Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In a body of work totalling 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 in Dada and Surrealism. Isou viewed his fellow countryman, Tristan Tzara, as the greatest creator and rightful leader of the Dada movement, and dismissed most of the others as plagiarists and falsifiers.^[1] 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.^[2] A work similar to Marcel Duchamps Fountain Avant garde (written avant-garde) is a French phrase, one of many French phrases used by English speakers. ... Isidore Isou (born Ioan-Isidor Goldstein, 1925, in BotoÅŸani) is a Romanian-French Jewish poet, film critic, visual artist and founder of Lettrisme. ... Cover of the first edition of the publication, Dada. ... Yves Tanguy Indefinite Divisibility 1942 Surrealism[1] is a cultural movement that began in the mid-1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members. ... Tristan Tzara () (April 16, 1896 – December 25, 1963) was a Romanian poet and essayist. ... André Breton André Breton (French IPA: ) (February 19, 1896 – September 28, 1966) was a French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist, and is best known as the main founder of surrealism. ...

In French, the movement is called Lettrisme, from the French word for letter, arising from the fact that many of their early works centred around letters and other visual or spoken symbols. The Lettristes 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'. This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

History

1925.^[3] Isidore Goldstein is born at Botosani, Romania, on January 31, to an Ashkenazi Jewish family. During the early 1950s, Goldstein would be signing himself 'Jean-Isidore Isou'; otherwise, it has always been 'Isidore Isou'. 'Isou' is standardly taken to be a pseudonym, but Isou/Goldstein himself resists this interpretation. Year 1925 (MCMXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Botoşani (population:129,000) is a city in Bukovina, Moldavia, Romania and it is the capital of the Botoşani County. ... is the 31st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim (אַשְׁכֲּנָזִי אַשְׁכֲּנָזִים Standard Hebrew, AÅ¡kanazi,AÅ¡kanazim, Tiberian Hebrew, ʾAÅ¡kănāzî, ʾAÅ¡kănāzîm, pronounced sing. ... Isidore Isou (born Ioan-Isidor Goldstein, 1925, in BotoÅŸani) is a Romanian-French Jewish poet, film critic, visual artist and founder of Lettrisme. ...

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.^[4]

1940s

• 1942–1944. Isou develops the principles of Letterism, and begins writing the books that he would subsequently publish after his relocation to Paris.
• 1945. Aged twenty, Isou arrives in Paris on August 23 after six weeks of clandestine travel. In November, he founds the Letterist movement with Gabriel Pomerand.
• 1946. Isou and Pomerand disrupt a performance of Tzara’s La Fuite at the Vieux-Colombier. Publication of La 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 by Gallimard: Introduction à une nouvelle poésie et à une nouvelle musique (Introduction to a New Poetry and a New Music) and L'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 of poetry and music. The latter is more biographical, discussing the genesis of Isou’s ideas, as well as exploring Judaism. Isou and Pomerand are joined by François Dufrêne.
• 1949. Isou publishes Isou, ou la mécanique des femmes (Isou, or the mechanics of women), the first of several works of erotology, 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 on political theory, Isou’s Traité d’économie nucléaire: Le soulèvement de la jeunesse (Treatise of Nuclear Economics: Youth Uprising).

1942 (MCMXLII) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1942 calendar). ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ... City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) The Eiffel Tower in Paris, as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ... Year 1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar). ... is the 235th day of the year (236th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full 1946 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1947 (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1947 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Éditions Gallimard is the second most important French publisher, and probably the most respected. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... 1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1949 calendar). ...

