Editor’s Note: According to Maurice Lemaître. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, this exhibition traces the influence of Antonin Artaud in the various ramifications of the Letterist movement, which was founded by Isidore Isou and Gabriel Pomerand in 1946. At the same time it shows how his legacy was reinterpreted by some important figures from the North American avant-garde (John Cage, David Tudor, Robert Rauschenberg, Franz Kline…), as it examines the decisive role played in this process by the Black Mountain College (where in 1952 the writer Mary Caroline Richards read a fragment of her still unfinished translation of Le théâtre et son double that would be the inspiration for Cage’s Theatre Piece #1), and analyses Artaud’s influence on both Brazilian concrete poetry and on the work of two artists from the same country, Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, who explored the potential of a more corporeal reception of the work of art. In addition, through a wide array of documentary and audiovisual materials, the exhibition shows how his book, Van Gogh le suicidé de la société became a key element of the anti-psychiatry movement.

Actor, artist, poet and madman, Antonin Artaud exploded onto the world with radical ideas, ejecting actors and spectators, alike, out of their comfort zones in the name of progressive art. Contemporary theatre has never been the same since Antonin Artaud introduced the world to his “Theatre of Cruelty,” where the word became flesh. His work with the theatre puts the spectator into the firing line of the stage. He transports us into an interactive world that transcends the limitations of language into pictorial sounds and a world of onomatopoeias abandoned by conventional structures. Artaud didn’t only leave his mark on contemporary theatre, but his influence spilled into the plastic arts and poetry spawning the Lettrist movement in Paris, the avant-garde world of theatre and music at Black Mountain College, a progressive art school in the mountains of North Carolina through to art therapy, and concrete poetry in Brazil. artes fine arts magazine

The plastic arts have always been in conversation with their surroundings, whether with science, philosophy, poetry and literature. Artaud’s legacy became a key component in the redefinition of art and aesthetic languages, through poetry or painting, whose vast influence played a key role in post-war art and culture in direct ways and sometimes with more subtle undertones.

The exhibition, “The Specters of Artaud” at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain takes us on a tour through Artaud’s world of disembodied poetry in the scope of three hundred works, from Paris to São Paolo. The curious aspect of the exhibition is that its focus is not only on the visual arts of painting and photography, but it offers the crowds an audial feast, in which language is deconstructed into its basest elements and redefined. Lettrist cinema is explored in conjunction with Concrete Poetry and the avant-garde psychiatric methods that were in development in 1950s’ Brazil, where Artaud’s ghost continues to haunt us in the background.

In any art historical context, most specifically in the scope of the avant-garde, we can trace their ancestry back to earlier movements, and the 1950s and 60s are no exception. The exhibition on display at the Reina Sofia is the first to focus on Artaud’s legacy in the mid-twentieth century, and beyond the scope of the theatre.

Before looking into how Antonin Artaud affected the art world after his death, we need examine him in life. His greatest written work is “Le théâtre et son double,” the theatre and its double, in which Artaud introduced the concept of a “Theatre of Cruelty” where speech belongs to the body and is not dictated by a script, inciting a subordination of language. This not only entails eliminating a storyline or a plot, but also attacks intelligible speech.

“We must get rid of our superstitious valuation of texts and written poetry. Written poetry it is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed” – Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and its Double [1].

The “Theatre of Cruelty” concept is based on turning theatre into an inimitable experience, where each production is unique and can never be repeated. Artaud’s obsession with words and symbolism seeps through into his entire body of work, from his poetry where words are deconstructed into their basic phonetics to his love of Balinese theatre that inspired a form of bodily hieroglyphics. Even in his sketches and painting, Artaud’s love of symbols and creation of a pictorial language, can be seen alongside an interest in bodily expression, which manifested around the time Artaud returned to drawing in 1945 during his institutionalisation.

The topic of Artaud’s mental health is vitally important when discussing his sphere of influence, decades after his death. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Artaud spent the last years of his life going from asylum to asylum, where he underwent electroshock treatment. The mistreatment of Artaud by his psychiatrist Gaston Ferdière, who went on to treat Lettrist, Isadore Isou, inspired a wide group of anti-psychiatry movements. Artaud’s return to drawing in his later years coincided with his stay in psychiatric institutions, due to Ferdière’s open support in favour of art therapy. Artaud’s art works from this time are under a controversial spotlight as to whether his return to drawing should be viewed in a psychiatric context or an artistic one. While Artaud refused to have his works dealt with under any psychiatric association, his critics continued to refer to Artaud’s mental health issues and institutionalisation for years to come. Artaud has been tainted with the brush of the “mad genius” yet his creativity and innovation are more complex than that, and to trivialise his artistic endeavours by limiting him to his mental health is short sighted.

