Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou.Walker, John. (1992) "Lettrism" . Glossary of Art, Architecture & Design since 1945, 3rd. ed. 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 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.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). 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.See Isou, Réflexions sur André Breton (1948).
In French, the movement is called Lettrisme, from the French word for letter, arising from the fact that many of their early works centred on 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'.
History 1925.For fuller chronological details, see Curtay, La poésie lettriste; Foster, Lettrisme: Into the Present; Sabatier, Le lettrisme. Isidore Goldstein was born at Botoșani, Romania, on 31 January, to an Ashkenazi 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.Interview with Roland Sabatier, 15 November 1999, in La Termitière, no. 8.
1940s 1942–1944. Isou develops the principles of Lettrism, and begins writing the books that he would subsequently publish after his relocation to Paris. 1945. Aged twenty, Isou arrived in Paris on 23 August after six weeks of clandestine travel. In November, he founded 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).
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, aired live on national TV, 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 on Slime and Eternity), which will soon be followed by Lemaître's Le film est déjà commencé? (Has the film already started?), Wolman's L'Anticoncept (The Anticoncept), Dufrêne's Tambours du jugement premier (Drums of the First Judgment) and Guy Debord's Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howls for de Sade). Debord joins the group in April when they travel down to Cannes (where he was 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 Letterist 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.
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.'Andrew Hussey, The Game of War (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001), p. 37. In the sixties, several new members join group, including Jacques Spacagna (1961), Aude Jessemin (1962), Roberto Altmann (1962), Roland Sabatier (1963), Alain Satié (1964), Micheline Hachette (1964), Francois Poyet (1966), Jean-Paul Curtay (1967), Anton Perich (1967), Gérard-Philippe Broutin (1968). 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 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 on architecture, Isou's Manifeste pour le bouleversement de l'architecture (Manifesto for the Overhaul of Architecture).
1970s and 1980s General continuation of existing currents, together with new research into psychiatry, mathematics, physics, and chemistry. 1972 Mike 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 ...
1990s 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.See Satié, Le lettrisme, la creation ininterrompue (Paris: Jean-Paul Rocher, 2003), 56n34. He still continues to pursue traditional Letterist techniques, but now in relative isolation from the main group.
2000s 2007 Isou dies and The End of the Age of Divinity is published by an anonymous Situationist International member, which claims Isou was the real Mashiach (Messiah).
Key concepts
The Amplic (amplique) and the Chiselling (ciselante) phases