1950s

• 1950. Maurice Lemaître, Jean-Louis Brau, Gil J. Wolman and Serge Berna join the group. Isou publishes first metagraphic novel, Les journaux des dieux (The Gods’ Diaries), followed soon afterwards by Pomerand’s Saint Ghetto des Prêts (Saint Ghetto of the Loans) and Lemaître’s Canailles (Scoundrels). Also, the first manifestos of Letterist painting. Some of the younger Letterists invade Nôtre Dame cathedral at Easter mass, to announce to the congregation that God is dead. In a Letterist FAQ published in the first issue of Lemaître’s journal, Ur, CP-Matricon explains: 'The letterists do not create scandals: they break the conspiracy 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 first film, Traité de bave et d’éternité (Treatise of Slime and Eternity), which will soon be followed by Lemaître’s Le film est déjà commence? (Has the film already started?), Wolman’s L’Anticoncept (The Anticoncept), Dufrêne’s Tambours du judgment premier (Drums of the First Judgment) and Guy Debord’s Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howls for Sade). Debord joins the group in April when they travel down to Cannes (where he is then living) to show Traité de bave et d’éternité at the Cannes Film Festival. Under the auspices of Jean Cocteau, a prize for 'best avant-garde' is specially created and awarded to Isou’s film.
• 1952. Publication of the first (and only) issue of Ion, 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 a Charlie Chaplin press conference at the Hotel Ritz in October, would join him in splitting from Isou’s group to form the Lettrist International.
• 1953. Isou moves into photography with Amos, ou Introduction à la métagraphologie (Amos, or Introduction to Metagraphology), theatre with Fondements pour la transformation intégrale du théâtre (The Foundations of the Integrated Transformation of the Theatre), painting with Les nombres (The Numbers), and dance with Manifeste pour une danse ciselante (Manifesto for Chiselling Dance).
• 1955. Dufrêne develops his first Crirhythmes.
• 1956. Isou introduces the concept of infinitesimal art in Introduction à une esthétique imaginaire (Introduction to Imaginary Aesthetics).
• 1958. Columbia Records release the first audio recordings of Letterist poetry, Maurice Lemaître presente le lettrisme.

Year 1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Lettrist painter, producer of Lettrist works since the 1940s, Lemaître, Isidore Isou’s right hand man for nearly half a century began to distance himself from it in the 2000s. ... Gil Joseph Wolman was a French poet and writer born in Paris in 1929 and died in Paris in 1995. ... Metagraphics or post-writing, encompassing all the means of ideographic, lexical and phonetic notation, supplements the means of expression based on sound by adding a specifically plastic dimension, a visual facet which is irreducible and escapes oral labelling. ... The Notre-Dame Affair (April 9th 1950). ... FAQ is an abbreviation for Frequently Asked Question(s). The term refers to listed questions and answers, all supposed to be frequently asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic. ... The expression conspiracy of silence, or culture of silence, relates to a condition or matter which is known to exist, but by tacit communal unspoken consensus is not talked about or acknowledged. ... Year 1951 (MCMLI) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Gil Joseph Wolman was a French poet and writer born in Paris in 1929 and died in Paris in 1995. ... Guy Ernest Debord (December 28, 1931, in Paris – November 30, 1994, in Champot) was a writer, film maker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Lettrist International and Situationist International (SI). ... Cannes - receding storm Cannes, as seen from a ferry speeding towards lÎle Saint-Honorat Cannes (pronounced ) (Provençal Occitan: Canas in classical norm or Cano in Mistralian norm) is a city and commune in southern France, located on the Riviera, in the Alpes-Maritimes département and the r... Cannes Film Festival logo. ... Jean Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (July 5, 1889 – October 11, 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker. ... 1952 (MCMLII) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr. ... The Lettrist International (LI) was the first breakaway group from Isidore Isous Lettrist Movement (LM). ... Year 1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1955 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1958 (MCMLVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Columbia Records is the oldest brand name in recorded sound, dating back to 1888, and was the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. ...

1960s

• 1960. Isou introduces the concept of supertemporal art in L’Art supertemporel. Asger Jorn publishes a critique of Letterism, Originality and Magnitude (on the system of Isou) in issue 4 of Internationale Situationniste. Isou replies at length in L'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 the Situationist 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.'^[5]
• 1963 to 1972. Several new members join group, including Roberto Altmann, Roland Sabatier, Alain Satié, Michéline Hachette, Francois Poyet, Gérard-Philippe Broutin, Jean-Paul Curtay, Woody Roehmer.
• 1964. Definitive split with Dufrêne and the Ultraletterists, 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 the old group. Dufrêne and Wolman 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 on architecture, Isou’s Manifeste pour le bouleversement de l’architecture (Manifesto for the Overhaul of Architecture).

