MODERNIST

MAGAZINES, CREEDS
AND
MANIFESTOS
LATE 19
TH
CENTURY GERMANY
The art magazines were central to Art
Nouveau's dominance across Europe.
This was particularly the case in Germany,
where both Pan and Die Jugend
contributed to the spread of the new style.
The latter lent its name to the German
name for Art Nouveau, Jugendstil.

PAN GERMANY, 1895
The German art magazine Pan was a
lavish celebration of Art Nouveau. It
took its name from the Greek God of
nature, who is depicted here in Sattler's
cover for the first edition. His goat-like
form leers from the background against
a sinister red sky. The scene is
dreamlike, and suffused with
mythological imagery and symbolism.


In the foreground a flower grows, its
stamens coiling into the lettering of the
title. The petals are square and curled
at the edges to suggest scrolls of paper,
and each bears an image of Pan's face.
There is nothing natural about this
flower. It is not nature, but words and
images that bloom from the well-tended
earth. In using this imagery, Sattler
may be hinting at the role of the
magazine in cultivating new art and
literature.
LATE 19
TH
CENTURY ENGLAND - THE YELLOW BOOK
1894 - 1897
a quarterly literary
periodical that lent its
name to the "Yellow"
1890s.

published in London from 1894 to 1897
by Elkin Mathews and John Lane, later
by John Lane alone, and edited by the
American Henry Harland.

to some degree associated with
Aestheticism and Decadence, the
magazine contained a wide range of
literary and artistic genres, poetry, short
stories, essays, book illustrations,
portraits, and reproductions of paintings.
EARLY 20
TH
CENTURY FRANCE DADA - 1917
Dada was an
international
movement among
European artists
and writers between
1915 and 1922,
characterized by a
spirit of anarchic
revolt.
EARLY 20
TH
CENTURY FRANCE
LITTRATURE 1919 - 1924
Littrature magazine was a Dada- friendly
journal published from 1919 to1924 in France.

The first issue was February 1919.

These men, whom we shall call the 'Littrature
group,' represented a poetic and critical
position between Rimbaud and Lautreamont on
the one hand and Jarry and Apollinaire on the
other; they supported the effort to liberate the
mind in progress since the second half of the
nineteenth century... they were immediately
attracted to the activity proposed by Dada... they
saluted Dada, a phenomenon bursting forth in
the midst of the post-war economic and moral
crisis, a savior, a monster, which would lay
waste everything in its path. They felt that it
would be an offensive weapon of the first order.
Thus, through the word Surralisme, borrowed
from Apollinaire and already full of meaning,
was regularly used by the Littrature group and
their friends, their magazine, for want of an
alternative course at the moment, gave itself to
Dada, a scarecrow erected at the crossroads
of the epoch.
Georges Hugnet, The Dada Spirit in Painting
SIMULTANEITY AND SPEED, DESTRUCTION
AND RECONSTRUCTION - PHOTOMONTAGE
Like everyone else, artists were radically
affected by industrialization, political
revolution, trench warfare, airplanes,
talking motion pictures, radios,
automobiles, and much moreand they
wanted to create art that was as radical
and new as modern life itself.

If we consider the work of the Cubists
and Futurists, we often think of their
works in terms of simultaneity and
speed, destruction and reconstruction.

Dadaists, too, challenged the
boundaries of traditional art with
performances, poetry, installations,
and photomontage that use the
materials of everyday culture instead of
paint, ink, canvas, or bronze.

