Editor | Marius de Zayas, Paul Haviland, Agnes E. Meyer, Alfred Stieglitz |
---|---|
Categories | Literature, visual arts |
Frequency | Monthly |
Publisher | Stieglitz |
First issue | 1915 |
Final issue | 1916 |
Country | United States |
Based in | New York City |
Language | English |
OCLC | 29656182 |
291 was an arts and literary magazine that was published from 1915 to 1916 in New York City. [1] It was created and published by a group of four individuals: photographer/modern art promoter Alfred Stieglitz, artist Marius de Zayas, art collector/journalist/poet Agnes E. Meyer and photographer/critic/arts patron Paul Haviland. Initially intended as a way to bring attention to Stieglitz's gallery of the same name (291), it soon became a work of art in itself. The magazine published original art work, essays, poems and commentaries by Francis Picabia, John Marin, Max Jacob, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, de Zayas, Stieglitz and other avant-garde artists and writers of the time, and it is credited with being the publication that introduced visual poetry to the United States.
Alfred Stieglitz was one of the most active arts promoters in the world in the early 1910s. He was already famous for his own photography, he published the well-known magazine Camera Work and he ran the progressive art gallery 291 in New York. After the Armory Show in 1913, a trio of artists and supporters (de Zayas, Meyer and Haviland) gathered around Stieglitz at his gallery, encouraged by his recent interest in promoting other art forms in addition to photography. In January 1915 they proposed the idea of starting a new magazine that would showcase the most avant-garde art of Europe and the U.S., and at the same time bring attention to Stieglitz's gallery. They named the new magazine after the gallery, and with Stieglitz's blessing the four of them began working on the first issue. [2]
Compared with his other publications, Stieglitz was fairly detached from the project. He later said, "I was more or less an onlooker, a conscious one, wishing to see what they would do so far as policy was concerned if left to themselves." [3] Nonetheless, Stieglitz was not one to sit idly aside while something went on around him. He helped set the tone and direction of the magazine, beginning with its design and production.
Wanting to live up to the high standards set in Camera Work, Stieglitz and his colleagues decided to publish two editions of the magazine: a standard subscription printed on heavy white paper and a deluxe edition, limited to 100 copies, printed on Japanese vellum. Both were published in a large folio format (20" x 12"/50.8 cm x 30.5 cm). [4]
Each issue contained just four to six pages, sometimes hinged together to provide a fold-out spread, and there were no advertisements. Due to its size and cutting edge presentation, it had the look and feel of a work of art itself, not a magazine about art. It has been called a "proto-Dadaist statement" [5] in part because much of the content was in the form of visual poetry, a literary and design format attributed to Picabia's friend the French surrealist Guillaume Apollinaire. The design and layout was inspired by the second series of the magazine Les Soirées de Paris, edited in France by Apollinaire, and it was de Zayas who brought the concepts from the French magazine and put them into place in the new magazine. Because of these influences art historian William Innes Homer has said "In design and content, there was no periodical in America more advanced than 291. [6]
A regular subscription initially cost ten cents per issue or one dollar a year; the deluxe edition cost five times as much. Little attempt was made to attract subscribers, and no more than one hundred signed up for the regular edition. There were only eight known subscribers to the deluxe edition. [4]
Stieglitz had 500 extra copies printed of Issue No. 7–8, which featured his photograph The Steerage . Because it had recently been published for the first time and attracted very positive comments, he anticipated a huge demand for the image. The demand did not materialize, and none of the additional copies was sold.
Only twelve numbers of 291 were published, but three of them were double numbers so just nine actual issues were printed. It never attracted a wide audience, and the high costs of production became too much to sustain. Stieglitz had hundreds of unsold copies at his gallery when he closed it in 1917; he sold all of them to a rag picker for $5.80. [4] In 1917, Francis Picabia founded the magazine 391 in Barcelona, the title inspired by 291.
All issues are highly valued now, and a complete set of the original issues is very rare. One of the complete sets is in the collection of the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, DC (LC Control No 00204566). A bound reprint edition was published by the Arno Press in 1972 (ISSN 1054-7193) and may be found in large university and public libraries.
In literature the idea is expressed by the polyphony of simultaneous voices which say different things. Of course, printing is not an adequate medium, for succession in the medium is unavoidable and a photograph is more suitable.
That the idea of simultanism is essentially naturalistic is obvious; that the polyphony of interwoven sounds and meaning has a decided effect upon our senses is unquestionable, and that we can get at the spirit of things through this system is demonstrable.I speak of that photography in which the genius of man leaves to the machine its full power of expression. For it is only thus that we can reach a comprehension of pure objectivity.
Objective truth takes precedence over Stieglitz in his work. By means of a machine he shows us the outer life.Francis Picabia was a French avant-garde painter, writer, filmmaker, magazine publisher, poet, and typographist closely associated with Dada.
291 is the commonly known name for an internationally famous art gallery that was located in Midtown Manhattan at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City from 1905 to 1917. Originally called the "Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession", the gallery was established and managed by photographer Alfred Stieglitz.