Year 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Asger Jorn (March 3, 1914 - May 1, 1973) was born in Vejrum, Jutland, Denmark under the name Oluf Jørgensen. ... The Situationist International (SI), an international political and artistic movement, originated in the Italian village of Cosio dArroscia on 28 July 1957 with the fusion of several extremely small artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International, the International movement for an imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association. ... Year 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ... This section does not cite its references or sources. ... 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (the link is to a full 1967 calendar). ... Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the 1968 Gregorian calendar. ...

1970s and 1980s

General continuation of existing currents, together with new research into psychiatry, mathematics, physics and chemistry.

1990s

Development of excoördism. 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.^[6] He still continues to pursue traditional Letterist techniques, but now in relative isolation from the main group.

Key Concepts

The Amplic (amplique) and the Chiselling (ciselante) phases

Isou first discovered 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 by Homer. 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 that could be done within that approach had been done. In poetry, Isou felt that this point was reached with Victor Hugo (and in painting with Delacroix, in music with Richard 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. From Charles Baudelaire to Tristan Tzara (as, in painting, from Manet to Kandinsky; or, in music, from Debussy to Luigi 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 as letters—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. Homer (Greek: ) is the name given to the supposed unitary author of the early Greek poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. ... Victor-Marie Hugo (pronounced in French) (26 February 1802 — 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner, and perhaps the most influential exponent of the Romantic movement in France. ... Eugène Delacroix (portrait by Nadar) Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (April 26, 1798 - August 13, 1863) was an important painter from the French romantic period. ... Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner (22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, conductor, music theorist, and essayist, primarily known for his operas (or music dramas as he later came to call them). ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Tristan Tzara () (April 16, 1896 – December 25, 1963) was a Romanian poet and essayist. ... Articles with similar titles include Claude Monet, another painter of the same era. ... On White II (Kandinsky 1923) Wassily Kandinsky (Russian: Василий Кандинский, first name sometimes spelled as Vasily, Vassily or Vasilii) (December 16, 1866 - December 13, 1944) was a Russian-born painter and art theorist. ... Claude Debussy Claude Achille Debussy (August 22, 1862 – March 25, 1918), composer of impressionistic classical music. ... Luigi Russolo ca. ...

The Lettrie

Isou’s idea for the poem of the future was that it should be purely formal, devoid of all semantic content. The Letterist poem, or lettrie, in many ways resembles what certain Italian Futurists (such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti), Russian Futurists (such as Velemir Chlebnikov, Iliazd, or Alexej Kručenych—cf. Zaum), and Dada poets (such as Raoul Hausmann or Kurt Schwitters) had already been doing, and what subsequent sound poets and concrete poets (such as Bob Cobbing or Henri Chopin) would later be doing. However, the Letterists were always keen to insist on their own radical originality and to distinguish their work from other ostensibly similar currents. Futurism was a 20th century art movement. ... The Futurists in Paris, February 1912. ... El Lissitzkys poster for a post-revolutionary production of the Victory Over the Sun. ... Velemir Khlebnikov portrait by Wladimir Burliuk, 1913 Velimir Khlebnikov (Russian: Велимир Хлебников; first name also spelled Velemir; last name also spelled Chlebnikov, Hlebnikov, Xlebnikov), pseudonym of Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov (November 9, 1885 (October 28, 1885 (O.S.)) – June 28, 1922), was a central part of the Russian Futurist movement but his work... Ilia Mikhailovich Zdanevich (April 21, 1894– December 25, 1975) was a Russian writer and artist associated with the Dada movement. ... Aleksei Eliseevich Kruchenykh (Russian: Алексей Елисеевич Крученых; last name also spelled Kruchonykh) (1886 - 1968) was perhaps the most radical poet of Russian Futurism. ... Alexander Rodchenkos bookcover for Kruchonykhs treatise Zaum (1921). ... Cover of the first edition of the publication, Dada. ... Raoul Hausmann (July 12, 1886–February 1, 1971) was an Austrian sculptor and writer. ... Kurt Schwitters (June 20, 1887 - January 8, 1948) was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. ... Sound poetry is a form of literary or musical composition in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded at the expense of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; verse without words. By definition, sound poetry is intended primarily for performance. ... Concrete poetry, pattern poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on. ... Bob Cobbing (July 30, 1920 - September 29, 2002) was a British sound, visual, concrete and performance poet who was a central figure in the British Poetry Revival. ... Henri Chopin (born 1922) is an avant-garde poet and musician. ...

