Art manifesto
Encyclopedia
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
. 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.
The first art manifesto of the 20th century was introduced with the Futurists
Futurism (art)
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...
in Italy in 1909, and readily taken up by the Vorticists
Vorticism
Vorticism, an offshoot of Cubism, was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century. It was based in London but international in make-up and ambition.-Origins:...
, Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
ists and the Surrealists
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
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
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...
have made particular use of this to start a 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
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...
's explanation of the manifesto (Feeble Love & Bitter Love, II) captures the spirit of many:
Introduction
The manifesto was previously a political document of state. Indeed the declaration of war in 1914 was embodied in a document titled a "manifesto". This background is extremely informative when assessing the positioning and impact of the manifesto as adopted by the early artistic users of it, who were subverting, even destroying, the form, as part of an overall challenge to art and society.Although it might be assumed that an art manifesto's primary purpose is to communicate the aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
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.
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".
Martin Puchner
Martin Puchner is a literary critic and philosopher. He studied at Konstanz University, the University of Bologna, and the University of California, before receiving his Ph.D. at Harvard University. Until 2009 he held the H. Gordon Garbedian Chair at Columbia University, where he also served as...
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 Zürich Dadaists, and Rosa Luxemburg by those in Berlin. In England the Suffragettes were supported by Vorticist
Vorticism
Vorticism, an offshoot of Cubism, was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century. It was based in London but international in make-up and ambition.-Origins:...
Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
, and the Communists
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
by Surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
in France. However, the attentions of the artists were often not welcomed. Marinetti found himself stymied by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
, and Velimir Khlebnikov
Velimir Khlebnikov
Velimir Khlebnikov , pseudonym of Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov , was a central part of the Russian Futurist movement, but his work and influence stretch far beyond it.Khlebnikov belonged to Hylaea,...
by Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, while Breton was an outcast from the French Communist party and Guy Debord
Guy Debord
Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
resorted to starting an independent group.
Puchner, Terry Eagleton
Terry Eagleton
Terence Francis Eagleton FBA is a British literary theorist and critic, who is regarded as one of Britain's most influential living literary critics...
and Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends—he once described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism...
cite the general de-politicization of more recent postmodernist groups' manifestos; Fluxus and others have struggled to reconcile their anti-authoritarianism with the prescriptive nature of the manifesto genre.
Futurist Manifesto 1909
-
- The Art of Noise 1913
Vorticist Manifesto 1914
Extracts from the Vorticists'Vorticism
Vorticism, an offshoot of Cubism, was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century. It was based in London but international in make-up and ambition.-Origins:...
BLAST manifesto were published in their magazine Blast, number 1, on June 20, 1914, and then in Blast, number 2, in July 1915.
Dada Manifesto 1916
Hugo BallHugo Ball
Hugo Ball was a German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists.Hugo Ball was born in Pirmasens, Germany and was raised in a middle-class Catholic family. He studied sociology and philosophy at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg...
recited the first Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
manifesto at a cabaret on July 14, 1916.
De Stijl 1918
Signed by Theo van DoesburgTheo van Doesburg
Theo van Doesburg was a Dutch artist, practicing in painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl.-Biography:-Early life:...
, Robt. van 't Hoff, Vilmos Huszar
Vilmos Huszàr
Vilmos Huszár was a Hungarian painter and designer. He lived in The Netherlands, where he was one of the founder members of the art movement De Stijl....
, Antony Kok, Piet Mondrian
Piet Mondrian
Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian , was a Dutch painter.He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism...
, G. Vantongerloo, Jan Wils
Jan Wils
Jan Wils was a Dutch architect.He was born in Alkmaar and died in Voorburg.Wils was one of the founding members of the De Stijl movement, which also included artists as Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and Gerrit Rietveld.Among others, Wils designed the Olympic stadium for the 1928 Summer Olympics...
Manifest I of "The Style" (De Stijl
De Stijl
De Stijl , propagating the group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian , Vilmos Huszár , and Bart van der Leck , and the architects Gerrit Rietveld , Robert van 't Hoff , and J.J.P. Oud...
), from De Stijl, vol. II, no. 1 (November 1918), p. 4.
Surrealist Manifesto 1924
The first Surrealist manifesto was written by the French writer André BretonAndré Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
in 1924 and released to the public 1925. The document defines Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
as:
- Psychic automatismSurrealist automatismAutomatism has taken on many forms: the automatic writing and drawing initially practiced by surrealists can be compared to similar, or perhaps parallel phenomena, such as the non-idiomatic improvisation of free jazz....
in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reasonReasonReason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...
, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.
Art Concret
Theo van Doesburg
Theo van Doesburg was a Dutch artist, practicing in painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl.-Biography:-Early life:...
Base de la peinture concrète, Art Concret, no. 1 (April 1930).
Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art 1938
by surrealist André BretonAndré Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
and marxist Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
as a reaction against the Soviet Union's mandated art.
Refus global 1948
The Refus globalRefus Global
Le Refus global, or Total Refusal, was an anti-establishment and anti-religious manifesto released on August 9, 1948 in Montreal by a group of sixteen young Québécois artists and intellectuals that included Paul-Émile Borduas and Jean-Paul Riopelle....
(or Total Refusal) was an anti-establishment
Anti-establishment
An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine New Statesman to refer to its political and social agenda...
and anti-religious
Religious skepticism
Religious skepticism is a type of skepticism relating to religion, but should not be confused with atheism. Religious skeptics question religious authority and are not necessarily anti-religious but are those skeptical of a specific or all religious beliefs or practices. Some are deists, believing...
manifesto released on August 9, 1948 in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
by a group of sixteen young Québécois
French-speaking Quebecer
French-speaking Quebecers are francophone residents of the Canadian province of Quebec....
artists and intellectuals known as les Automatistes
Les Automatistes
Les Automatistes were a group of Québécois artistic dissidents from Montreal, Quebec. The movement was founded in the early 1940s by painter Paul-Émile Borduas. "Les Automatistes" were so called because they were influenced by Surrealism and its theory of automatism...