Pierre Albert-Birot was a French avant-garde poet, dramatist, and theater manager. He was a steadfast avant-garde during World War I, through the magazine Sic he created and published from 1916 to 1919. He was a defender of Futurism and Cubism. The Dadaists considered him one of their own, although he never took part in the movement. He declared himself the founder of the ″nunique" school, a literary school of which he was the only master, with no disciples. After the war, he distanced himself from the Surrealists, to whom he had, with Guillaume Apollinaire, given their name, and he created a solipsistic body of work and tried his hand at everything, printing his own books, cultivating the childlike joy of artistic creation, as he himself wrote: ″I find my joy in poetic creation and I find my joy in the creations of my hands. ... All of this is just like a game, I love to play, I keep the kid alive.″ Despite being mocked by the Surrealists for his pretensions to excel in too many arts, and being criticized by Philippe Soupault as an extravagant man without real poetic talent, he earned the praises and friendships of Francis Picabia and Apollinaire who dubbed him Pyrogène ("Pyrogen"), because of his "fiery" temperament as an innovator and disruptor. Later, Gaston Bachelard praised the depth of his philosophical views, thanking him for ″giving the body better consciousness than a philosopher″ and he influenced various poets such as Jean Follain, Pascal Pia, and even today, Valérie Rouzeau.
Charles Henry Caffin was an Anglo-American writer and art critic, born in Sittingbourne, Kent, England. After graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1876, with a broad background in culture and aesthetics, he engaged in scholastic and theatrical work. In 1888, he married Caroline Scurfield, a British actress and writer. They had two children, daughters Donna and Freda Caffin. In 1892, he moved to the United States. He worked in the decoration department of the Chicago Exposition, and after moving to New York City in 1897, he was the art critic of Harper's Weekly, the New York Evening Post, the New York Sun (1901–04), the International Studio, and the New York American. His publications are of a popular rather than a scholarly character, but he was an important early if equivocal advocate of modern art in America. His writings were suggestive and stimulating to laymen and encouraged interest in many fields of art. One of his last books, Art for Life's Sake (1913), described his philosophy, which argued that the arts must be seen as "an integral part of life....[not] an orchid-like parasite on life" or a specialized or elite indulgence. He also argued strenuously for art education in American elementary schools and high schools and was a frequent lecturer.
Camera Work was a quarterly photographic journal published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917. It presented high-quality photogravures by some of the most important photographers in the world, with the goal to establish photography as a fine art. It was called "consummately intellectual", "by far the most beautiful of all photographic magazines", and "a portrait of an age [in which] the artistic sensibility of the nineteenth century was transformed into the artistic awareness of the present day."
Marius de Zayas Enriquez y Calmet, was an early 20th-century Mexican artist, writer and art gallery owner who was influential in the New York arts circles of the 1910s and 1920s.
391 was a Dada-affiliated arts and literary magazine created by Francis Picabia, published between 1917 and 1924 in Barcelona, Zürich and New York City.
The Steerage is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1907. It has been hailed by some critics as one of the greatest photographs of all time because it captures in a single image both a formative document of its time and one of the first works of artistic modernism.
There were men and women and children on the lower deck of the steerage. There was a narrow stairway leading to the upper deck of the steerage, a small deck right on the bow with the steamer.
To the left was an inclining funnel and from the upper steerage deck there was fastened a gangway bridge that was glistening in its freshly painted state. It was rather long, white, and during the trip remained untouched by anyone.
On the upper deck, looking over the railing, there was a young man with a straw hat. The shape of the hat was round. He was watching the men and women and children on the lower steerage deck...A round straw hat, the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right, the white drawbridge with its railing made of circular chains – white suspenders crossing on the back of a man in the steerage below, round shapes of iron machinery, a mast cutting into the sky, making a triangular shape...I saw shapes related to each other. I was inspired by a picture of shapes and underlying that the feeling I had about life."
Paul Burty Haviland was a French-American photographer, writer and arts critic who was closely associated with Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession.
Frank Burty Haviland was a French Cubist painter, a friend and early client of Picasso and Braque, and an early collector of African art.
New York Dada was a regionalized extension of Dada, an artistic and cultural movement between the years 1913 and 1923. Usually considered to have been instigated by Marcel Duchamp's Fountain exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917, and becoming a movement at the Cabaret Voltaire in February, 1916, in Zürich, the Dadaism as a loose network of artists spread across Europe and other countries, with New York becoming the primary center of Dada in the United States. The very word Dada is notoriously difficult to define and its origins are disputed, particularly amongst the Dadaists themselves.
Katharine Nash Rhoades was an American painter, poet and illustrator born in New York City. She was also a feminist.
Les Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques, is a book written by Guillaume Apollinaire between 1905 and 1912, published in 1913. This was the third major text on Cubism; following Du "Cubisme" by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger (1912); and André Salmon, Histoire anecdotique du cubisme (1912).
Marion Hasbrouck Beckett was an American painter.
Edith Clifford Williams (1885–1971) was an early pioneer in the American abstract art movement. She was part of the circle that gathered around the photographer and modern art promoter Alfred Stieglitz. She was also a long-time confidante of Hu Shih (1891–1962), who was arguably the most prominent Chinese intellectual in the first half of the 20th century.
Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia was a French art critic and writer affiliated with Dadaism. She was an organiser of the French resistance and the first wife of artist Francis Picabia.
Galeries Dalmau was an art gallery in Barcelona, Spain, from 1906 to 1930. The gallery was founded and managed by the Symbolist painter and restorer Josep Dalmau i Rafel. The aim was to promote, import and export avant-garde artistic talent. Dalmau is credited for having launched avant-garde art in Spain.
Baroness Hélèné d'Oettingen, born Elena Francezna Miaczinska, was a Russian-French painter and writer. Her father is believed to have been a Polish nobleman, but she supposedly acquired the baroness title through marrying a Baltic baron.
Les Soirées de Paris was a French literary and artistic review founded in February 1912 by Guillaume Apollinaire and four of his associates - André Billy, René Dalize, André Salmon, and André Tudesq. It was last published in August 1914.