Metagraphics/Hypergraphics

On the visual side, the Letterists first gave the name 'metagraphics' (metagraphie) and then 'hypergraphics' (hypergraphie) to their new synthesis of writing and visual art. Some precedents may be seen in Cubist, Dada and Futurist (both Italian and Russian) painting and typographical works, such as Apollinaire's Calligrammes or Marinetti's Zang Tumb Tuum. Metagraphics or post-writing, encompassing all the means of ideographic, lexical and phonetic notation, supplements the means of expression based on sound by adding a specifically plastic dimension, a visual facet which is irreducible and escapes oral labelling. ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Woman with a guitar by Georges Braque, 1913 Cubism was an avant-garde art movement that revolutionised European painting and sculpture in the early 20th century. ... Cover of the first edition of the publication, Dada. ... For building painting, see painter and decorator. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire (August 26, 1880 – November 9, 1918) was a poet, writer, and art critic. ... The Futurists in Paris, February 1912. ... Zang Tumb Tumb is a sound poem written in 1914 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian Futurist. ...

Letterist film

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, this greased pig will tear into a thousand pieces. I announce the destruction 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 (le 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’s The Anticoncept and Debord’s Howls 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. In detournement, an artist reuses elements of well-known media to create a new work with a different message, often one opposed to the original. ...

Supertemporal art (L’art supertemporel)

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.

Infinitesimal art (Art infinitesimal)

Recalling the infinitesimals of G.W. 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 called Art 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. In mathematics, an infinitesimal, or infinitely small number, is a number that is greater in absolute value than zero yet smaller than any positive real number. ... Leibniz redirects here. ... Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs (1965) Conceptual art is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. ...

Youth uprising (Le soulèvement de la jeunesse)

Isou identified the amplic phase of political theory and economics as that of Adam Smith and free trade; its chiselling phase was that of Karl Marx and socialism. 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. Adam Smith FRSE (baptised June 5, 1723 O.S. / June 16 N.S. – July 17, 1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneering political economist. ... Free trade is an economic concept referring to the selling of products between countries without tariffs or other trade barriers. ... Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a German philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary. ... Socialism refers to a broad array of ideologies and movements which aim to improve society through collective and egalitarian action; and to a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community. ...

Major Developments of Letterism

• The Letterist International was formed in 1952 by Letterists Guy Debord, Gil J. Wolman, Jean-Louis Brau and Serge Berna. In 1957, it fused with the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus and the London Psychogeographical Committee to create the Situationist International. During its five years, the Letterist International continued to practice the Letterist technique of metagraphics, although they were quite against hypergraphics, instead developing metagraphics into détournement.^[7]
• Ultra-Letterism arose in 1958, its manifesto appearing in the second issue of Grammes in that year, signed by the Letterists François Dufrêne, Robert Estivals, and Jacques Villeglé. Its members practiced hypergraphics 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.^[8]
• The Second Letterist International was an ephemeral group formed in 1964 by Wolman, Dufrêne and Brau.^[9]
• The New Lettrist International 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 the Letterist International, as well as from Hurufism (Arabic for 'Letterism').

The Letterist International (LI) was a Paris-based collective of radical artists and theorists between 1952 and 1957, who provide the link between Isidore Isous Letterist group and the Situationist International. ... Guy Ernest Debord (December 28, 1931, in Paris – November 30, 1994, in Champot) was a writer, film maker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Lettrist International and Situationist International (SI). ... Gil Joseph Wolman was a French poet and writer born in Paris in 1929 and died in Paris in 1995. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... The London Psychogeographical Association (LPA) is a largely fictitious organisation devoted to psychogeography. ... The Situationist International (SI), an international political and artistic movement, originated in the Italian village of Cosio dArroscia on 28 July 1957 with the fusion of several extremely small artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International, the International movement for an imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association. ... Metagraphics or post-writing, encompassing all the means of ideographic, lexical and phonetic notation, supplements the means of expression based on sound by adding a specifically plastic dimension, a visual facet which is irreducible and escapes oral labelling. ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... In detournement, an artist reuses elements of well-known media to create a new work with a different message, often one opposed to the original. ... This section does not cite its references or sources. ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... The Preliminary Committee for the Founding of a New Lettrist International (NLI) was organised by the Neoist Alliance and the London Psychogeographical Association. ... The Letterist International (LI) was a Paris-based collective of radical artists and theorists between 1952 and 1957, who provide the link between Isidore Isous Letterist group and the Situationist International. ... Hurufism (Arabic حروفية hurufiyya, adjective form hurufi) is a mystical esoteric Sufi sect, that was active in areas of western Persia, Turkey and Azerbaijan in later 14th - early 15th century. ...