, led by Paul-Émile Borduas
Paul-Émile Borduas
Paul-Émile Borduas was a Canadian painter known for his abstract paintings. He was also an activist for the separation of church and state, especially for art, in Quebec.- Biography :...
.
The Refus global was greatly influenced by French poet André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
, and it extolled the creative force of the subconscious
Subconscious
The term subconscious is used in many different contexts and has no single or precise definition. This greatly limits its significance as a definition-bearing concept, and in consequence the word tends to be avoided in academic and scientific settings....
.
Mystical Manifesto 1951
by Salvador DalíSalvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
The Mystical Manifesto inaugurated Dalí's Nuclear mysticism period.
Les Spatialistes Manifesto 1952
Les Spatialistes, an Italian group based in MilanMilan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
drew up a manifesto for television.
Gutai Manifesto 1956
This manifesto by Jirô YoshiharaJiro Yoshihara
Jiro Yoshihara was a Japanese painter. He is in most sources named as the founder of the Gutai group in 1954. Yoshihara wrote the "Gutai Manifesto" in 1956. This leader of the "Gutai" group - a group of internationally acclaimed avant-garde artists representative of Japan's post-war art world...
defined the artistic aims of Japan's Gutai group
Gutai group
The Gutai group was an artistic movement and association of artists founded by Jiro Yoshihara in Japan in 1954...
.
Auto-Destructive Art Manifesto 1959
by Gustav MetzgerGustav Metzger
Gustav Metzger is an artist and political activist who developed the concept of Auto-Destructive Art and the Art Strike. Together with John Sharkey, he initiated the Destruction in Art Symposium in 1966...
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
Pete Townshend
Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend is an English rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author, known principally as the guitarist and songwriter for the rock group The Who, as well as for his own solo career...
, who later cited Metzger's concepts as an influence for his famous guitar-smashing during performances of The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
.
Neo-Concrete Manifesto 1959
by Ferreira GullarFerreira Gullar
Ferreira Gullar is the pen name for José Ribamar Ferreira , Brazilian poet, playwright, essayist, art critic, and television writer...
.
It begins:
- We use the term "neo-concrete" to differentiate ourselves from those committed to non-figurative "geometric" art (neo-plasticism, constructivism, suprematism, the school of Ulm) and particularly the kind of concrete art that is influenced by a dangerously acute rationalism. In the light of their artistic experience, the painters, sculptors, engravers and writers participating in this first Neo-concrete Exhibition came to the conclusion that it was necessary to evaluate the theoretical principles on which concrete art has been founded, none of which offers a rationale for the expressive potential they feel their art contains."
Manifesto of Industrial Painting 1959
by Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, August 1959The 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:
- The return to nature with modern instrumentation will allow man, after thousands of centuries, to return to the places where Paleolithic hunters overcame great fear; modern man will seek to abandon his own, accumulated in the idiocy of progress, on contact with humble things, which nature in her wisdom has conserved as a check on the immense arrogance of the human mind.
Counterculture 1960–75
Manifestos in the 1960s reflected the changing social and political attitudes of the times: the general ferment of "countercultureCounterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
" revolution to overthrow the existing order and the particular rise of feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
and Black Power
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...
, as well as the pioneering of new art forms such as body art
Body art
Body art is art made on, with, or consisting of, the human body. The most common forms of body art are tattoos and body piercings, but other types include scarification, branding, scalpelling, shaping , full body tattoo and body painting.More extreme body art can involve things such as mutilation...
and performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
.
Situationist Manifesto 1960
The Situationist International was founded at Cosio d’Arroscia April 27, 1957 by eight members, who wanted a revolutionary art with a state of constant transformation, and hence newness, as well as abolishing the gap between art and life. The manifesto espousing this was issued May 17, 1960 and reprinted in Internationale Situationniste number 4 in June 1960. It advocated the "new human force" against technology and the "dissatisfaction of its possible uses in our senseless social life", stating "We will inaugurate what will historically be the last of the crafts. The role of amateur-professional situationist—of anti-specialist—is again a specialization up to the point of economic and mental abundance, when everyone becomes an 'artist'". Its final sentence is: "Such are our goals, and these will be the future goals of humanity."The Chelsea Hotel Manifesto 1961
Yves Klein
Yves Klein was a French artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. He is the leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany...
This manifesto has been copyrighted since 1989 by the Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. There are currently eleven gallery spaces: three in New York; two in London; one in each of Beverly Hills, Rome, Athens, Paris, Geneva, Hong Kong and Moscow.-1980s:...
. 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:
- An artist always feels uneasy when called upon to speak of his own work. It should speak for itself, particularly when it is valid.
- What can I do? Stop now?
- No, what I call "the indefinable pictorial sensibility" absolutely escapes this very personal solution.
- So...
He appropriates
Appropriation (art)
Appropriation is a fundamental aspect in the history of the arts . Appropriation can be understood as "the use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new work."...
the sky:
- Once, in 1946, while still an adolescent, I was to sign my name on the other side of the sky during a fantastic "realistico-imaginary" journey. That day, as I lay stretched upon the beach of Nice, I began to feel hatred for birds which flew back and forth across my blue, cloudless sky, because they tried to bore holes in my greatest and most beautiful work.
- Birds must be eliminated.
He ends with an affirmation that he is "ready to dive into the void".
I Am For An Art... Manifesto, 1961
by Claes OldenburgClaes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects...
Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects...
, a Pop artist, reacting against Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
, along with other young artists. The Manifesto ‘I am for an Art’ was originally made to be included in the catalogue of the 'Environments, Situations and Spaces’ exhibition. Each of the statements begin with 'I am for an art...'.