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 in
France, America, Spain, Germany, Italy,
Switzerland, Belgium, etc. but have no
nationality. Paris, 12 January, 1921
The new artist protests: he no longer paints
(symbolic and illusionistic reproduction) but
creates directly in stone, wood, iron, tin,
rocks, or locomotive structures capable of
being spun in all directions by the limpid
wind of the momentary sensation. Tristan
Tzara, Manifesto, 23 March, 1918

Hannah Hch Schnitt mit dem Kchenmesser Dada durch die letzte Weimarer
Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands
(Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of
Germany)
(1919-1920)
DADA PERFORMANCE HUGO BALLS
SOUND POEMS
In 1906, dadaists
gathered at the Cabaret
Voltaire in Zurich. Hugo
Ball stood before an
irritated crowd in his
obelisk suit and began
reciting his sound
poems. This moment is
known for its brash
nihilism aimed at
freeing oneself from
history - artistic, political,
etc.

HUGO BALLS SOUND POEMS A NEW GENRE
Sound poems are poems
without words or abstract
poems. In order to create
them, the language is
divided into its abstract parts
(syllables and individual
letters) and then rearranged
to form meaningless
sounds.

An excellent example is
Hugo Balls poem
Karawane (1916) recited at
Cabaret Voltaire.

Signs of this are everywhere apparent.
Grammar is violated; syntax 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 Ulysses
seems to me the conscious and calculated indecency of a desperate man
who 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 a
superabundant 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 that
Mr. Eliot has written some of the loveliest single lines in modern poetry. But
how intolerant he is of the old usages and politenesses of societyrespect for
the weak, consideration for the dull! As I sun myself upon the intense and
ravishing beauty of one of his lines, and reflect that I must make a dizzy and
dangerous 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, and
envy the indolence of my ancestors who, instead of spinning madly through
mid-air dreamt quietly in the shade with a book.
Virginia Woolf, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown
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 is
spent on finding a way of telling the truth, the truth itself is
bound to reach us in rather an exhausted and chaotic
conditon. Ulysses, Queen Victoria, Mr. Prufrockto give
Mrs. 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 earsunless
of course you wish to sleep, when, in the bounty of his
concern, Providence has provided a host of writers anxious
and able to satisfy your needs.
Virginia Woolf, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown

Your part is to insist that writers shall come
down off their plinths and pedestals
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
1914 - 1929
Famous for her strong opinions about art
as well as for her beauty and wit, radical
editor Margaret Anderson was a key
figure in American and European
Modernism.
Between1914-1929, Andersons
pioneering art and literature magazine the
Little Review published poetry, criticism
and artwork by many of the most
significant writers and artists of the
twentieth century, including William Butler
Yeats, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Pablo
Picasso, Hart Crane, Man Ray, Mina Loy,
Wyndham Lewis, T.S. Eliot, Sherwood
Anderson, and Francis Picabia.
James Joyces Ulysses appeared
serially in the Little Review before it
was published in its entirety in 1922;
the Little Review and its editors became
the subjects of a widely-publicized
obscenity trial when the United State Post
Office deemed some segments of the
work obscene and refused to distribute
copies.
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 on
Christmas 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 wrote
Beach (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 des Amis des Livres (which
was across the street from Beach's Shakespeare and Company on
the rue d'Odon) on December 7, 1921, still two months before the
publication of Ulysses .
Joyce kept in close contact with Larbaud, sending him page proofs
of recently-completed episodes as well as a copy of the schema he
had prepared. Larbaud gave his talk to an audience of over two
hundred and fifty people. Adrienne Monnier remarked: "I believe
it 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 Nouvelle 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, Larbaud
emphasized the European backgrounds to Joyce's literary
sensibility. The article was tremendously influential on other early
critical appraisals of Joyce in France, Europe, and even England
and America.
CRITERION 1922 - 1939
39. The Criterion, I.1,
October 1922
The first issue of T.S. Eliot's
journal The Criterion
included an English
translation of Larbaud's
N.R.F. article on Joyce,
along with Eliot's poem The
Waste Land. The English
version omits the first part of
Larbaud's article, a general
introduction to Joyce,
because, presumably, the
English-speaking world
would have less need for it
than the French.
CRITERION, ITS AIM, ITS CONTRIBUTORS AND
ITS READERS
The Criterion does not aim at a very large circulation, but aims solely at
publishing the highest class of work. While a contribution to this paper
does not reach a very large audience, it probably receives more
intelligent attention than any other review and the audience is not
limited to Great Britain. T. S. Eliot

Eliots aim for the journal was international, and he hired translators to
provide 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

THE DIAL 1920 - 1929
From 1920 to 1929 The Dial was an influential outlet for Modernist literature
in English.