Key members

• Isidore Isou (Jan 25, 1925– July 31, 2007).
• Gabriel Pomerand (1926–1972), member from 1945.
• Maurice Lemaître (1926–), member since 1950, and still actively pursuing his own approach to Letterism, although somewhat apart from the main group since the early 1990s.
• Roland Sabatier (1942–), member since 1963.
• Alain Satié (1944–), member since 1964.
• François Dufrène (1930–1982), member from 1947 to 1964. Split to form Ultra-letterism and the Second Letterist International.
• Guy Debord (1931–1994), member from 1951 to 1952. Split to form Letterist International.
• Gil J. Wolman (1929–1995), member from 1950 to 1952. Split to form Letterist International, but then returned to occasional participation with Isouian group from 1957 to 1964, before splitting again to form the Second Letterist International.

Isidore Isou (born Ioan-Isidor Goldstein, 1925, in Botoşani) is a Romanian-French Jewish poet, film critic, visual artist and founder of Lettrisme. ... Lettrist painter, producer of Lettrist works since the 1940s, Lemaître, Isidore Isou’s right hand man for nearly half a century began to distance himself from it in the 2000s. ... This section does not cite its references or sources. ... Guy Ernest Debord (December 28, 1931, in Paris – November 30, 1994, in Champot) was a writer, film maker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Lettrist International and Situationist International (SI). ... The Lettrist International (LI) was the first breakaway group from Isidore Isous Lettrist Movement (LM). ... Gil Joseph Wolman was a French poet and writer born in Paris in 1929 and died in Paris in 1995. ... The Lettrist International (LI) was the first breakaway group from Isidore Isous Lettrist Movement (LM). ...

Influences

• Fluxus artist Ben [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 reading L'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."^[10]
• The film Irma Vep (1996) contains a sequence that evokes the Lettrist aesthetic.^[11]
• Michael Jacobson's novella The Giant's Fence (2006) is a hypergraphic work, apparently inspired by the Letterists.

Fluxus (from to flow) is an art movement noted for the blending of different artistic disciplines, primarily visual art but also music and literature. ... Ben Vautier (born on July 18, 1935 in Naples, Italy), also known as just Ben, is a French artist. ...

Sources and further reading

English translations of Letterist works

Although the Letterists have published literally hundreds of books, journals and substantial articles in French, virtually none of these have been translated into English. One recent exception is:

• Pomerand, Gabriel. Saint Ghetto of the Loans (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006).

Maurice Lemaître has privately published translations of a few of his own works, though these are not at all easy to find:

• Conversations about Letterism.
• Correspondence. Maurice Lemaitre-Kirk Varnedoe.
• Has The Film Already Started?
• The Lettrist Cinema.

Secondary works in English

• Curtay, Jean-Paul. Letterism and Hypergraphics: The Unknown Avant-Garde, 1945–1985 (Franklin Furnace, 1985).
• Debord, Guy and Gil J. Wolman.Why Lettrism?
• Ferrua, Pietro, ed. Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Letterism (Portland: Avant-Garde, 1979)
• Foster, Stephen C., ed. Lettrisme: Into the Present (University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1983).
• Home, Stewart. The Assault on Culture (Aporia Press and Unpopular Books, 1988).
• Isou/Satié/Gérard Bermond. Le peinture lettriste (bilingual edition, Jean-Paul Rocher, 2000).
• Jolas, Eugene. 'From Jabberwocky to Lettrism', Transition 48, no. 1 (1948).
• Jorn, Asger. 'Originality and Magnitude (on Isou's System)', in his Open Creation And Its Enemies (Unpopular Books, 1994).
• Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces (Penguin, 1989).
• Monsegu, Sylvain. 'Lettrism', in Art Tribes, ed. Achille Bonito Oliva (Skira, 2002).
• Seaman, David W. Concrete Poetry in France (UMI Research, 1981).