Here is a quote from the first two statement in his poetical manifesto,
"I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a staring point of zero... "
( Harrison, C. and Wood, P. (2006) Art in Theory, 1900-2000: an Anthology of Changing Ideas. 2 ed. USA: Blackwell Publishing)
Fluxus Manifesto 1963
by George MaciunasGeorge Maciunas
George Maciunas was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He was a founding member of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers...
This is a short hand-printed document of three paragraphs interspersed with collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
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:
- Purge the world of bourgeois sickness, "intellectual", professional and commercialized culture, purge the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art, abstract art, illusionistic art, mathematical art, — purge the world of "Europanism"!
It advocates revolution, "living art, anti-art" and "non art reality to be grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes and professionals."
S.C.U.M. Manifesto 1967
by Valerie SolanasValerie Solanas
Valerie Jean Solanas was an American radical feminist writer, best known for her attempted murder of Andy Warhol in 1968. She wrote the SCUM Manifesto, which called for male gendercide and the creation of an all-female society.-Early life:Solanas was born in Ventnor City, New Jersey, to Louis...
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
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
'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 male 'artist' attempts to solve his dilemma of not being able to live, of not being female, by constructing a highly artificial world in which the male is heroized, that is, displays female traits, and the female is reduced to highly limited, insipid subordinate roles, that is, to being male.
- The male 'artistic' aim being, not to communicate (having nothing inside him he has nothing to say), but to disguise his animalism, he resorts to symbolism and obscurity ('deep' stuff). The vast majority of people, particularly the 'educated' ones, lacking faith in their own judgment, humble, respectful of authority ('Daddy knows best'), are easily conned into believing that obscurity, evasiveness, incomprehensibility, indirectness, ambiguity and boredom are marks of depth and brilliance ...
- Absorbing 'culture' is a desperate, frantic attempt to groove in an ungroovy world, to escape the horror of a sterile, mindless, existence. `Culture' provides a sop to the egos of the incompetent, a means of rationalizing passive spectating; they can pride themselves on their ability to appreciate the `finer' things, to see a jewel where this is only a turd (they want to be admired for admiring).
Maintenance Art Manifesto 1969
by Mierle Laderman UkelesMierle Laderman Ukeles
Mierle Laderman Ukeles is a New York City-based artist known for her feminist and service oriented artwork. In 1969 she wrote a manifesto entitled Maintenance Art—Proposal for an Exhibition, challenging the domestic role of women and proclaiming herself a "maintenance artist"...
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. More recently she has addressed a landfill site on Staten Island
Staten Island
Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...
.
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) The Maintenance Manifesto stated:
- Maintenance is a drag; it takes all the fucking time (lit.) The mind boggles and chafes at the boredom. The culture confers lousy status on maintenance jobs--minimum wages, housewives — no pay. Clean your desk, wash the dishes, clean the floor, wash your clothes, wash your toes, change the baby's diaper, finish the report, correct the typos, mend the fence, keep the customer happy, throw out the stinking garbage, watch out don't put things in your nose, what shall I wear, I have no sox, pay your bills, don't litter, save string, wash your hair, change the sheets, go to the store, I'm out of perfume, say it again — he doesn't understand, seal it again — it leaks, go to work, this art is dusty, clear the table, call him again, flush the toilet, stay young.
AfriCobra Manifesto 1970
by Jeff DonaldsonJeff Donaldson (artist)
Jeff Donaldson was a pioneering visual artist whose work helped define the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He was born in Pine Bluff, AR in 1932 receiving a BA in Studio Art from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in 1954. Donaldson went on to complete his MFA at the Institute of...
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. 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.
WAR Manifestos early 1970s
WAR is an acronym for "Women Artists in Revolution" of which Nancy SperoNancy Spero
Nancy Spero was an American visual artist.-Life and work:Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Spero lived for much of her life in New York City. She was married to, and collaborated with artist Leon Golub....
was a member. Prior to this in 1966–70 she had created a series of anti-Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
"manifestos" which were images created with water paints and inks on paper. She then attended AWC (Art Workers Coalition) meetings, which had men and women members, and became part of WAR, which was an offshoot. She said, "I loved it. I was so angry at that time about so many things, especially about not being able to get my art out, to get people to look. I thought, "WAR"— that's it. We started to organize some actions and protests and wrote manifestos. For example, a few of us marched into the Museum of Modern Art and demanded equality for women artists. Then, I joined another, the Ad Hoc Committee of Women Artists. It all went very fast in those days."
Women's Art: A Manifesto 1972
by Valie ExportValie Export
Valie Export is an Austrian artist...
Valie Export is a Viennese performance artist who worked with the Actionists
Viennese Actionism
The term Viennese Actionism describes a short and violent movement in 20th century art that can be regarded as part of the many independent efforts of the 1960s to develop "action art" . Its main participants were Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. As "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.'"
Collectif d'Art Sociologique manifesto 1974
Sociological art
Sociological Art is an artistic movement and approach to aesthetics created by Fred Forest, Hervé Fischer and Jean-Paul Thénot in 1974.-From 1967 to 1974:As of 1967 Fred Forest began a series of actions that would foreground the Sociological Art movement...
Collective was founded by Fred Forest
Fred Forest
Fred Forest is a French new media artist making use of video, photography, the printed press, mail, radio, television, telephone, telematics, and the internet in a wide range of installations, performances, and public interventions that explore both the ramifications and potential of media space...