In 1920, Scofield Thayer and Dr. James Sibley Watson. Jr. re-established The
Dial as a literary magazine, the form for which it was most successful and
best known. Under Watson's and Thayer's sway The Dial published
remarkably influential artwork, poetry and fiction, including William Butler
Yeats' The Second Coming and 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, Hart
Crane, 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 Dial published art as well as poetry and essays, with artists ranging from
Vincent van Gogh, Renoir, Henri Matisse, and Odilon Redon, through Oskar
Kokoschka, Constantin Brancusi, and Edvard Munch, and Georgia O'Keeffe
and Joseph Stella. The magazine also reported on the cultural life of
European capitals, writers included T. S. Eliot from London, John Eglinton
from Dublin, Ezra Pound from Paris, Thomas Mann from Germany, and Hugo
von Hofmannsthal from Vienna.

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 editors
believe that this is a critical time in the history of
the advancement of men. Catholicity and
tolerance, reason and forbearance can today
make the world-old dream of human
brotherhood approach realization: while bigotry
and prejudice, emphasized race consciousness
and force can repeat the awful history of the
contact of nations and groups in the past.

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

Readers were not only exposed to the political
and social reform issues of that time, but they
also read literary works from great writers such
as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Jean
Toomer. Du Bois, along with The Crisis literary
editor, Jessie Fauset, knew the importance of
giving African-American writers a platform to
share and express their thoughts in The Crisis,
which soon transformed the publication into a
great literary journal.

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 the
history 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 and
realize these ideals.

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 of
thought. 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 and
literature, 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 dream as a reservoir of Surrealist inspiration is also highlighted.
Breton also discusses his initial encounter with the surreal in a famous description of a
hypnagogic state that he experienced in which a strange phrase inexplicably appeared in
his mind: "There is a man cut in two by the window." This phrase echoes Breton's
apprehension of Surrealism as the juxtaposition of "two distant realities" united to
create a new one.

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

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

The text concludes by asserting that Surrealist activity follows no set plan or conventional
pattern, and that Surrealists are ultimately nonconformists.
Salvador Dal and Surrealism
One day it will have to be officially
admitted that what we have
christened reality is an even
greater illusion than the world of
dreams.

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 of
active paranoiac thought, it will
be possible to systematize
confusion and contribute to the
total discrediting of the world of
reality.




Sleep
I have often
imagined the
monster of sleep
as a heavy, giant
head with a
tapering body held
up by the crutches
of reality. When the
crutches break we
have the sensation
of falling.



The persistence of memory
Suddenly she remembered. When she had sat
there last ten years ago, there had been a little
sprig or leaf pattern on the tablecloth, which she
had looked at in a moment of revelation.

The rainladen trees of the avenue evoked in him,
as always, memories of the girls and women in the
plays of Gerhart Hauptman; and the memory of
their pale sorrows and the fragrance falling from
the wet branches mingled in a mood of quiet joy.

The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the
past devouring the future. In truth all sensation is
already memory.
Henri Bergson

But, then, I cannot escape the objection that there
is no state of mind, however simple, which does
not change every moment, since there is no
consciousness without memory, and no
continuation of a state without the addition, to the
present feeling, of the memory of past moments. It
is this which constitutes duration. Inner duration is
the continuous life of a memory which prolongs the
past into the present, the present either containing
within it in a distinct form the ceaselessly growing
image of the past, or, more profoundly, showing by
its continual change of quality the heavier and still
heavier load we drag behind us as we grow older.
Without this survival of the past into the present
there would be no duration, but only instantaneity.
Henri Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics