The Artists' Book Manifesto of American Painting in the 1960s

by Stephen J. Gertz

Walasse Ting

Until the late 1950s, the creation of artists' books had been primarily an European phenomenon. But 1¢ Life, a collection of poems by Chinese-born American painter Walasse Ting (1929-2010), and published in 1964 with sixty-two lithographs housed within silk-screen printed boards, represents an early example of a shift to the U.S. for their production, an extravagant declaration their migration to, and presence in, the New World, a flag boldly planted to stake their claim.

"The book very quickly became the manifesto of a new generation of painters and the expression of the new pictorial research that they were engaged in."

Kiki O.K. [Kogelnik]

Although 1¢ Life was Ting's conception, it was painter Sam Francis who drove this huge project to its conclusion; he recruited the artists and organized their work. Francis also sought and received funding for the project and brought in Swiss publisher Eberhard W. Kornfeld. The works were then exhibited at the Kornfeld und Klipstein gallery in Bern.

Tom Wesselmann

Sam Francis

The participating artists represented a Who's Who of the contemporary art scene. In addition to works by Francis and Ting, the lithographs in 1¢ Life are by Alan Davie, Alfred Jensen, James Rosenquist, Pierre Alechinsky, Kimber Smith, Alfred Leslie, Antonio Saura, Kiki "O.K." Kolgelnik, Robert Indiana, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Karel Appel, Tom Wesselmann, Bram van Velde, Joan Mitchell, Allan Kaprow, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, K.R.H. Sonderborg, Roy Lichtenstein, Oyvind Fahlström, Reinhoud d'Haese, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Mel Ramos, and Enrico Baj.

Robert Indian

The sixty-two lithographs (the images, heavily, although not exclusively, in the Pop idiom),  were created to accompany sixty-one of Ting's "raunchy pidgen English" poems based upon his observations of city life, snatches of street conversation, etc., i.e.:

Walasse Ting

Sun in my stomach
New moon in eyes
I want a hamburger
Loan me two dollars

Mel Ramos

In the poem above, Ting, who had ties to the Paris-based COBRA group of avant-garde artists, captures what could be a street person barking a command, startling,  a bit scary, a bit nuts, annoying, amusing and painful at the same time. Or, perhaps, a Pop snapshot  influenced by cartoonist E.C. Segar's popular character, J. Wellington Wimpy, the ground beef gourmand, Popeye the Sailor's gluttonous friend, and world-class mooch renowned for his 1/4 lb. entreaty to anyone he runs into, "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."  Or, that friend who's loaded but never has any cash. All the poem lacks is an appropriate coda:

Sam Francis

Parched is my throat

Thirsty my heart
I want an Orange Julius
Loan me 25 cents more

Thanks

See you later buddy

Roy Lichtenstein

Ting "wanted to publish the most international illustrated book, intended to illustrate his text, uniting tachisme, neo-dadaisme, pop art, and all other artistic movements.

Pierre Alechinsky

"The idea was born from global experience, close contact with culture, pseudo-culture, primitive existential worries, urban erotic and eastern wisdom. It was a Herculean task, for which only a Chinese would have been able to muster the perseverance" (publisher E. W. Kornfeld).

Andy Warhol

Blending Pop, abstract, and Conceptualist sensibilities "the pop artists formed the central core of the group. The book very quickly became the manifesto of a new generation of painters and the expression of the new pictorial research that they were engaged in...." {catalog excerpt from Gemini Fine Books & Arts, Ltd.).

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Cover by Walasse Ting and Roy Lichtenstein.