, Jean-Paul Thénot and Hervé Fischer and had their manifesto published in the newspaper Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
. Its main purpose was using sociology to underpin artistic actions, or using artistic actions to elucidate sociological phenomena. One such action was the auctioning of a "artistic square meter" in 1976 to spoof the inflation of prices in the housing and art markets.http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/20_en.htm#text The collective made heavy use of mass media and live performance using video, telephones, etc. The group was dissolved in 1981, though some of its tenets were brought by Fred Forest
Fred Forest
Fred Forest is a French new media artist making use of video, photography, the printed press, mail, radio, television, telephone, telematics, and the internet in a wide range of installations, performances, and public interventions that explore both the ramifications and potential of media space...
and Mario Costa
Mario Costa
Dr. Mario Costa is a Maltese diplomat and a former Ambassador of Malta to Russia.- References :...
with the Communication aesthetics
Communication aesthetics
Communication Aesthetics was devised by Mario Costa and Fred Forest at Mercato San Severino in Italy in 1983. It is a theory of aesthetics calling for artistic practise engaging with and working through the developments, evolutions and paradigms of late twentieth century communications technologies...
movement of 1983.
Body Art Manifesto 1975
In 1975 François PluchartFrançois Pluchart
François Pluchart was a French art critic an a journalist.He was one of the theorists of Body art in France, with artists like Michel Journiac and Gina Pane and founded the art journal ArTitudes....
promoted the first Body Art
Body art
Body art is art made on, with, or consisting of, the human body. The most common forms of body art are tattoos and body piercings, but other types include scarification, branding, scalpelling, shaping , full body tattoo and body painting.More extreme body art can involve things such as mutilation...
show at the Galerie Stadler in Paris, with work from 21 artists, including Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
, Chris Burden
Chris Burden
Christopher "Chris" Burden is an American artist working in performance, sculpture, and installation art.-Education:Burden studied for his B.A...
and Katharina Sieverding
Katharina Sieverding
Katharina Sieverding is a photographer known for her self-portraiture. Sieverding lives and works in Berlin and Düsseldorf. She is a professor at the University of the Arts, Berlin.- Early life and education :...
. The first Body Art manifesto was published.
A Manifesto on Lyrical Conceptualism 1975
by Paul HartalPaul Hartal
Paul Hartal is a Canadian painter and poet, born in Szeged, Hungary. He has created the term "Lyrical Conceptualism" to characterize his style in both painting and poetry, and has created a manifesto to describe his thesis....
This is a four page document illustrated with nine black and white images of the artist's paintings, collages and multimedia, published in Montreal in 1975.
"My art is a painted metaphor; the past machine of a perpetual second, the fossil emotion of an infinite longing, the magic desire evolving on the broken axis of the compressed space, reflected in the form of inner, personal landscapes", writes Hartal in the manifesto. "Art ought to be total", he suggests. "The biotic separated from the geometrical is arbitrary, and ignores the human nature." The idea of "Lyrical Conceptualism is based on the wholeness of the psychological coordinate", he says. It "derives from the id, ego and superego"; an "art in which the primarily twofold character of the artist's view evolves into a lyrical, intuitive and conceptual triad". In The Brush and the Compass: The Interface Dynamics of Art and Science (Lanham: University Press of America, 1988, 341 pp), Hartal discusses in more detail the theory of Lyrical Conceptualism or Lyco art, http://www.federationofpoets.com/featurepaulhartal.htm,http://www.arthbys.com/Paul_Hartal.htm, http://www.publicboard.com,
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile//11739.html,
http://www.monkdogz.com/literature.htm,
http://www.arteutile.net/Hartal/Hartal.htm
Punk and cyber 1976–1998
The rise of the punkPunk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...
movement with its basic and aggressive DIY attitude had a significant input into art manifestos, and this is reflected even in the titles. Some of the artists overtly identified with punk through music, publishing or poetry performance. There is also an equivalent "shocking" interpretation of feminism which contradicts the non-objectification advocated in the 1960s. Then the growing presence of the computer age began to assert itself in art proclamations as in society.
Crude Art Manifesto 1978
by Charles ThomsonCharles Thomson (artist)
Charles Thomson is an English artist, painter, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art...
This was posted in Maidstone Art College
Kent Institute of Art & Design
The Kent Institute of Art & Design was an art school based across three campuses in the county of Kent, in the United Kingdom. It was formed by the amalgamation of three independent colleges: Canterbury College of Art, Maidstone College of Art and Rochester College of Art...
by Charles Thomson
Charles Thomson (artist)
Charles Thomson is an English artist, painter, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art...
, then a student at the college. 21 years later he co-wrote the Stuckist
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...
manifestos with Billy Childish
Billy Childish
Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...
. Thomson was also a member of the punk-based The Medway Poets
The Medway Poets
The Medway Poets were founded in Medway, North Kent in 1979. They were an English punk based poetry performance group and later formed the core of the first Stuckists Art Group. The members were Miriam Carney, Billy Childish, Rob Earl, Bill Lewis, Sexton Ming and Charles Thomson...
. 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".
Smile Manifestos 1982
by Stewart HomeStewart Home
Stewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...
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.
International Association of Astronomical Artists Manifesto 1982
The basic tenet of the IAAA is the depiction of space (as in the cosmos) through realist painting. They disassociate themselves from science fiction and fantasy artists: "a firm foundation of knowledge and research is the basis for each painting. Striving to accurately depict scenes which are at present beyond the range of human eyes". The group now has over 120 members representing 20 countries.Cheap Art Manifesto 1984
by the Bread and Puppet TheaterBread and Puppet Theater
The Bread and Puppet Theater is a politically radical puppet theater, active since the 1960s, currently based in Glover, Vermont...
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:
- People have been thinking too long that art is a privilege of the museums & the rich.
- Art is not business!
It stresses the positive nature of art which is beneficial to all and should be available to all, using poetic images such as "Art is like green trees", and urging, "Art fights against war & stupidity! ... Art is cheap!
A Cyborg Manifesto 1985
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
Sadie Plant
Sadie Plant is a British author and philosopher.She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Manchester in 1989, then taught at the University of Birmingham's Department of Cultural Studies before going on to found the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at the University of Warwick,...
, established a cyberfeminist movement in 1994. From 1997, the Old Boys Network (OBN) has organised "Cyberfeminist Internationals".