“I have never mistaken madness for artistic talent, though, and I have always refused to see Artaud’s works or the works of Engenho de Dentro painters as the fruits of madness. For personalities such as these, madness is undoubtedly part of their way of viewing and feeling life but not the determining factor in their artistic creation.”  ~Ferreira Gullar [2].

One of Artaud’s final works, his last recording which was banned from broadcast, titled “Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu,” To have done with the judgement of God, intensified Artaud’s exploration of the dissolution of codified boundaries. At the time of his “Pour en finir..,” poets and composers were examining and redefining music and poetry, drawing on the importance of questioning language and the body. However, Artaud’s last work went further than his “Theatre of Cruelty,” “Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu” critiqued militarism, rationality and the bourgeois society in the post-war era.

Contemporary art is often centralised around the influence of the neo-Dada movement in post-war art, where we look to Duchamp in place of Artaud as the father of modern art, but Antonin Artaud’s subtle, if not revolutionary impact, on the modern art world is indeed felt. His surrealist film “The Seashell and the Clergyman” (1928), directed by Germaine Dulac, went on to influence surrealist icons Salvador Dalí and Luis Bruñel in their masterpiece “Un Chien Andalou.” The scope of his influence even reached out to the Beat Generation, through the poet Allan Ginsberg. Artaud’s “Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu,” inspired Ginsberg in his most famous poem “Howl.”

In the scope of the exhibition on display at the Reina Sofia, the examination of Artaud’s influence shows a direct and indirect interplay between his decedents and their master’s voice. Opening the exhibition, the spectator is haunted by Artaud’s voice reciting “Madness and Black Magic” in preparation for launching them down the rabbit hole into a world that moves beyond the confines of language, with artists from France, The US and Brazil who drew selectively and eclectically from Antonin Artaud’s body of work.

The exhibition introduces us to the Lettrists who experimented with Artaud’s philosophy concerning the deconstruction of language. The manifesto of this lesser-known French movement from the 1950s sought to whittle down poetry to the letter, and like Artaud, reinvent language in both written and spoken combination. The Lettrist movement is however not limited to poetry, film and performance, but also incorporated painting.

It is perhaps in the Lettrists we can see a strong presence of Artaud’s ghost, not only in their use of the spoken word but in their sketches and painting. Artaud’s “Jamais reel et toujours vrai…” dating back to 1945 is set against the works of Isidore Isou, Gabriel Pomerand and Maurice Lemâitre, all of whom found an aesthetic bond with the creator of the “Theatre of Cruelty.” Antonin Artaud held a fascination with the occult, most notably astrology, and with symbology. This interest is reflected in his numerous sketches, which have been translated into the Lettrist works that are on display in the Reina Sofia.

Isidore Isou judged language as useless, an extinct medium that has contaminated from being handed down over generation after generation. The efforts of the lettrists sought to transform language to accommodate it for new realities to suit a modern aesthetic and turn it into a reflection of its political age. This linguistic reinvention acted as a metaphor for the reinvention of a post-war world and social order.

In their artwork, the Lettrists expressed literature in a graphic, hieroglyphic notation where symbols could express a world more accurately as themselves or at the very least, as a visual representation. Lettrist literature blurs the line with the plastic arts, where the books by Isou, such as “Journaux des dieux,” The journals of the gods, construct a literary narrative using a system of hieroglyphics in a hybrid text of symbols and painting. This intent to transcend the limitations of language in an aesthetic and psychological manner all extends back to Artaud, but it’s key to examine this linguistic purge in the political and social context of the time.

The Lettrists created a movement of art and literature after Auschwitz. Literature has evolved, or perhaps even devolved, from the lettrists’ point of view to eliminate language of any trace of systemisation that has become synonymous with a tool of occlusion and political oppression of from the Second World War. The métagraphies of Lettrists like Isou, Lemâitre and Pomerand seek to break away from figurative and metaphorical language of the conventional Latin letter system. In turn, their language sought direct communication with the audience though images to evoke the traumatic and even banal experiences of a post-war Europe. This breakdown between the audience and the writer in lettrism allows the reader to become responsible in their interpretation of what is presented on page to them, making them a part of the spectacle the same way Artaud’s theatre did.

