- Isidore Isou
Isidore Isou (
January 31 ,1925 –July 28 ,2007 ), born Ioan-Isidor Goldstein, was aRomania n-born French poet, film critic and visual artist. He was the founder ofLettrism , an art and literary movement which owed inspiration toDada andSurrealism .Biography
Born into a Jewish family in
Botoşani , Isou started his career as anavant-garde art journalist duringWorld War II , shortly after the August 23 coup saw Romania joining the Allies ("seeRomania during World War II "). With the future social psychologistSerge Moscovici , he founded the magazine "Da", which was soon after closed down by the authorities.fr icon [http://psycho.univ-lyon2.fr/article.php3?id_article=347 "Serge Moscovici. Repères bio-bibliographiques"] , at the Institut de Psychologie; retrievedAugust 1 ,2007 ] He moved toParis , having developed many concepts that intended as a total artistic renewing starting from their lower levels. He called himself a "Lettriste", a movement of which he was initially the only member (at the age of 16 he had published the "Manifesto" in 1942) and published a system of Lettristhypergraphics . Others soon joined him, and the movement continues to grow, albeit at times under a confusing number of different names.In the 1960s Lettrist, Lettrist-influenced works and Isidore Isou gained a great deal of respect in France. The influential writer
Guy Debord and the artistGil J. Wolman worked with Isou for a while, before breaking away to form theLettrist International , which latter merged with theInternational Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus , and theLondon Psychogeographical Association to form theSituationist International , a dissidentrevolutionary group. This is how Lettrist art influenced theposter s,barricade s, even clothing in the attempted revolution of 1968. Although it seemed a highly self-contained art in the post-war period, in 1968 it suddenly became more deeply involved in active social change than such movements asExistentialism andSurrealism , and came closer to producing actual transformation than these movements.Isou's final public appearance was at the
University of Paris onOctober 21 ,2000 . [David Seaman, [http://www.thing.net/~grist/lnd/lettrist/isou-sor.htm "Isidore Isou a la Sorbonne"] , at [http://www.thing.net/ Thing.net] ; retrievedAugust 1 ,2007 ] Crippled by ill health, he remained house-bound until his death in 2007. Many of his works, and those of the other Lettrists, have recently been reprinted in new editions, together with much hitherto unpublished material, most notably Isou's very large "La Créatique ou la Novatique (1941-1976)" (1,390 pages).In
July 2007,Kino International released a DVD collection "" which included Isou's film "Traité de Bave et d'Èternité " ("Venom and Eternity") (1951).Quote
*"Je préfère mon nouveau dégoût à l'ancien goût dégoûtant." ("I'd rather have my new distaste than the old distasteful taste.")
Published works
*"Les Champs de Force de la Peinture Lettriste", Avant-Garde, Paris, 1964.
*"Manifesto of Lettrist Poetry: A Commonplaces about Words".
*"Introduction à une Nouvelle Poésie et une Nouvelle Musique", Paris,Gallimard , 1947.
*"Les Journaux des Dieus", 1950/51.
*"La Créatique ou la Novatique (1941-1976)", Éditions Al Dante, 2003.References
External links
* [http://web.mac.com/rolandsabatier/iWeb/Site%2014/%20ISIDORE%20ISOU%3A%20lettrisme.html Site Isidore isou]
* [http://www.391.org/manifestos/isidoreisou_letterist.htm "Letterist Manifesto"]
* [http://www.ubu.com/sound/isou.html Isidore Isou at Ubuweb]
* [http://isidoreisou.org Isidore Isou Institute]
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