October 8, 2019
Special exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library organized by Kevin Repp, Curator of European Modern Books & Manuscripts. The exhibit runs at the Beinecke from Friday, August 30, 2019 to Sunday, December 15, 2019. For full exhibition description and program, click here.
The works in this exhibition challenge us to ask that question. How? Not necessarily by leaving words behind, though some of them certainly do this too. Lettrist hypergraphies blast the written word to bits. Not even vowels and consonants are safe in Gil Wolman’s megapneumies, or the cri-rythmes of François Dufrêne, or the recording sessions of Henri Chopin. But in most cases words abound, giving shape and substance to nearly all the compositions of experimental poetry here on display. Just as words have always done in poetry? Not quite. Even when they seem to make up the entire poem, words are by no means the only (or often even the primary) compositional element. Typography, layout, color (of ink or paint), even the material supports on which these words appear (paper, canvas, wood, iron, magnetic tape, to name a few) all come into play. But don’t such elements belong to words? Aren’t they simply part of them, an incidental part at that, subordinate but necessary for words to take concrete physical form and hence be read or heard? Well, no. Typography, layout, ink, material supports may be necessary for words to appear on a page, but they can also be deployed for other purposes, even at cross purposes, striking out at words, challenging their sense, altering or entirely subverting their meaning. By taking them up as compositional elements in their own right, experimental poets and artists of the avant-garde ask us to explore possibilities for creative expression in the purely visual, aural, tactile qualities of physical media. They ask us to look beyond words.
The range and diversity of experimental poetry is breathtaking. For more than a century now, the drive to uncover expressive potential in the nonverbal, physical side of the poetic medium has swept across continents and oceans, from Europe to America, Brazil to Japan, giving rise to new movements, forms, and genres along the way. Much as Cubists and Post-Impressionists set the stage for a revolution in modern art by exploring the flatness of the canvas and the physical qualities of paint, experiments with the raw material of printing, handwriting, and (later) voice and sound recording opened the door to a new understanding of poetry by altering perceptions of the nature and properties of language and its media. In fact, the two revolutions were deeply intertwined. Collage, montage, juxtaposition, superimposition, the inclusion of sculptural and performative aspects, found material, film, video, and sound, the predilection for mixed media in general are all common to contemporary art and experimental poetry today. So much so that the line between them, blurry from the start, seems increasingly difficult to draw. In both cases, ripples sent out by explosions at the turn of the twentieth century continue to widen. There’s no telling when or where they will end.
Beyond Words explores just a small part of this vast universe. Giving little more than a brief nod to the revolutionary work and significance of the historical avant-garde, the exhibition focuses almost exclusively on postwar Continental Europe. Even here, vital contributions from Eastern Europe are largely absent, despite the intimate ties that linked experimental poets on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Connections to British, American, and Japanese allies are likewise lost. Most conspicuous of all, the Brazilian concrete poets make only a cameo appearance, and primarily in the role of foils, their massive and global impact on experimental poetry and the postwar avant-garde notwithstanding. Such omissions are glaring. Without collaboration of like-minded artists around the world, the creative expanse of visual and sound poetry within postwar Europe itself is hardly imaginable. A glance at exhibition programs or the pages of avant-garde reviews such as Cinquième Saison, Ou, De Tafelronde, and Lotta Poetica suffices to see the importance Europeans placed on maintaining these global networks at the time. The choice to focus on works from the Continent—and on France, Belgium, and Italy in particular—obscures much that was essential to their composition and meaning. But it also leaves room to explore at least some intricacies of artists and movements that by and large still remain unfamiliar even to connoisseurs of postwar experimental poetry. The works of Isidore Isou, Maurice Lemaître, Gil Wolman, and François Dufrêne provide opportunity to consider the defining role of Lettrism and its various offshoots, relegated to the margins of many existing narratives, in shaping battles over visual and sound poetry in the 1950s and ‘60s. The crucial alliances of Paul de Vree, first with Henri Chopin and later with Sarenco, emerge from the shadows to reveal the centrality of Belgium in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Alongside Sarenco, Lamberto Pignotti, Luciano Caruso, and Ugo Carrega offer a glimpse into the complex, obscure, yet densely populated universe that is Italian poesia visiva. Although a small episode in a much larger story, the span of visual and sound poetry in postwar Europe easily stretches the bounds of a single exhibition.
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