Guy Ernest Debord (December 28, 1931, in Paris – November 30, 1994, in Champot) was a writer, film maker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Lettrist International and Situationist International (SI). ... Gil Joseph Wolman was a French poet and writer born in Paris in 1929 and died in Paris in 1995. ... Stewart Home (born 1962) is a writer, subcultural pamphleteer, underground art historian, and activist. ... Samizdat operation based in East London producing leaflets, pamphlets and books. ... Eugene Jolas (1894-1952) was a writer, translator and literary critic. ... Asger Jorn (March 3, 1914 - May 1, 1973) was born in Vejrum, Jutland, Denmark under the name Oluf Jørgensen. ...

General introductions and surveys in French

• Bandini, Mirella. Pour une histoire du lettrisme (Jean-Paul Rocher, 2003).
• Curtay, Jean-Paul. La poésie lettriste (Seghers, 1974).
• Devaux, Fréderique. Le Cinéma Lettriste (1951–1991) (Paris Experimental, 1992).
• Lemaître, Maurice. Qu’est-ce que le lettrisme? (Fischbacher, 1954).
• Sabatier, Roland. Le lettrisme (ZEditions, n.d. [1988]).
• Satié, Alain. Le lettrisme, la creation ininterrompue (Jean-Paul Rocher, 2003).

Discography

• 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 in Futura poesia sonora (Cramps Records CRSCD 091–095, 1978).
• Maurice Lemaître, Oeuvres poètiques et musicales lettristes (1993). (Audio cassette).
• Isidore Isou, Poèmes lettristes 1944-1999 (Alga Marghen 12vocson033, 1999). (12" l.p., 33 r.p.m., 500 copies).
• Isidore Isou, Musiques lettristes (Al Dante II-AD04, 1999). (Compact disc).
• Isidore Isou, Juvenal (symphonie 4) (Al Dante, 2004). (Compact disc).
• Gil J. Wolman, L'Anticoncept (Alga Marghen 11VocSon032, 1999). (12" l.p., 33 r.p.m., 400 copies).
• Gil J. Wolman, La mémoire (Ou, no. 33, 1967).
• L'Autonomatopek 1 (Opus International, nos. 40–41, 1973). (7" e.p.) Contains work by Isou, Dufrêne, Wolman, Brau etc.

External links

• Letterism—French avant-garde film and visual poetry
• Texts of The Anticoncept and Howls for Sade
• Avant-garde films, including Traité de bave et d’éternité and Howls for Sade
• Avant-garde audio recordings, including some letterism
• Alain Satié’s site
• Roland Sabatier site (English and French)
• Official letterism site (French)
• Official excoördism site (French)
• Letterist blog (French)
• the tsiou's gallery (la galerie du tsiou) (French)
• A radio program on letterism with several texts by Bernard Girard (French)

Notes

1. ^ 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).
2. ^ See Isou, Réflexions sur André Breton (1948).
3. ^ For fuller chronological details, see Curtay, La poésie lettriste; Foster, Lettrisme: Into the Present; Sabatier, Le lettrisme.
4. ^ Interview with Roland Sabatier, 15 November 1999, in La Termitière, no. 8.
5. ^ Andrew Hussey, The Game of War (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001), p. 37.
6. ^ See Satié, Le lettrisme, la creation ininterrompue (Paris: Jean-Paul Rocher, 2003), 56n34.
7. ^ See Patrick Straram, La veuve blanche et noire un peu détournée (Paris Sens&Tonka, 2006), 21–22, 81–82; Figures de la négation (Saint-Etienne Métropole: Musée d'Art Moderne, 2004), 78–80.
8. ^ Figures de la négation, 118; Henri Chopin, Poésie sonore (Paris: Jean-Michel Place, 1979), 88-93.
9. ^ Figures de la négation, 76; Gil J. Wolman, Défense de mourir (Paris: Editions Allia, 2001), 144–45.
10. ^ Quoted in Art Tribes, ed. Achille Bonito Oliva (Milan: Skira, 2002), 274n2.
11. ^ http://www.arkepix.com/kinok/DVD/ASSAYAS_Olivier/dvd_noise.html (French site)