What our art means 1986
by Gilbert and GeorgeGilbert and George
Gilbert & George are two artists who work together as a collaborative duo. Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore have become famous for their distinctive, highly formal appearance and manner and their brightly coloured graphic-style photo-based artworks.-Early life:Gilbert Proesch was...
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:
- We want Our Art to speak across the barriers of knowledge directly to People about their Life and not about their knowledge of art. The twentieth century has been cursed with an art that cannot be understood. The decadent artists stand for themselves and their chosen few, laughing at and dismissing the normal outsider. We say that puzzling, obscure and form-obsessed art is decadent and a cruel denial of the Life of People.
There is also an intent to change people, but "The art-material must be subservient to the meaning and purpose of the picture." It states:
- We want to learn to respect and honour "the whole". The content of mankind is our subject and our inspiration. We stand each day for good traditions and necessary changes. We want to find and accept all the good and bad in ourselves.
The conclusion is an affirmation of "our life-search for new meanings and purpose to give to life."
Post Porn Modernist Manifesto c.1989
Veronica Vera
Veronica Vera is an American human sexuality writer and actress.Vera is best known for the films Times Square Comes Alive, Gerard Damiano's Consenting Adults, Mondo New York and Rites of Passion....
The manifesto was signed by Veronica Vera
Veronica Vera
Veronica Vera is an American human sexuality writer and actress.Vera is best known for the films Times Square Comes Alive, Gerard Damiano's Consenting Adults, Mondo New York and Rites of Passion....
and Candida Royalle
Candida Royalle
Candida Royalle is an American producer and director of couples-oriented pornography and a former pornographic actress. She is member of the XRCO and the AVN Halls of Fame....
(both ex porn stars who had then directed their own porn movies), Annie Sprinkle
Annie Sprinkle
Annie M. Sprinkle is an American former prostitute, stripper, pornographic actress, cable television host, porn magazine editor, writer and sex film producer...
(who gives explicit sexual one woman shows) and performance artist Frank Moore
Frank Moore (performance artist)
Frank Moore is an American performance artist, poet, essayist, painter, musician and Internet/television personality who has experimented in art, performance, ritual, and shamanistic teaching since the late 1960s....
, among other significant artists who use sex in their work. 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." It advocates the "attitude of sex-positivism" and wishes to "communicate our ideas and emotions ... to have fun, heal the world and endure."
A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, 1991
by VNS MatrixVNS Matrix
VNS Matrix was an artist collective founded in Adelaide, Australia, in 1991, by Josephine Starrs, Julianne Pierce, Francesca da Rimini and Virginia Barratt...
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:
- we are the modern cunt
- positive anti reason
- unbounded unleashed unforgiving
- we see art with our cunt we make art with our cunt
In 1996 they wrote the Bitch Mutant Manifesto.
The ____________ Manifesto, 1996
by Michael BetancourtMichael Betancourt
Michael Betancourt is a critical theorist, art and film historian, and animator. His principal published works focus on the technologies of visual music, new media art and theory, and formalist study of motion pictures....
The ____________ Manifesto proposed an interactive, fill-in-the-blanks view of prohibitions and claims to be made about art and art movements. It was an early interactive piece of net art that appeared in webzines and in newsgroups, inviting participation. It begins:
- Today, ____________ itself is obsolete.
The manifesto ends with a Reset button. The text is sampled from Tristian Tzara's Dada manifestos, but key pieces from the original text have been omitted and replaced with blanks to be filled-in.
It is one of the earliest manifestos to be published on the Internet as well as in print.
Group Hangman 1997
Billy Childish
Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...
Group Hangman was started by Billy Childish
Billy Childish
Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...
, Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin
Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....
and two others in Medway
Medway
Medway is a conurbation and unitary authority in South East England. The Unitary Authority was formed in 1998 when the City of Rochester-upon-Medway amalgamated with Gillingham Borough Council and part of Kent County Council to form Medway Council, a unitary authority independent of Kent County...
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
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!" Some of the ideas resurfaced in the Stuckist manifestos written two years later. Point 9 of Communication 0001 states:
- Western art has been stupefying its audience into taking the position of an admiring doormat. We, at Group Hangman however, intend to wipe our mud-encrusted boots on the face of conceptual balderdash.
Style must be smashed ("Artistic talent is the only obstacle") and the unacceptable must be embraced. The last communication, of only two short sentences, was written in 2000 and recommends, "It is time for art to grow up."
Extropic Art Manifesto 1997
Natasha Vita-More
Natasha Vita-More is a transhumanist, media artist and designer, with a science background, known for designing "Primo Posthuman." This future human prototype incorporates biotechnology, robotics, information technology, nanotechnology, cognitive and neuroscience for human enhancement and extreme...
(formerly Nancie Clark)
(A genre of the Transhumanist art
Transhumanist Art
Transhumanist art is an art movement which focuses on the concept of transhumanity, a transitional stage in a perceived progression from human to transhuman to posthuman...
movement whose manifesto was written in 1982)
This was written on January 1, 1997, and was apparently "on board the Cassini Huygens spacecraft on its mission to Saturn." Following the statement "We are transhumans", there is the explanation, "Transhumanist Art 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
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
, Bill Viola
Bill Viola
Bill Viola is a contemporary video artist. He is considered a leading figure in the generation of artists whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in New Media...
and Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
.
World wide web 1999–present
Widespread access to the internet has created a new incentive for artists to publish manifestos, with the knowledge that there is an instant potential worldwide audience. The effect of the internet on art manifestos has been described: "One could almost say we are living through a new boom time for the manifesto. The Web allows almost anybody to nail a broadsheet to the virtual wall for all to see." Some of the manifestos also appear in print form; others only exist as virtual text. It has also led to a great diversity of approaches, as well as a noticeable trend looking back at earlier traditions of Modernism or the Renaissance to create a present and future paradigm. The Stuckists manifesto has become well known, though most others have achieved little individual reputation or impact.Stuckist manifesto 1999
Billy Childish
Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...
and Charles Thomson
Charles Thomson (artist)
Charles Thomson is an English artist, painter, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art...
