Barcelona y Arthur Cravan
Sep 21st, 2011 by apartmentblogger
When the irrepressible, mercuriala and restless Cuban French artist Francis Picabia (1879-1953) arrived in Zurich in 1918 to get in contact with the group Dada Cabaret Voltaire, act that somehow marked the end of a period, brought with him a history capable of competing with Tzara in ascendancy over this incomparable nihilistic group life-affirming art. Dandy because of his attitude and favored by his pursuit of an adventurous life and the limits of his personal fortune, Picabia was a major figure in the anti-artistic sensitivity, although formal quality and unquestionable and inexhaustible talent of his works systematically was the one who denied this will, famous for his paintings, black and gold machine, his wanderings with his trusty sidekick and friend Duchamp-together had led the vanguard in the United States introducing Dada in New York and the publication of 391, an influential journal whose pages, under the influence of figures such as Apollinaire, and Jarry, was lashed mercilessly and with large doses of aggression against all and against all forms of art.
391, which was possible thanks to the special collaboration of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, was founded in Barcelona in January 1917, when Picabia found a similar group of refugees who were fleeing from war and ready to participate in the company, among whom were: Marie Laurencin painter, Albert Gleizes, Serge Charchoune, Maximilian Gauthier and Arthur Cravan, the latter also a poet, filmmaker and film critic Ricciotto Canudo and, above all, the unclassifiable, his official name was Fabian Lloyd, who had earned a notorious reputation in France with the publication of his very scandalous antiartistic Maintenant magazine and who was particularly Picabia identified by virtue of its nature and its wild and indomitable EPAT and admirable way to expose the bourgeois life and art.
Writer, amateur boxer, Homeric drinker, scammer, supreme slanderer, sailor in the Pacific, mule driver, orange pickers in California, snake charmer, hotel thief, lumberjack, anarchist, driver in Berlin, author of a perfect robbery at a Swiss jewelry store, poor as a rat, falsifier of passports with which he toured Europe, USA, Canada and Mexico, grandson of the Chancellor of the queen of England, a nephew of Oscar Wilde (his father was the brother of Constance, wife of the Irish author) , last seen off the coast of Mexico in 1918 before he was thirty, when he was about to cross a shark infested sea to meet his wife, the painter Mina Loy, in Buenos Aires, performer per excellence … the different masks that adopted his fascinating person and his final disappearance, somehow made him the perfect model of Dada, admired by his legendary 1916 fight ring in Madrid with the black champion Jack Johnson which, predictably and considered the advanced state that ethyl Cravan jumped into the ring, was convincingly knocked out before reaching the second assault.
Paul Oilzum
His legend has been reborn. If you rent apartments in Barcelona you may suddenly be stopped, as has been happening lately in Madrid, with simple painted on walls, mailboxes, phone booths and unexpected places that recall his name.
Translated by: Hans
Contact Me
Tweet
Boxer and precursor of dada movement #Arthur Craven and his relationship with #Barcelona #Culture #poetry #literature http://t.co/5wRLkpr8