The Art manifesto has been a recurrent feature associated with the avant-garde in Modernism. Art manifestos are mostly extreme in their rhetoric and intended for shock value to achieve a revolutionary effect. They often address wider issues, such as the political system. Typical themes are the need for revolution, freedom (of expression) and the implied or overtly stated superiority of the writers over the status quo. The manifesto gives a means of expressing, publicising and recording ideas for the artist or art group— even if only one or two people write the words, it is mostly still attributed to the group name.
Manifestos were introduced with the Futurists in Italy in 1909, and readily taken up by the Vorticists, Dadaists and the Surrealists after them: the period up to World War II created what are still the best known manifestos. Although they never stopped being issued, other media such as the growth of broadcasting tended to sideline such declarations. Due to the internet there has been a resurgence of the form, and many new manifestos are now appearing to a potential worldwide audience. The Stuckists have made particular use of this to start worldwide movement of affiliated groups.
Manifestos typically consist of a number of statements, which are numbered or in bullet points and which do not necessarily follow logically from one to the next. Tristan Tzara’s explanation of the manifesto (Feeble Love & Bitter Love, II) captures the spirit of many:
Although it might be assumed that an art manifesto's primary purpose is to communicate the aesthetics of the group issuing it, this turns out not to be the case, nor is it an art form in its own right. The norm is a hybrid form that combines a theatrical performance with political declamation. "Screeching Voices: Avant-Garde Manifestos in the Cabaret", Martin Puchner Retrieved April 4, 2006 Artists have not restricted themselves to their own genre, although they have often used their skills in the presentation of the text through graphics and type faces, resulting in a combination of "art, publicity, criticism, and advertising"."Looking at Artists' Manifestos, 1945–1965", Stephen B. Petersen Retrieved April 4, 2006
Martin Puchner stresses the inescapable connection between the art manifesto and the political manifesto, not least because artists also issued overt political statements and allied themselves with political groups. Marinetti tried to gain a political office and both Italian and Russian Futurists issued political manifestos. Lenin was espoused by the Zurich Dadaists, and Rosa Luxemburg by those in Berlin. In England the Suffragettes were supported by Vorticist Wyndham Lewis, and the Communists by Surrealist Andre Breton in France. However, the attentions of the artists were often not welcomed. Marinetti found himself stymied by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and Velimir Khlebnikov by Leon Trotsky, while Breton was an outcast from the French Communist party and Guy Debord resorted to starting an independent group. "Poetry of the Revolution. Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes" introduction, Martin Puchner Retrieved April 4, 2006
In 1964 this was given as a lecture to the Architectural Association, which was taken over by students as an artistic "Happening". One of Metzger's Ealing College students was Pete Townshend, who later cited Metzger's concepts as an influence for his famous guitar-smashing during performances of The Who.
It begins:
The full title is "Manifesto of Industrial Painting: For a unitary applied art". It was originally published in Italian in Notizie Arti Figurative No. 9 (1959). Shortly afterwards it was published in Internationale Situationniste no.3 in a French translation. It was translated into English in 1997 by Molly Klein. It has only 70 points and is written a grand utopian rhetorical manner, with statements such as , "A new, ravenous force of domination will push men toward an unimaginable epic poetry." One of its themes is the reconciliation of industry and nature:
This manifesto has been copyrighted since 1989 by the Gagosian Gallery. It begins with the prompts for the later statements in the manifesto, the first line being, "Due to the fact that I have painted monochromes for fifteen years". It is a meditation by the artist about his work and life:
This is a short hand-printed document of three paragraphs interspersed with collage elements from dictionary definitions related to "flux". It is written in lower case, with upper case for certain key phrases, some underlined. Its first paragraph is:
S.C.U.M. is an acronym for the "Society for Cutting up Men" and the manifesto was not specifically about art. However, it has become part of art history, because it was published in 1968, the same year that Solanas, who had spent time in Andy Warhol's "Factory", shot and nearly killed him. It also has sections that address art ideas. Solanas spent her last years as a street prostitute and died in 1988.
