2011
In this remarkable collection of 100 manifestos from the last 100 years, Alex Danchev presents the cacophony of voices of such diverse movements as Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Feminism, Communism, Destructivism, Vorticism, Stridentism, Cannibalism and Stuckism, taking in along the way film, architecture, fashion, and cookery.
Artists’ manifestos are nothing if not revolutionary. They are outlandish, outrageous, and frequently offensive. They combine wit, wisdom, and world-shaking demands. This collection gathers together an international array of artists of every stripe, including Kandinsky, Mayakovsky, Rodchenko, Le Corbusier, Picabia, Dalí, Oldenburg, Vertov, Baselitz, Kitaj, Murakami, Gilbert and George, together with their allies and collaborators – such figures as Marinetti, Apollinaire, Breton, Trotsky, Guy Debord and Rem Koolhaas.
In his introduction, Alex Danchev examines the rhetoric, the politics and the revolutionary fervour of manifestos, a genre launched by that great utopian project of the modernist period, The Communist Manifesto. Along the way he uncovers humour, wordplay, posturing and catfights. This collection stakes the claim for manifestos as the passport to modernity, to postmodernity, and beyond.