Discontinuity does exist between the Lettrists and Artaud’s philosophy. The Lettrists sought to break up language into a primitivist form, however their forms and symbols are easily recognisable through alphabets from foreign languages and recognisable linear narratives. If we consider how lettrism sought to bypass Dada, if Dada were able to reduce poetry down to the phoneme the way lettrism did, it moved beyond this linguistic question by focussing on bodily intonation. The divided the articulation of phonemes and sounds turned into tongue clicks, hiccups, growls and lisps. Graphic signs were constructed to notate these lettrist symphonies.

Lettrists such as Gil Wolman, François Dufrêne and Jean-Louis Brau were closer in action to Artaud’s philosophy, externalising sounds that focused on a delivery that originated within the body. These artists turned their works into “Physical Poetry” consisting of singular and somatic sounds that interrupted language in its rational form and questioned its function.

The exhibition showcases four core Lettrist films from Isou, Lemâitre, Wolman and Dufrêne, where we can see how lettrist cinema explores the disjunction between how one hears and sees in a cinematic contest. However, when we take into account the lettrist use of cinema and sound, this is where their work departs from Artaud’s philosophy.

Antonin Artaud opposed sound in cinema, where according to him the screen and the loudspeaker belonged to two distinct and disjointed worlds. The sound and the image were not only out of sync, but didn’t exist in the same space.

“The noise is produced by a loudspeaker, by a record instead of being produced by the orchestra but its value is no different. For as synchronized it as it may be, it does not come from the screen, from that virtual, absolute space that the screen spreads in front of us. Whatever one does, our ear will always hear it in the theatre, while our eyes sees elsewhere than in the theatre what happens on the screen.” – Antonin Artaud [3]

While the works of Antonin Artaud were not published in English during his lifetime, his voice and philosophy spread across the Atlantic to Black Mountain College and the rest of the United States in the 1950s. Artaud’s works struck up a conversation between John Cage, David Tudor, Mary Caroline Richards and Pierre Boulez.

While Tudor prepared himself to play Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata (1948), he found the complexity of the score challenging and turned to Pierre Boulez’s writings for assistance. In Boulez’s article titled “Prepositions” he found a reference to Antonin Artaud, inducing him to learn French so he could read The Theatre and its Double: “Music should be a collective hysteria and magic, violently modern- along the lines of Antonin Artaud.” [4]

Artaud’s “aesthetic violence” became key in David Tudor’s performances and John Cage’s compositions. While Tudor looked for the technical applications of Artaud’s philosophy in his performances, John Cage examined his work for the effects in performance and reception in theatre and music.

Artaud’s specific influence in Black Mountain College is conveyed through “Theatre Piece #1” at the Reina Sofia, with archival documentation ranging from photographs, letters and program notes, even musical scores. Exiting from the darkened room of Lettrist symphonies the exhibition brings you into a large bright room, where Robert Rauschenberg’s four-panel White Painting, an exhibition copy, acts as a screen turning the space into an installation. This recreates the use of white paintings and panels in the production of “Theatre Piece #1,” while unidentified slides of white light are projected onto it, to stir the viewer’s imagination.

The exhibition is peppered with photographs and materials from the era of “Theatre Piece #1,” conveying a live performance in the scope of an audio-visual exhibition. Theatre Piece #1 at Black Mountain College became a key in the installation of countermodernism in the USA in the mid-twentieth century, avant-garde and outcast in itself during a time when abstract expressionism dominated.

Concrete Poetry became a descendent of Artaud’s literary and theatrical works. It originated in Sweden, when poet Öyvind Fahlström published his manifesto in 1953. However in 1952, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in São Paulo, Agusto de Campos formed the Noigandres group. This group of Brazilian Concrete poets focused on the efficiency of communication, yet laced with impurities drawing from bodily references and redoubled meanings.

