issue ofGrammes in that year, signed by the Lettrists François Dufrêne, Robert Estivals, and Jacques Villeglé. Its members practicedhypergraphics 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.[9]
The Second Letterist International was an ephemeral group formed in 1964 by Wolman, Dufrêne and Brau.[10]
TheNew Lettrist International, unknown form the original lettrists themselves, 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 theLetterist International, as well as fromHurufism (Arabic for 'Letterism').[citation needed]
François Dufrêne (1930–1982), member from 1947 to 1964. Split to formUltra-letterism and the Second Letterist International.
Jan Kubíček (1927–2013), significantly contributing member during the early 1960s.
Maurice Lemaître (1926–2018), member since 1950, and still actively pursuing his own approach to Letterism.
Gil J. Wolman (1929–1995), member from 1950 to 1952. Split to formLetterist International 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 formLetterist International 1952-1957], but then returned to occasional participation with Isouian group from 1961 to 1964, before splitting again to form the Second Letterist International.*
Fluxus artistBen 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 readingL'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."[11]
The German painter, set designer, and writer,Mike Rose, developed techniques close to Letterism during the 1970s and 1980s, and had some contact with the Parisian group.
The filmIrma Vep (1996) contains a sequence that evokes the Lettrist aesthetic.[12]
Michael Jacobson's novellaThe Giant's Fence[1] (2006) is a hypergraphic work, apparently inspired by the Letterists.
Although the Letterists have published hundreds of books, journals and substantial articles in French, virtually none of these have been translated into English. One recent exception is:
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
Fabrice Flahutez, Camille Morando,Isidore Isou's Library. A certain look on lettrism, (English-French), Paris, Artvenir, 2014 (ISBN978-2953940619)
Acquaviva, Frédéric "Isidore Isou", Centre International de Poésie de Marseille, Cahier du Refuge n°163, 2007
Acquaviva, Frédéric "Isou 2.0" in Catalogue Isidore Isou, pour en finir avec la conspiration du silence, ICRF, 2007
Acquaviva, Frédéric " Lettrisme + bibliophilie : mode d'emploi", Le Magazine de la Bibliophilie n°75, 2008
Acquaviva, Frédéric "Gil J Wolman", Centre International de Poésie de Marseille, Cahier du Refuge n°173, 2007
Acquaviva, Frédéric and Bernard Blistène "Bientôt les Lettristes", Passage de Retz, 2012
Acquaviva, Frédéric "Lemaître, une vie lettriste" Editions de la Différence, Paris, 2014
Acquaviva, Frédéric "Isidore Isou" Editions du Griffon, Neuchâtel, 2018 (FILAF Awards for 2019 Best Contemporary Arts Book)* Fabrice Flahutez, Julia Drost et Frédéric Alix,Le Lettrisme et son temps, Dijon,Les presses du réel, 2018, 280p.ISBN978-2840669234.
Bandini, Mirella.Pour une histoire du lettrisme (Jean-Paul Rocher, 2003).
Lemaître, Maurice.Qu'est-ce que le lettrisme? (Fischbacher, 1954).
Sabatier, Roland.Le lettrisme: les créations et les créateurs (ZEditions, n.d. [1988]).
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.* Satié, Alain.Le lettrisme, la creation ininterrompue (Jean-Paul Rocher, 2003).
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 inFutura poesia sonora (Cramps Records CRSCD 091–095, 1978).
^See Isou,Les véritables créateurs et les falsificateurs de dada, du surréalisme et du lettrisme (1973), and Maurice Lemaître,Le lettrisme devant dada et les nécrophages de dada (1967).
^See Patrick Straram,La veuve blanche et noire un peu détournée (ParisSens & Tonka, 2006), 21–22, 81–82;Figures de la négation (Saint-Etienne Métropole: Musée d'Art Moderne, 2004), 78–80.
^Figures de la négation, 118;Henri Chopin,Poésie sonore (Paris: Jean-Michel Place, 1979), 88-93.
^Figures de la négation, 76;Gil J. Wolman,Défense de mourir (Paris: Editions Allia, 2001), 144–45.
