Lettrist movement papers, 1949-1988

Printable guide [HTML]

Summary

Creators:

Isou, Isidore, Lemaître, Maurice, 1926-, Satié, Alain, 1944-, Mouvement lettriste, and Brau, Jean Louis

Abstract:

Assorted material from the Lettrist movement, including manuscripts, printed essays and tracts, and exhibition ephemera.

Extent:

5.75 Linear Feet (3 boxes, 2 flatfile folders)

Language:

Collection material is in French.

Preferred citation:

Lettrist movement papers, 1949-1988, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 900263

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa900263

Background

Scope and content:

This assembled archive of approximately 50 assorted items is a portion of a larger acquisition documenting the development of the Lettrist movement. Included here are manuscripts, tracts, exhibition catalogs, posters and printed ephemera relating to Isidore Isou, the founder of the movement, and other key members such as Maurice Lemaître, Alain Satié, and Jean-Louis Brau, as well as a range of collaborative works.

The archive includes eight items by Isou mostly from the 1970s and 1980s, one regarding the "brain-pollution" of a former colleague, another a "communiqué" to President Giscard d'Estaing. There are nine items by Isou's compatriot, Maurice Lemaître, including a tract arguing that Isou should be awarded the Nobel Prize. A collection highlight is a set of brilliantly colored issues of Revue littéraire letteriste, each one of which is a poster-size visual "novel" by a different artist/writer. There is also an art object, Les mots parlent (1971) which consists of a partially opened sardine can containing an advertisement for wine that has been cut into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle.

Biographical / historical:

Lettrism was founded in 1945 by Romanian poet Isidore Isou who, with the help of Gabriel Pomerand, distributed leaflets in Paris announcing that letters had superseded words as the avant-garde's preferred medium. In 1946 the first Lettrist manifesto was published. In the same year the first exhibition was held, featuring drawings, paintings and sculptures made of Roman letters. In 1949 Isou published a tract advocating sexual promiscuity, La Mécanique des femmes, for which he was briefly incarcerated, and over the subsequent twenty years, Lettrism's scope included everything from art and literature to film, social mores and electoral politics. Various offshoots of the movement developed, including Lettrism International, formed when Guy Debord broke with Isou; Debord subsequently founded the Situationist International.

Processing information:

In 2009 with grant funding from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), Laura Schroffel processed the collection and made an inventory under the supervision of Ann Harrison, while Annette Leddy helped devise the arrangement and wrote the descriptive notes.

Arrangement:

Materials by individual artists/authors are grouped together, followed by a list of materials from collaborative projects.

Physical location:

Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy.

Rules or conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Indexed terms

Subjects:: Lettrism
Literature, Experimental
Posters
Art objects
Printed ephemera
Manuscripts
Tracts (documents)

Access and use

Restrictions:: Open for use by qualified researchers.
Terms of access:: Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions.