Away on leave for a couple of weeks, I thought I'd leave a few thoughts from artists manifestos that might just have some relevance to our own time...
Aphorisms on Futurism
Die in the Past
Live in the Future.
WHAT can you know of expansion, who limit yourselves to compromise?
Mina Loy (1914)
Vorticist Manifesto
Beyond Action and Reaction we would establish ourselves.
The nearest thing in England to a great traditional French artist is a great revolutionary English one.
Wyndham Lewis and others (1914)
What is Architecture?
Painters and sculptors, become craftsmen again, smash the frame of salon art that is around your pictures, go into the buildings, bless them with fairy tales of colour, chisel ideas into the bare walls - and build in imagination...
Walter Gropius (1919)
First German Dada Manifesto
Art in it's execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest art will be that which in it's conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week, which is forever trying to collect it's limbs after yesterday's crash. The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time.
Richard Huelsenbeck (1918)
Draft Manifesto
Mankind is passing through the most profound crisis in it's history. An old world is dying, a new one is being born. Capitalist civilisation, which has dominated the economic, political and cultural life of continents, is in the process of decay...
John Reed Club of New York (1932)
Tentative ideas for a manifesto after 1 and 1/3 years at art school
There must be intercommunication. The genuine participating audience has been lost. Lack of audience reaction has been made a virtue. There must be a communal basis even if only from the artists themselves. Fragmentation and the perverted cult of individuality at all cost is a force which has rendered the artist impotent...The audience must become participators, the creators. The artist must abrogate his mystery.
Derek Jarman (1964)
The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism
Standing tall on the roof of the world, yet again, we hurl our defiance at the stars.
F.T. Marinetti (1909)
Thanks to Alex Danchev's excellent 100 Artists' Manifesto
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