The Stuckists
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...
have grown in eleven years from 13 artists in London to 209 groups in 48 countries, and claim, "Stuckism is the first significant art movement to spread via the Internet" The first 3 points of their numbered eponymous manifesto proclaim "a quest for authenticity
Authenticity in art
Authenticity in art has a variety of meanings related to different ways in which a work of art or an artistic performance may be considered authentic.Denis Dutton distinguishes between nominal authenticity and expressive 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
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
, Britart
Young British Artists
Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London, in 1988...
, Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi is the co-founder with his brother Maurice of the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and led that business - the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s - until they were forced out in 1995. In the same year the Saatchi brothers formed a new agency called M&C...
, art gimmicks and white wall galleries, while the amateur is hailed. The final point is:
- Stuckism embraces all that it denounces. We only denounce that which stops at the starting point — Stuckism starts at the stopping point!
This manifesto is available on their web site in 7 languages. They have issued at least 8 other manifestos, including the Remodernist
Remodernism
Remodernism revives aspects of modernism, particularly in its early form, and follows postmodernism, to which it contrasts. Adherents of remodernism advocate it as a forward and radical, not reactionary, impetus....
Manifesto (2000), which inaugurates "a new spirituality in art" (to replace Postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
's "scientific materialism, nihilism and spiritual bankruptcy"), the Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
Manifesto, handed out in their demonstrations
Stuckist demonstrations
Stuckist demonstrations since 2000 have been a key part of the Stuckist art group's activities and have succeeded in giving them a high profile both in Britain and abroad...
at Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
and a Critique of Damien Hirst. The Tate
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
gallery holds three of the manifestos. Spin-offs by other Stuckists include a Camberwell College of Arts
Camberwell College of Arts
Camberwell College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, and is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost art and design institutions. It is located in Camberwell, South London, England, with two sites situated at Peckham Road and Wilson Road...
Students for Stuckism manifesto (2000), a rewrite by Terry Reynoldson (2004) and a teenagers' Underage Stuckists Manifesto (2006). In 2006, Allen Herndon published The Manifesto of the American Stuckists, whose content was challenged by the Los Angeles Stuckists group. There has also been an anti-Stuckist manifesto published in 2005 by the London Surrealist Group.
How to Write an Avant-Garde Manifesto (a Manifesto) 2006
by Lee ScrivnerLee Scrivner
Lee Scrivner is an American writer, artist, songwriter and musician from Las Vegas known for his satirical manifestos.- The Sound Moneyfesto :The Sound Moneyfesto was launched at the Manifesto Marathon 2008 at the Serpentine Gallery in London...
An avant-garde manifesto that reviews avant-garde manifestos of the past hundred years, it was taped to the front door of the Institute of Contemporary Arts
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
in London in April 2006. It was later published online by ICA residents, the London Consortium
London Consortium
The London Consortium is a graduate school in the UK offering multidisciplinary Masters and Doctoral programs in the humanities and cultural studies at the University of London. It is administered by Birkbeck, University of London, one of the constituent colleges of the University of London, and...
.
Energy Art Movement Manifesto 2008
by Giorgio Vaselli and Laura ZerebeskiThe manifesto of the Energy Art Movement
Energy Art
The Energy Art Movement is an international contemporary multimedia art movement, with three primary values: quality, diversity, and artistic evolution – on the common ground of energetic depictions. The movement's values have been explicitly defined in its manifesto – the founding document – and...
explores the idea of energizing artworks for the sake of enhanced visual effect. It argues on both historical and rational bases for the value in energetic alternatives to depictions. Historically, the manifesto notes various periods of art
Art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time, or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years...
which have recognized the relevance of energetic compositions, such as the late-Roman period
Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...
, the Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
, Futurism
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
, and Vorticism
Vorticism
Vorticism, an offshoot of Cubism, was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century. It was based in London but international in make-up and ambition.-Origins:...
. On a rational basis, the manifesto deduces how energetic compositions increase the artistic values
Formalism (art)
In art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content...
of color, form, composition, inventiveness, and expression within artworks, thereby introducing a new aesthetic criterium
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
. According to the manifesto, "Forms may be arranged, directed, and shaped in a manner that provides a sense of dynamism... The level of expression may also increase through dynamism, because the viewer through the sense of motion may more easily place oneself into the atmosphere of the concept." The manifesto furthermore expresses the writers' dissatisfaction with the current state of the Fine Arts
Fine art
Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....
, and they "believe that visual dynamism is one of those attributes which serves to improve the five values of visual taste..."
The Remodernist Film Manifesto 2008
by Jesse RichardsJesse Richards
Jesse Richards is a painter, filmmaker and photographer from New Haven, Connecticut and was affiliated with the international movement Stuckism.-Early life:...
A manifesto on filmmaking written by former Stuckist painter, photographer and filmmaker Jesse Richards that like the closely related Remodernism
Remodernism
Remodernism revives aspects of modernism, particularly in its early form, and follows postmodernism, to which it contrasts. Adherents of remodernism advocate it as a forward and radical, not reactionary, impetus....
manifesto, calls for a "new spirituality", but in this instance, in relation to cinema. The manifesto proclaims a spiritual film to be "not about religion. It is cinema concerned with humanity and an understanding of the simple truths and moments of humanity. Spiritual film is really ALL about these moments". Point 4 of the manifesto discusses Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese aesthetics in relation to the idea of Remodernist film
Remodernist Film
Remodernist film developed in the United States and the United Kingdom in the early 21st century with ideas related to those of the international art movement Stuckism and its manifesto, Remodernism...