It is a document of just over 11,000 words. Its tone and basic theme are evident from the title, but it is not quite as clear cut as it seems and some women are admitted to be as bad as men (women artists, for example). SCUM wants to "destroy all useless and harmful objects — cars, store windows, "Great Art", etc." In a section on "'Great Art' and 'Culture'" it states:
The full title of the manifesto is "Maintenance Art—Proposal for an Exhibition"; it is considered a seminal document of feminist art. She was pregnant at the time, and decided to reinterpret household chores by becoming a "maintenance artist", where she would "perform" them. Through this such "maintenance" revealed itself as an important condition for freedom and social functioning and she extended the idea beyond feminism to projects like the 11 month Touch Sanitation, involving 8,500 New York workers."Touch Sanitation", Robert C. Morgan Retrieved April 7, 2006 More recently she has addressed a landfill site on Staten Island."Learning from Landfill", Daniel Belasco, Jewish Culture News, Spring 2002 Retrieved April 7, 2002 from www2.jewishculture.org
The manifesto was followed by a questionnaire (1973-76) and was concerned with making art of what would normally be seen as routine, mundane chores. She wrote, "After the revolution, who is going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?". She followed this up with a "Sanitation Manifesto!" (1984)"Power and Glory in Sisterhood", Edward M. Gomez, New York Times, October 13, 2002 Retrieved April 7, 2006 from schroederromero.com The Maintenance Manifesto stated:
Jeff Donaldson was a cofounder of Afri-Cobra, a black artist collective founded in the late 1960s and based in Chicago. He helped organise international shows of black artists and wrote influential manifestos."African American Art", artlex.com Retrieved April 7, 2006 AfriCobra is an acronym for "African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists". This was derived from combining the term for Africa with "Cobra", the "Coalition of Black Revolutionary Artists". The manifesto stated the groups objectives to be the development of a new African American art, involving social responsibility, community artistic involvement and promotion of pride in Black identity. There were parallels with African American musical innovations, and the advocacy of a complementary aesthetic involving sublime imagery and high-key colours."Movements, Groups and Kindred Spirits", asrc.cornell.edu Retrieved April 7, 2006
Valie Export is a Viennese performance artist who worked with the Actionists and catalogued their events. She did her own confrontational body art, with a philosophy of "Feminist Actionism", inviting people to touch her in the street. She issued "written manifestos predicting with vengeance the future of women's art" and "made important theoretical contributions to communicating a personal feminism in performance. She felt that it was important politically to create art. 'I knew that if I did it naked, I would really change how the (mostly male) audience would look at me.'""Inducing Knowledge by Enduring Experience: The Function of a Postmodern Pragmatic Aesthetic in Linda Montano's Living Art", Alisa A. Brandenburg, 2004 Retrieved April 7, 2006
This was posted in Maidstone Art College by Charles Thomson, then a student at the college. 21 years later he co-wrote the Stuckist manifestos with Billy Childish. Thomson was also a member of the punk-based The Medway Poets. The manifesto rejects "department store" art and "elitist" gallery art, as well as sophistication and skill which are "easily obtainable ... and are used both industrially and artistically to conceal a poverty of content." The priority is stated to be "the exploration and expression of the human spirit".
At this time Stewart Home operated as a one-person movement "Generation Positive", founding a punk band called White Colours and publishing an art fanzine Smile, which mostly contained art manifestos for the "Generation Positive". The rhetoric of these resembled the 1920s Berlin Dadaist manifestos. His idea was that other bands round the world should also call themselves White Colours and other magazines be titled Smile. The first part of the book Neoist Manifestos/The Art Strike Papers featured abriged versions of his manifesto-style writings from Smile."Stewart Home", Wikipedia Retrieved April 7, 2006
The whole title is "the Why Cheap Art? manifesto". It is a single sheet, issued by the Bread and Puppet Theater "in direct response to the business of art and its growing appropriation by the corporate sector." There are seventeen statements, most of them beginning "Art is" and ending with an exclamation mark, set out mostly in upper case, sometimes mixed in with lower case, in different typefaces which get bolder through the leaflet till the final statement of a large HURRAH. It starts:
This has the full title of "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth-Century." Donna Haraway is a cultural historian. She advocates the deveopment of cyborgs ("cybernetic organisms") as the way forward for a post-gender society. This had a significant effect initially amongst academics. VNS Matrix, a group of Australian women artists and British cultural historian, Sadie Plant, established a cyberfeminist movement in 1994. From 1997, the Old Boys Network (OBN) has organised "Cyberfeminist Internationals"."Social Technologies: Deconstruction, subversion and the utopia of democratic communication", Inke Arns Retrieved April 7, 2006
The manifesto is five paragraphs, each with a subtitle, the first of which is "Art for All", summing up the popularist intent of their manifesto:
