the reproduction on
the paper
of a magical action
that I have performed
in true space
with the breath of my
lungs
with my hands
with my head
and my 2 feet
with my torso and my
arteries, etc. —
For Artaud, as we know, art was always indistinguishable from magic. If we fail to get clear what ‘magic’ meant to him, however, we shall be liable to invent completely chimerical connections between Artaud and the cabbala, or the Tarot, orastrology, or alchemy and so on. All his life long, Artaud had an insatiable curiosity about the occult sciences and, over the years, he absorbed anextraordinary amount of knowledge about Eastern religions, esoteric practices,magical rites and alchemy.
A good indication of Artaud’s understanding of magic is the definition he gives of it apropos of the Mayan gods, still living and still bloodthirsty…
If magic is a constant form of communication from within to without, from the act to the thought, from the thing to the word, from matter to mind, we can say that we lost this blinding inspiration, this nervous illumination, long ago, and that we need to bathe once more in live, untainted springs.
Magic is thus a link for Artaud, an awesomely effective form of ‘communication’. It is no doubt the only way to heal that ‘painful split’ between things and words, between ideas and signs, that gulf between culture and life, that deadly petrification which Artaud saw at work everywhere in the Western world. The Theatre of Cruelty is founded on the idea of a magical use of theatrical space that brings together what has hitherto remained separate: actor and public,author and director, language of sound and language of sight, gestures, cries,lights. . . . A contagion affects the spectator, reality is shattered, and an exorcism occurs: ‘We ought to consider staging from the angle of magic and enchantment.’
The page is thus subject to contrary forces. On the one hand, it submits to the centrifugal force of handwriting that escapes from the printed lines with its sweeping strokes and impetuous, unfinished loops. Amid this energy, punctuation is often lacking, replaced by the line turnovers that lend the pages their unique visual rhythm: the poetic and the plastic are both present here, indeed indistinguishable. Meanwhile the drawings constitute a countervailing centripetal force: their outlines, pointed up by cross-hatching and striation, double backupon themselves; the marks thicken, darken, take on a coal-like quality fromthe pencil lead being crushed into the paper; rubbings-out proliferate.
We are not concerned here with
drawings
properly speaking,
or with any kind of incorporation
of reality by drawings.
These are not an attempt
to renew
the art
of drawing
in which I have never believed
no
but to understand them
they must first be placed in context.
They are 50 drawings
taken from exercise books
containing notes
literary
poetic
psychological
physiological
magical
especially magical
magical first
and foremost.
So they are mixed up
with pages
laid down on pages
where writing
is at the forefront
of vision,
writing,
feverish notes
effervescent,
ardent
blasphemy
imprecation.
From imprecation
to imprecation
these pages progress
and like bodies of
new
sensibility
these drawings
are there
to comment upon them,
to aerate
and clarify them.
Antonin Artaud was a poet, theorist, philosopher, essayist, playwright, actor and director, and one of the 20th century´s most important theoreticians of drama. His theory of the ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ has influenced playwrights as diverse as Beckett, Genet, Albee and Gelber.
Antonin Artaud spent most of his life in and out of sanatoriums and asylums. He published his most well-known work 1938, The Theatre and its Double. The book is a series of essays, two of which expand on Artaud´s The Theatre of Cruelty, a major defining philosophy in experimental theatre and performing art. He has influenced the works of a number of performers and producers, from Peter Brook to Spalding Gray to Motley Crue and Bauhaus.
Artaud´s theories in Theatre and Its Double influenced rock musician Jim Morrison. Motley Crüe named the Theatre of Pain album after reading his proposal for a Theatre of Cruelty, much like Christian Death had with their album Only Theatre of Pain. The band Bauhaus included a song about the playwright, called “Antonin Artaud”, on their album Burning from the Inside. Influential Argentinean folk-rock songwriter Luis Alberto Spinetta named his album Artaud and wrote most of the songs on that album based on his writings. Theatrical practitioner Peter Brook took inspiration from Artaud´s ‘Theatre of cruelty’ in a series of workshops that lead up to his well-known production of Marat/Sade. The Living Theatre was also heavily influenced by him, as was much English-language experimental theatre and performance art–Karen Finley, Spalding Gray, Liz LeCompte, Richard Foreman, Charles Marowitz, Sam Shepard, Joseph Chaikin, and more all named Artaud as one of their influences.
Donald Nicholson-Smith’s translations include works by Guy Debord, Jean Piaget, Jean Patrick Manchette, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, J.B. Pontalis and Jean Laplanche, Thierry Jonquet, Henri Lefebvre and Raoul Vaneigem. Born in Manchester, England, he is a long-time denizen of New York city.
