Sami Sjöberg

The Vanguard Messiah

Lettrism between Jewish Mysticism and the Avant-Garde

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

In recent years the role of religion in the avant-garde has begun to attract scholarly interest. The present volume focuses on the work of the Romanian Jewish poet and visual artist Isidore Isou (1925-2007) who founded the lettrist movement in the 1940s. The Jewish tradition played a critical part in the Western avant-garde as represented by lettrism. The links between lettrism and Judaism are substantial, yet they have been largely unexplored until now. The study investigates the works of a movement that explicitly emphasises its vanguard position while relying on a medieval religious tradition as a source of radical textual techniques. It accounts for lettrism's renunciation of mainstream traditions in favour of a subversive tradition, in this case Jewish mysticism. The religious inclination of lettrism also affects the notion of the avant-garde. The elements of the Jewish tradition in Isou's theories and artistic production evoke a broader framework where religion and experimental art supplement each other.

Produktdetails

• Europäisch-jüdische Studien - Beiträge 21
• Verlag: Oldenbourg
• Seitenzahl: 210
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. Juli 2015
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 236mm x 160mm x 18mm
• Gewicht: 426g
• ISBN-13: 9783110427790
• ISBN-10: 3110427796
• Artikelnr.: 42372701

Autorenporträt

Sami Sjöberg, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Rezensionen

"The book is the first systematic and elaborate study of the role of the Jewish tradition in the avant-garde movement of lettrism."
Studies in Spirituality 26/2016