In Rio de Janiero, critic and poet Ferreira Gullar started to read Artaud’s works, whose influence would push Gullar into further visual deconstruction which would result in spatialised language in his “poemas espaciais,” spatial poems. Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica also examined poetry and art within the context of Artaud’s linguistic philosophy, whose visual poetry of geometric works sought to express concrete poetry through images instead of languages, playing with the visual construction of concrete written poetry.

Another important aspect of 1950s Brazil’s inheritance of the works of Artaud are the anti-psychiatry movement. The exhibition deals with two sides of this movement – one from the point of view of the Parisian lettrists and the other in Brazil through the work of psychiatrist Nise da Silveira.

Da Silveira knew of Artaud’s work, and set up a workshop where her patients could engage in art therapy. The work which initially served as a method of psychiatric therapy turned into a centre of creativity, and in 1952, da Silveira pushed for the Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente, the Museum of Images of the Unconscious, to be founded. Lygia Clark, who was involved in the visual art side of the concrete poetry movement, contributed work to gallery, as she turned to therapy for material for her art during the 70s.

The workshop set up by Nise da Silveira soon became a site of intense exchange, not only between patients as artists, but critics, doctors and poets. Silveira’s avant-garde approach to psychiatry critiqued the institution in general and aggressive practices such as lobotomy and electroshock treatment, the latter of which Artaud underwent many times. Da Silveira’s workshop challenged the perception of art, where historically art connected to mental illness is considered “outsider art,” also known as “arte virgem” unschooled art. Da Silveira’s work is a crucial aspect to the South American contribution of this field, but it was used as a form of therapy, especially in the 1970s, in opposition to traditional psychiatric methods.

This anti-psychiatric campaign was a core part of the Lettrist movement in Paris. Isadore Isou experienced a breakdown in 1968 and was institutionalised. He underwent treatment by Gaston Ferdière, who had treated Artaud in Rodez. Isou was held against his will for almost a month, and launched a vicious campaign against Ferdière on release. Many posters, tracts and pamphlets were published, which are on display at the Reina Sofia, these depict Isou’s campaign against draconian psychiatric methods, culminating with the publication of “Antonin Artaud torturé par les psychiatres,” Antonin Artaud tortured by the psychiatrists in 1970.

The exhibition challenges and tackles a mountain of complex issues. Since it’s impossible to discuss Artaud’s scope of influence without examining his own work, life and knowledge. Antonin Artaud fought against social authority and conventional representation, he challenged how authority was expressed in language and fought against the institution of language and language as an institution. The exhibition isn’t about Artaud’s own work, but looks at his lingering presence in his illegitimate heirs, investigating and showcasing his legacy and legend. Specters of Artaud isn’t a display of paintings with easy comparisons, it’s an intentionally uncomfortable audio-visual, interactive experience that spanned three continents, making the spectator a part of the show itself. “Specters of Artaud” brings the “Theatre of Cruelty” into the space of the exhibition hall.

By Jennifer Walker, Contributing Writer

Specters of Artaud. Language and Art in the 1950s includes about three hundred works by artists primarily from three geographical areas – France, the United States and Brazil – and it suggests that the process of appropriation, recontextualization and translation of Artaud’s multi-faceted legacy is actually part of a broader intellectual history, one that is closely linked to the emergence, on both sides of the Atlantic, of a set of interdisciplinary art practices that called for the development of alternative models of modernity. Visit the Museo Nacional Central de Arte Reina Sofia Web site at http://www.museoreinasofia.es/index_en.html

Learn more about the influence of North Carolina’s Black Mountain College on art and artists in the 1950s, at: http://www.artesmagazine.com/2010/09/north-carolina%e2%80%99s-black-mountain-college-a-new-deal-in-american-art-education/

Watch Orson Wells interview the radical poet Isidore Isou in Paris during the height of the Letterist movement:

 

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Author’s Note: I would like to offer Milena Ruiz from the Reina Sofia’s press department a big thank you for helping me to prepare this article.

[1] Antonin Artaud, “The theatre and its double,” translated by Mary Caroline Richards (New York Grove Press Inc. (1958): 78

[2] Ferreira Gullar “The Innumerable States of Being,” The Reina Sofia Catalogue “The Specters of Artaud” (2012):189

[3] Antonin Artaud in a letter to Yvonne Allendy, M.C Richards, “The Theatre of Antonin Artaud”, 347

[4] Pierre Boulez, “Propositions,” in Polyphonie 2 (1948): 65-72