Gil J. Wolman
Gil Joseph Wolman (7 September 1929,
Lettrism
Wolman joined the Letterists in 1950, although he quit the group only two years later. His first published work appeared in the 1950 first issue of their journal Ur, where his 'Introduction to Wolman' would set the scene for later creations: "In the beginning, there was Wolman"! While still in the group, Wolman would make two major contributions. First, in sound poetry, he devised the notion of the 'megapneume': while lettrism was based upon the letter, megapneumes were based upon the breath. Second, in film, he produced L'Anticoncept, the work for which he is now primarily remembered. The film was shown for the first time on 11 February 1952 at the 'Avant-Garde 52' cinema club. It consisted of blank illumination projected onto a weather balloon, accompanied by a staccato spoken soundtrack. The film was banned by the French censors on 2 April 1952—when the Letterists visited the Cannes Film Festival the following month, they were forced to restrict the audience to journalists only. The text of the soundtrack was published in the sole issue of the Letterist journal Ion (1952; reprinted Jean-Paul Rocher, 1999), and later reissued in a separate edition augmented with associated texts (Editions Allia, 1994). Ion also included the text of Guy Debord's film Howls for Sade, which was dedicated to Wolman and featured his voice in its own soundtrack.
First Letterist International
In June 1952, Wolman and Debord formed the
In 1955, Wolman wrote Why Lettrism?, also with Guy Debord, published in Potlatch no. 22. The following year, he represented the Letterist International at the
Back with the Lettrists / Second Letterist International
Following his exclusion, Wolman continued to develop his own work, and he re-established links with the original Letterist movement and exhibited with them from 1961 to 1964. He devised
Posterity
Three years after his death, the magazine "Poézi Prolétèr" (No.2), directed by Katalin Molnar and Christophe Tarkos, published in 1998 an article on Wolman including several of his texts gathered under the title "Introduction of the word". Although at times often seen as a side-kick of Guy Debord, he is now regarded, along with Robert Filliou, as one of the more influential artists of his day. Wolman, however, who started a decade before Filliou, did not subscribe to Filliou's "genius without talent", but rather said that "genius is what we all have when we stop improving one thing in order to make something else. When we only refuse to have talent" (1964).
Several of Wolman's audio recordings were published through Henri Chopin's journal, OU; and an l.p., L'Anticoncept, was issued in 1999 by Alga Marghen, which gathered together various sound works from 1951 to 1972. A volume of his uncollected writings was published in 2001 by Editions Allia, Défense de mourir. The first international retrospective of Wolman's works was held at MACBA (Barcelona, 2010) and Museu SERRALVES (Porto, 2011), curated by Frédéric Acquaviva, Bartomeu Mari and Joao Fernandes, with a catalogue "Gil J Wolman, I am immortal and alive" in 3 different versions : English, Spanish-Catalan, French-Portuguese. The Centre Pompidou in Paris devoted a room to Wolman's works in 2015 while La Plaque Tournante, an independent art space in Berlin, programmed the first Wolman Retrospective in Germany with 500 works and documents.
Notes
- ^ Adrian Dannatt (2 August 1995). "Obituaries: Gil J. Wolman". The Independent.
- ^ Andrew Hussey, The Game of War (Jonathan Cape, 2001), p. 117.
- ^ Jean-Michel Mension, The Tribe (Verse, 2002), p. 61.
- ^ -Michel Mension (2002), p. 80.
- ^ The Game of War, p. 117.
External links
- Wolman, Lettrism, Sound Poetry and Beyond Radio Web MACBA podcast reconstructing the link between Lettrism, sound poetry, and the work of some isolated but fundamental figures (radio/phony_9 of Frédéric Acquaviva).
- Gil J Wolman. I am immortal and alive Monographic exhibition (curated by Frédéric Acquaviva and Bartomeu Mari), on the work of Gil J Wolman, MACBA (2010)
- "Wolman in the Open" Archived 2015-03-19 at the Wayback Machine An essay by Frédéric Acquaviva
- Gil J Wolman Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.