Scope and Contents

This exhibition features enlargement of pages as prints on fabric from Isou's novel "Initiation a la haute volupte" (1960) that is also held by the Sackner Archive as the book and also the prints published by Francisco Conz. The exhibition was curated by Roland Sabatier. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents Stored Isou box. This erotic novel is thought to have been written by Isidore Isou. Born in Romania in 1928, Isou came to Paris at the end of World War II with many ideas for a renovation of all the arts, a re-visioning from the ground up. He called himself a "Lettriste," a movement of which he was initially the only member. Others soon joined him, and the movement continues to grow, albeit at times under a confusing number of different names. In the 1960s Lettriste, Lettriste-influenced works and Isodore Isou gained a great deal of respect in France. Isou's works and letrisme were associated with the situationist branch of the anarchist family and became the art that dominated posters, barricades, even clothing in the attempted revolution of 1968. Although it seemed a highly self-contained art in the post-war period, in 1968 it suddenly became more deeply involved in active social change than such movements as existentialism and surrealism, and came closer to producing actual...