: "The Japanese ideas of wabi-sabi
Wabi-sabi
represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete"...
(the beauty of imperfection) and mono no aware
Mono no aware
, literally "the pathos of things", also translated as "an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to ephemera", is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of , or the transience of things, and a gentle sadness at their passing.-Origins:...
(the awareness of the transience of things and the bittersweet feelings that accompany their passing), have the ability to show the truth of existence, and should always be considered when making the remodernist film". The manifesto also criticizes filmmakers that shoot on video, arguing that film, particularly Super-8 film "has a rawness, and an ability to capture the poetic essence of life, that video has never been able to accomplish" and also criticizes Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
's work, as being "dishonest and boring", as well as Dogme 95
Dogme 95
Dogme 95 was an avant-garde filmmaking movement started in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vow of Chastity". These were rules to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and...
's "pretentious checkist" of rules. Instead, the Remodernist film philosophy seems to be somewhat anti-ego, with Richards noting that "this manifesto should be viewed only as a collection of ideas and hints whose author may be mocked and insulted at will". The manifesto was recently translated into Turkish and published by the film website Bakiniz, and is being translated into Polish and published by the Polish underground art and culture magazine, RED.
The Superstroke Art Movement Manifesto 2008
by Conrad BoConrad Bo
Michiel Conrad Botha better known as Conrad Bo is a South African Artist, the founder of The Superstroke Art Movement....
This manifesto was written by the South African conceptual artist Conrad Bo
Conrad Bo
Michiel Conrad Botha better known as Conrad Bo is a South African Artist, the founder of The Superstroke Art Movement....
, who believes the Superstroke
Superstroke
Superstroke is a term used for a contemporary art movement with its origins in South Africa. Superstroke is one of the influential art movements regarding African modernism and abstraction. The word "Superstroke" implies the super expressive brush stroke...
Art Movement is the first internationally known art movement in Africa since the Fook Island art movement started by Walter Battiss
Walter Battiss
Walter Whall Battiss was a South African artist, generally considered the foremost South African abstract painter and known as the creator of the quirky "Fook Island" concept....
. The manifesto is quite specific in what the Superstroke
Superstroke
Superstroke is a term used for a contemporary art movement with its origins in South Africa. Superstroke is one of the influential art movements regarding African modernism and abstraction. The word "Superstroke" implies the super expressive brush stroke...
Art Movement want to achieve. Superstroke
Superstroke
Superstroke is a term used for a contemporary art movement with its origins in South Africa. Superstroke is one of the influential art movements regarding African modernism and abstraction. The word "Superstroke" implies the super expressive brush stroke...
is short for the super expressive brush stroke.
The the Manifesto for the Superstroke
Superstroke
Superstroke is a term used for a contemporary art movement with its origins in South Africa. Superstroke is one of the influential art movements regarding African modernism and abstraction. The word "Superstroke" implies the super expressive brush stroke...
Art Movement written by Conrad Bo is as follows: 1.Paintings should be executed using expressive even violent brush strokes on at least some part of the picture. 2.Should a photograph be used for a figurative painting, the objection should not be Photorealism, but Expressionism. 3.If mediums such as pen, pencil, etc. are used, the pen and pencil strokes must at least be overly expressive for it to be considered a Superstroke picture. 4.Paintings can be executed in both the abstract and figurative. 5.Subject matters such as Africa, light, dark, life and death are encouraged. 6.Collage, Stencil and Calligraphy may be used for impact. 7.The concept, Art for the sake of art, does not apply in Superstroke. In Superstroke it is art for the sake of Superstroke, as the artist must always strive for paintings rich in texture, or excessive brush or pencil strokes.
The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0 (2009
by Todd Presner, Jeffrey SchnappJeffrey Schnapp
Until joining the Harvard University faculty in 2011, Jeffrey T. Schnapp was the director of the from its foundation in 2000 through 2010. At Stanford University he occupied the Pierotti Chair in Italian Literature and was professor of French & Italian, Comparative Literature, and German Studies...
et al.
A manifesto for the transformation of practices in the digital arts and humanities that was authored by over forty participants in the 2009 Mellon Seminar on the Digital Humanities at UCLA. The manifesto articulates a vision of the future of knowledge production in the arts and humanities disciplines.
The Resurrection of Beauty - a manifesto for the future of art 2002-10
by Mark MiremontMark Miremont
Mark Miremont is an American philosopher, photographer, filmmaker, music video director and occasional street artist.He was born in Madrid, Spain and studied philosophy at UCLA and Harvard...
This manifesto was written by the American philosopher and artist Mark Miremont
Mark Miremont
Mark Miremont is an American philosopher, photographer, filmmaker, music video director and occasional street artist.He was born in Madrid, Spain and studied philosophy at UCLA and Harvard...