TING, Walasse. 1¢ Life. Edited by Sam Francis. Bern (E. Kornfeld), 1964. Trade edition, limited to 2000 copies, numbered in color stencil. Folio. 163, (11)pp. Sixty-two original color lithographs, including  thirty-six double-page, by Alan Davie (2), Alfred Jensen (3), Sam Francis (6), Walasse Ting (6), James Rosenquist, Pierre Alechinsky (5), Kimber Smith (6), Alfred Leslie (2), Antonio Saura, Kiki O.K. (2), Robert Indiana (2), Jean-Paul Riopelle (2), Karel Appel (5), Tom Wesselmann (2), Bram van Velde, Joan Mitchell, Allan Kaprow, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, K.R.H. Sonderborg, Roy Lichtenstein, Oyvind Fahlström, Reinhoud, Claes Oldenburg (2), Jim Dine, Mel Ramos (2), Enrico Baj (2). 19 illus.  Lithography by Maurice Beaudet, typography by Georges Girard.

Cloth portfolio, silkscreened in color, designed by Ting. D.j. Slipcase.

A limited edition of 100 numbered copies signed by each artist was also issued.

Castleman p. 208f.; Manet to Hockney 135; Grolier Club 55; Bibliothèque Nationale: 50 livres illustrés depuis 1947, no. 32.

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Images courtesy of Ars Libri Ltd., currently offering a copy of 1¢ Life, with our thanks.

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The Man Who Married Text And Art

 

Front endpaper to: SATIÉ, Alain. Pour ainsi dire. Gravures de Isidore Isou,
Maurice Lemaître, Roland Sabatier, Alain Satié, Jacques Spacagna.
Paris: Éditions PSI, 1971.

At the close of WWII, Isidore Goldstein, a precocious Romanian artist-poet born in 1925, came to Paris, looked around, decided to remake the arts, adopted the surname Isou, and staked his claim:

Destruction of WORDS for LETTERS

ISIDORE ISOU    Believes in the potential elevation beyond WORDS; wants
    the development of transmissions where nothing is
                  lost in the process; offers a verb equal to a shock. By
    the overload of expansion the forms leap up by themselves.
ISIDORE ISOU    Begins the destruction of words for letters.
ISIDORE ISOU    Wants letters to pull in among themselves all desires.
ISIDORE ISOU    Makes people stop using foregone conclusions, words.
ISIDORE ISOU    Shows another way out between WORDS and RENUNCIATION:
                   LETTERS. He will create emotions against language, for the
                   pleasure of the tongue.
           It consists of teaching that letters have a destination
     other than words.
ISOU            Will unmake words into their letters.
                Each poet will integrate everything into Everything
                Everything must be revealed by letters.
POETRY CAN NO LONGER BE REMADE.

ISIDORE ISOU IS STARTING
     A NEW VEIN OF LYRICISM.
           Anyone who can not leave words behind can stay back with them!

[Extract from Introduction à une Nouvelle Poésie et une Nouvelle Musique. Paris: Gallimard, 1947. Manifesto of Letterist Poetry, B. Innovation I.]

Isidore Isou. Self-Portrait. 1952.

Declaring himself a Lettriste while still a teenager in Romania, he established the Lettrism group in Paris of which he was the only member. No membership drive necessary, he was soon joined by others, Gabriel Pomerand amongst the first, all eager to explore the liberating possibilities unleashed by Lettrism, Isou in the lead.  By the 1960s, Lettrism theory, a marriage of art and typography with the letter as visual symbol, had spread across the entire landscape of culture and the visual arts as Hypergraphics, a refined synthesis of text and other media forms that is now firmly embedded into Western culture. Lettrism, once avante guard,  the cutting edge intellectual and artistic spearhead of the international post-War II youth rebellion, is now mainstream and fully integrated into Western consciousness.

Enzyklopädie des Osiris.
Berlin: Verlag grotesque kunst, 1919.
An example of Dada Quatsch (Pseudodada),  
a parody of Dada utterance and typography.

Lettrism’s roots lie in Dada and Surrealism. Though not his intent, Duchamp's Disques Optiques  is considered an exploration of the letter "O" as the central visual element.

Duchamp, Marcel. Rotorelief. Disques Optiques.
[Paris: Privately published, 1935].