The manifesto was signed by Véronica Vera and Candida Royalle (both ex porn stars who had then directed their own porn movies), Annie Sprinkle, who gives explicit sexual one woman shows and performance artist Frank Moore, among other significant artists who use sex in their work."Beyond the Porno Manifesto", Martin Kreischer, January 2005 Retrieved April 8, 2006 In 7 short points, it founds an art movement, which "celebrates sex as the nourishing, life-giving force. We embrace our genitals as part, not separate, from our spirits", advocates the "attitude of sex-positivism", and wishes to "communicate our ideas and emotions ... to have fun, heal the world and endure.""Post Porn, Post Sex, A New Art Movement", Frank Moore, 1989-1993 Retrieved April 7, 2006
VNS Matrix was a cyberfeminist art collective founded in Adelaide, Australia, in 1991. Their manifesto, written in 1991, was translated over the years into many languages including Italian, French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese and Finnish. It begins:
Group Hangman was started by Billy Childish, Tracey Emin and two others in Medway, Kent in 1983 for a short time. Fourteen years later it reformed with more members (nearly all of whom later joined the Stuckists art group), but without Emin. At this point Childish wrote 6 short manifestos, each containing 7 – 12 statements. He says, "they were anarchic and contradictory - my favourite!"Billy Childish interview, trakmarx.com Retrieved April 7, 2006Some of the ideas resurfaced in the Stuckist manifestos written two years later. Point 9 of Communication 0001 states:
This was written on January 1, 1997, and was apparently "onboard the Cassini Huygens spacecraft on its mission to Saturn." Following the statement "We are transhumans", there is the explanation, "Transhumanist Arts reflects an extropic appreciation of aesthetics in a technologically enhanced world." After the manifesto is a "FAQ", which states, "Transhumanist Arts include creative works by scientists, engineers, technicians, philosophers, athletes, educators, mathematicians, etc., who may not be artists in the traditional sense, but whose vision and creativity are integral to transhumanity." The Manifesto is based on a Transhumanist Art Statement written in 1982. Cited as specific influences are "Abstract Art, Performance Art, Kinetic Art, Cubism, Techno Art, science fiction and Communications Art." Some collaborators of Vita-More's are named as Timothy Leary, Bill Viola and Francis Ford Coppola.
The Stuckists have grown in seven years from 13 artists in London to 137 groups in 34 countries, and claim, "Stuckism is the first significant art movement to spread via the Internet""A Stuckist on Stuckism", Charles Thomson, 2004 Retrieved April 7, 2006 The first 3 points of their numbered eponymous manifesto proclaim "a quest for authenticity", "painting is the medium of self discovery" and "a model of art which is holistic". The 4th point states, "Artists who don't paint aren't artists"; the 5th is, "Art that has to be in a gallery to be art isn’t art." Points are made against conceptual art, Britart, Charles Saatchi, art gimmicks and white wall galleries, while the amateur is hailed. The final point is:
There is an introduction followed by two sections—"Fractal art is" (4 bullet points) and "Fractal art is not" (3 bullet points). Fractal art has been around "15–20 years". It is obviously concerned with computer-generated fractal images, but advanced as art "in many respects similar to photography—another art form which was greeted by skepticism upon its arrival. Fractal images typically are manifested as prints, bringing Fractal Artists into the company of painters, photographers, and printmakers." The need for selection and skill is stressed, as is the need for the practitioner to be "expressive" and "creative". It concludes, "Most of all, Fractal Art is simply that which is created by Fractal Artists: ART."
Charles Alexander Moffat is a Canadian artist and Curator of the Lilith Gallery. The manifesto advocates Neo-Gothism (which started "as part of the punk movement") in 9 Statements, ranging from a paragraph to a short sentence, most of which are about the agenda that "We are social rebels, misfits, a society within a society, ignored to some extent but still there, thriving and becoming more popular than ever", and that "Gothic culture is more than just a bunch of clothes and dark art." He advicates what he says is "an art style that has been around since Francesco Goya in the early Romanticist Period! Cheers to the people, the designers, the writers and the artists who stand up and make a difference! Vive le resistance!"
This was written tongue-in-cheek, beginning, "'OK art' is an OK idea,—not great, but not bad either." It has the ring of truth when it states in point 4: "Art enthusiasts and cynics alike, leave an OK art exhibition saying 'that was OK'. No one is blown away but they don't feel cheated either."
This is a short manifesto with four numbered points and two concluding paragraphs, when the numbering runs out. It advocates quick, high volume production of work, disregarding aesthetics, consumption and invention in favour of discovery. It is a democratising inititiative: "The Crap Art movement tries, above all, to avoid the elitism and more-artistic-than-thou attitude which has effectively kept the creation of art solely in the hands of 'artists'. We hope that everyone can make art." However "The name 'crap art' does not mean to indicate that crap art is somehow worthless ... indeed, we believe that it is more worthwhile than most of what is commonly considered 'art'". Furthermore, "it's easy to make crap art: Just sit down and do it!"
This British manifesto is signed by over 100 painters and sculptors of professional standing. It opens by stating "the visual arts have reached a point of crisis. The art that has enjoyed critical acclaim in recent decades is shallow, trivial, ill-crafted and bankrupt of ideas." It condemns abstraction, "the same tired formula" of conceptualism, the Turner Prize and the destruction of art school academic training by the Coldstream Committee in the mid-20th century. It advocates technical accomplishment, reverence for the "great art that has been in the past" and a return to tradition while also, ironically, acknowledging:
No date, presumed post–2000
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