to inspire resistance to the pretenses of conceptual art that thrive a full century after the Dadaist Manifesto. It reads: Previously the 20th century saw innovations in science and these accelerated technological, medical, social and political innovations at a rate unparalleled in human history. From the horse drawn carriage and wood fire, we progressed to space travel and nuclear fusion. Likewise, the arts progressed from realism to impressionism to dada to minimalism to post-modernism, and so on. Now. Here we stand in the 21st century. The progress of science and art has brought a marriage of marvels and horrors. The worst of the horrors grew from a cynical relativism. In science, it could be the physicist who thinks just because he can, he should design bombs that can kill millions of people. In art, it could be the artist who thinks just because he can, he should say a urinal in a gallery is art. What we value creates culture. Culture informs action. Action defines history. History determines the present. The values of the 20th century have led us to where we are now. The sarcastic relativism of dada has been widely embraced by the collectors, museums and publications that profit from the marketing of its philosophy. Its impact has been felt in all aspects of western culture. So much so that Beauty is commonly believed to have no place in art. From Wilde to Serra, it has been argued that Art has no use. Indeed the word 'art' has been rendered meaningless, as anything can be art, if so named. This is cynicism. This is nihilism. This is the art world in the first steps of the 21st century. Sarcasm, empty intellectualism, decay and the desperate need to shock have been in vogue for too long now. We do not doubt the genius of dada questioning what art can be. Yet, the values derived from anti-art's nihilistic ontology do not free us, they doom us. Just as we continue to search for meaning after Nietzsche's madman claimed, "God is Dead", so too we still search for Beauty after dada raped art. It is easier to desecrate something of Beauty than to create something of Beauty. The former is lazy intellectualism at best. The latter is the path of art. Perhaps because he could not create it at the time, Duchamp sought to de-value Beauty. And as his followers fetishize the early works of dada, his philosophy has paradoxically become the status quo. The resurrection of Beauty will be resisted at first. It will be called naive, superficial and simplistic. The pretense of the critics will be similar to that which Duchamp sought to obliterate with his readymades. Here, now, it is far more revolutionary to be sincere, romantic and idealistic. And while we reject the values derived from 20th century relativism, this does not make us neo-classicists. Classifications are meaningless to anyone seeking Beauty. There were works lacking Beauty before dada and there have been works of Beauty despite dada. Beauty can bridge any chasm and should be the goal of every culture. Beauty is the purpose of art, just as a building is the purpose of architecture. The utility of art is to inform us of Beauty, just as the utility of science is to inform us of truth. Beauty is a fundamental need of the healthy human condition, like oxygen. Dysfunction in the individual, the family, the society and the world is often due to a lack of Beauty. This is our destiny: to resurrect Beauty and to rally others to do the same. Think of what art could be in the 22nd century. Then the 23rd. Does empty relativism provide a path that will bring about something new and meaningful? Again. What we value creates culture. Culture informs action. Action defines history.
Examples of manifestos on the internet
These manifestos are cited not for their individual significance, but as examples of the diversity of approaches that can be found in manifestos on the web, ranging through computer art, "Gothic" art, jokes, traditional art, punk provocation and the use of the form by commerce. This also allows the influence of historical manifestos on contemporary ideas to be assessed.http://www.anadyomene-records.com/other/Manifesto.pdfManifesto by Brunette Models
Brunette Models
Brunette Models is a Polish-Cypriot musical project for experimental electronic music and sound sculpture, in the style of ambient music, atmospheric and deep listening music, and is a pioneer of this kind of music in Poland.-Piotr Krzyżanowski:...
Aug 2011]
The manifesto created by music artist as a negation of mainstream, commercial music, to much business, public relations in the public space etc. The manifesto is movement that promotes the freedom to distribute music as high resolution FLAC files and exchange works between artists.
Manifesto of Virtual Art 2010
by Adam Nash, Justin Clemens
Justin Clemens
Justin Clemens is an Australian philosopher, translator, social critic, and poet. He is primarily known today for his work on Alain Badiou as an editor, translator, and scholar writing, speaking, and lecturing on the impact of Badiou's thought in this contemporary juncture.A former instructor in...
and Christopher Dodds
A manifesto produced by The Australian Centre of Virtual Art (ACVA). It describes virtual art as a "post-convergent
Post-convergent
Post-convergent means, literally, “after convergence”. It is the period in the development of any given medium when, having converged all prior media within itself, it ceases to be used to solely recreate these prior media and starts to be used for creating work that is only possible in the new...
" form, containing all previous media as subsets.
Fractal Art Manifesto 1999
by Kerry Mitchell
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."
Neen manifesto 2000-2006
by Miltos Manetas
This is a Manifesto about Website art and computer existentialism.
OK Art Manifesto 2001
by Susie Ramsay and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
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."
Movement for Classical Renewal Manifesto 2002
by Christopher Fiddes
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
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
, "the same tired formula" of conceptualism
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
, 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:
- The arrival of the internet means it is no longer necessary to exhibit one's work in the tiny handful of fashionable London galleries, for at the touch of a switch it can be placed before a world wide public.
An organisation with similar aims in America is the Art Renewal Center.
Cass Art Manifesto;
This represents the adoption of a revolutionary medium by mainstream commercialism, in this case the Cass Art chain of artshops in London. As part of their promotion they have issued a "manifesto" in the style of an art group. It begins, "Art is freedom. Cass Art believes in art." There are seven points. The sixth starts, "We want to fill this town with artists", which has also been displayed across their shop fronts in a banner.
Symbiotic Art Manifesto 2004;
Written by artist Leonel Moura and Professor Henrique Garcia Pereira this Manifesto states that "Machines can make Art" and the role of the artist of the 21st century is no more to produce directly art but to trigger processes that generate art.
In 2011 Leonel Moura launched a new version, The Istanbul Manifesto, stating that “the great artist of tomorrow will not be human”.
Other contemporary art manifestos on the internet
Date given is that of the manifesto.
- Revolutionary Arts Group Manifesto
- The Conscious Art Manifesto (2000-01)
- Neomodernism Manifesto (2001)
- Manifesto of Visionary Art (2001)
- Thinkism Manifesto (September 12, 2001)
- Anti-Stylism Manifesto
- Eco-Art Manifesto (February 12, 2004)
- Humanitarian art manifesto (September 2004)
- Derivative Works Art Manifesto (December 18, 2005)
- The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0 (2009)
- Transgressive Expressionist Art TEA Party Manifesto (May 2, 2011)
No date, presumed post-2000
External links
- Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes
- Index of manifestos
- Art and manifesto in the neo-avant-garde (conference papers, 2002)
- Chapter from Art in Theory 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Second Edition, Edited By: Charles Harrison, Open University, Paul Wood, Open University
- Stuckist manifestos (1999–2000) and flyer (2005) in the Tate Gallery
- Page at website of Japan's Ashiya City Museum of Art & History with full text of the Gutai Manifesto, in English