Isou considered his fellow countryman, Tristan Tzara, to be Dada's foremost exponent, yet he believed that by the 1940s, the movement had become stagnant.

Cover to: ILIAZD (Ilia Zdanevitch). [Ledentu as a Beacon].
Paris: Éditions du 41º, 1923.

We also see a foreshadowing of Lettrism in Futurism and the work of Russian Futurist, Iliazd (Ilia Zdanevitch)...

Pages 52 and 53 from: ILIAZD (Ilia Zdanevitch). [Ledentu as a Beacon].
Paris: Éditions du 41º, 1923.

...And in the work of Italian Futurist Fortunato Depero.

DEPERO, Fortunato. Veni VD Vici.
Milano: Verzocchi (V&D), 1924.
Catalog for brick manufacturer V&D.

Lettrism gains traction during the 1950s, and after Isou publishes Le Lettrisme et l'Hypergraphie dans la peinture et la sculpture contemporaines in 1961 Lettrism becomes the dominant visual force of the 1960s and 1970s.

ISOU. Isidore. Le Lettrisme et l'Hypergraphie dans la peinture et la sculpture contemporaines.
Paris: Jean Grassin, 1961.

Lettrism crossed the Atlantic and influenced, amongst others, Ed Ruscha...

RUSCHA, Ed. Honk. 1962.

...And Roy Lichtenstein.

LICHTENSTEIN, Roy. Masterpiece. 1962.

By the late 1960s, the powerful influence of Lettrism on Pop-Art is seen in the visually stunning psychedelic posters for Bill Graham's Fillmore auditoriums in San Francisco and New York.

Wes Wilson. 1966.

Wes Wilson. 1967.

 Meanwhile, back in France...

LEMAÎTRE, Maurice. Le lettrisme dans le roman et les arts plastiques.
Devant le pop-art et la bande dessinée.
Two-page spread across first two blanks.
Paris: Collection "Lettrisme." 1, 1970.

BROUTIN, Gérard-Philippe, et al. Lettrisme et hypergraphie par Gérard-Philippe Broutin, Jean-Paul Curtay, Jean-Pierre Gillard, François Poyet.
Original gouache and ink by Dany Tayarda.
Paris: Éditions Georges Fall, 1972.

BROUTIN, Gérard-Philippe, et al. Lettrisme et hypergraphie par Gérard-Philippe Broutin, Jean-Paul Curtay, Jean-Pierre Gillard, François Poyet.
Original gouache and ink by Roland Sabatier.
Paris: Éditions Georges Fall, 1972.

LEMAÎTRE, Maurice. Poems et musique lettristes.
Paris: Lettrisme, 1971.

By the 1980s, Lettrism is fully integrated into all media and is a catch-all for any work uniting text, typography, and the visual arts.

KRUGER, Barbara. Your Body Is a Battle Ground. 1989.

DEVAUX, Frédérique (preface). 11 photographies originales de
Michael Amarger, Jean-Paul d'arville, Gérard-Philippe Broutin,
 Françoise Canal, Frédérique Devaux, Albert Dupont, Isidore Isou,
François Poyet, Woodie Roehmer, Roland Sabatier, Alain Satie.
Original photograph with hand-painted interventions by François Poyet.
Paris: Éditions de Cluny, 1990.

When he was only twenty-one years old Isidore Isou planted his flag in the arts, published his manifesto, and, by the time of his death in 2007, had left an indelible stamp upon the world that crystalizes into three simple words:

TEXT IS ART

BROUTIN, Gérard-Philippe, et al. Lettrisme et hypergraphie par Gérard-Philippe Broutin, Jean-Paul Curtay, Jean-Pierre Gillard, François Poyet.
Original gouache and ink by Isidore Isou.
Paris: Éditions Georges Fall, 1972.

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With the exception of the Kruger, Ruscha, Lichtenstein, Isou self-portrait and book, all images courtesy of Ars Libri, Ltd., Catalogue 154.

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